Customer Reviews

GARMIN 010-10702-00 GPS Antenna Kit

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I use this product on a Garmin GPS60CS. Before hand, I would get okay signal on any given day. And navigating by it in the truck was difficult because of lost signals. Once I hooked up this GA 25MCX to the GPS, WOW. I have never had sooo many and so high recepction before, EVER!. I almost had all 12 sats. @ full strength. And the plug is easy to use, just push it in and go. And just pull it out for removal, no tiny screw to mess with. The wire is slim and long (9ft), easy enough to hide away behing trim pieces. If you travel with a mobile GPS from Garmin, I highly recommend this product.

I ordered one of these Garmin 25MCX external GPS antennas thinking it was an adequate but less-expensive version of the Garmin GA27C. But the performance of the 25MCX was so bad that I thought it was defective. "Bad" in this context means that all four of the Garmin GPS units that I tried with it took way too long to acquire a fix and the GPS unit very easily lost its connections to the satellites. The 25MCX was essentially useless. I assume that the 25MCX must provide a very weak signal to the GPS compared to the Garmin GA27C and the "Gilsson High Performance active remote external" products.

More information: I tested the 25MCX with two different Garmin eMaps, a Garmin StreetPilot 2610, and a Garmin StreetPilot 2720. All with the same pathetic results: Way too long to acquire, way to frequent satellite disconnects. Amazon replaced the 1st 25MCX for me. But the 2nd one was no different. So Amazon replaced it, too. The 3rd one was just like the others. So, I returned it and replaced it with the Garmin-compatible Gilsson High Performance active remote external GPS Antenna. I currently own 3 of the Gilssons and over the years have owned 5 Gilssons. Perfect! And inexpensive. If you *must* have a Garmin, don't waste your money on the 25MCX. Get the Garmin GA27C. I owned one of these as well and used it with my eMap for sailing on Lake Superior. It works as well as the Gilsson. But, as of 8/3/07, the cost of the Garmin GA27C was $100 and the cost of the Gilsson High Performance active remote external GPS Antenna was $20. And their performance is equal.

I got this for my GPSmap 60csx and my wife's Quest (Mark I). We wanted to be able to locate the units someplace safer (for the occupants) than on the dash when we were in the car. We were also experiencing loss of lock when driving in some forested locations (the Quest mainly).

The antenna seems to improve reception even compared to the GPS units in the same location, and is a lot better when you locate the antenna someplace where the reception is better and/or the GPS units could not fit or be seen. I always kept the antenna inside the car - on the dash, or on sunroof shade. But the magnet seemed adequate to mount of the body of the car. Problem I had with that concept is that the wire has to be bought into the car through an open window or something, and I did not need to do it, so I never tried.

The only downside is that the connector (which is a coaxial type) seems to be a bit fragile for the application. It was very snug and hard to insert/remove and after a dozen or so inserts/removes the inner conductor became sufficiently misaligned that it damaged the connector on the GPS unit, and the external antenna stopped working. I believe that it gets power from the wire as well as sending signals. The GPS switched automatically to its internal antenna so this was not immediately apparent. I will shortly be seeing how Garmin's warranty process works.

Edited:

Warranty process for the antenna is this: Garmin does not do repairs, and refers you to the place you purchased it from to "see if they can do anything for you." Amazon.com's return policy is only for 30 days (in original packaging) otherwise they refer you to the manufacturer. I have had this for 6 weeks so I am out of luck. Buyer Beware, I guess. My recommendation, buy it if you really need it but buy it from a bricks and mortar store that has an interest in keeping you as a customer if the product turns out to be defective.

Edited again:

I sent in my GPSMap 60CSx (its external antenna connector failed when the external antenna's connector failed) for repair under its warranty. I got back someone else's Rino 110. Now, given that a Rino 110 costs 1/2 as much as a GPS Map, and has a very different feature set (including a walkie-talkie and the ability to communicate with other Rino's - but I don't own any, but no route finding) it is useless in my application. So, not only will the antenna take out itself, it can take out your GPS too, and the warranty service for that sucks as well. I'd steer clear of this antenna/manfacturer unless you absolutely need it.

Edit X3:

Garmin eventually replaced the GOS unit that was lost, and the antenna. But I would still stick with someone who is interested in keeping you as a customer. I'd also be concerned that the plug is still a weak spot in an essential place.

This antenna has been great. I live in Arlington, VA in an area of tall buildings and before I purchased this antenna my StreetPilot c330 would take up to 5 minutes to connect and then drop the signal intermittently. With this antenna, the unit takes generally under a minute to connect and rarely loses a signal, and even when it does lose a signal, it picks it up again very quickly. Highly recommended.

My Garmin c330 operated awful in my old Buick Roadmaster wagon with the unit taking sometimes up to 15-18 minutes to acquire the satellites and then lost them very often during any given trip. The GPS was useless to me. The addition of this antenna totally solved my problem. The acquisition of the satellites is very fast and I haven't lost them during any trip. I highly recommend this antenna.

Before I purchase the 25 MCX Antenna my street pilot would take a while before finding the required signal to start the navigation process and in some case I would even get to my destination and the unit still didn't find a signal. However, since I add the antenna I am now getting full signal strength immediately as the unit is turned on. The only problem I had was that at first I was using the antenna inside the vehicle and I would loose signal even in areas I would normally have signal without the antenna, but once I mount the antenna outside that solved that problem. I have a 08 Camry and found out from the Toyota dealers that the type of windshield that's on my car is the cause for that issue.

Antenna works as advertised but still requires unobstructed view of sky, connection to palm is VERY hard to remove.

Our Garmin Street Pilot c340 worked just fine until we got a new car - a 2007 Toyota Camry - then the device kept losing the GPS signal, usually at a critical moment, it seemed. Something in the new car was blocking the signal. We bought the Garmin GPS Antenna Kit. There's an antenna plug socket on the Street Pilot. we plugged in the Antenna, ran the cable through the open back door and put the magnetic antenna receiver on the car roof, shut the car door over the cable (it's fine - it doesn't crimp the cable - the rubber door gasket protects it) and powered up the GPS. The GPS signal is now strong and rarely gets lost - a major improvement over what we had been experiencing. I can state definitely that the antenna has solved our lost signal problems.

this device allows the GPS unit to be in other than direct satellite contact...recommended as it allows convenient placement of GPS & simultaneous direct satellite contact...it could use a suction cup to keep antenna from sliding around during turns...would by again...jo'c

I was having issues w/ my Garmin not working in our Trailblazer and although we tried everything we still got no satellite reception. I called the GM dealership and they said there should be nothing inside that would be interfering w/ the signal. I called Garmin and they asked if we had the invisible UV protector on our windows. Since we bought the SUV w/ all the bells and whistles available, I told them most likely we did. "That's the problem", Garmin said. They recommended we purchase the external antenna. We did and poof! No more problems! Got a signal immediately upon hooking it up. Amazon's price was less than half what Garmin wanted, too. Great product, fast shipping and excellent price. Thank you!