Customer Reviews

GARMIN City Navigator Europe NT On MicroSD

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Unfortunately the EuropeNT Citimaps version of the Garmin Micro-SD did not live up to it's North American counterpart. Although I have not encountered problems with the latter, this chip either had "bugs" or just wasn't capturing and interpreting the satellite signals correctly. I tried it in Chambery, France, Geneva, Switzerland, and Francfurt, Germany and never got useful results. From the train station in Geneva it kept recalculating and had me walking in circles for 25min when in fact my hotel turned out to be 2 blocks away!
I am a knowledgeable user and well aware of the various settings such as bicycle/pedestrian, map detail, routing, opting to avoid major roads, etc..
Again, not sure where the problem was but at times would lose the map altogether when walking/riding in normal outdoor settings.
The "Find Places" feature was unusable as well. I attempted to calculate a route back to home base in France and it provided around a 60 kilometer route when in fact it was only 10-15k away!
Although I will speak to Garmin about these problems and see if they are aware of any bugs in the product, for now I would have to highly recommend using a different mapping system in western Europe.

We live in Europe but bought our GPS in the US because it's cheaper, added the Europe city maps so we could use it here. It's been extremely helpful and accurate so far, we're very pleased with it! We've used it mainly for driving but have also used it as pedestrians.

This is somewhat embarrassing, but here it is.

So, we arrived in Paris CDG, took RER to the train stop I knew less than 100m from our Hotel, and took the nearest surface exit from the train station without realizing that it was the wrong surface exit (that was one of the bigger train stations with subway and RER transfer). We walked for several blocks only to mystify myself wondering why I didn't see the street signs I was supposed to. In the end, I pulled out my Garmin GPS with this SD plugged in, let it find where we were, found the Hotel's address, and say "Go", and discovered that we walked in the opposite direction for several blocks instead of walking for just a block!

Yes, please laugh; that was what we did, too. Nonetheless, this SD card saved us a ton! Get this, you won't regret it. The street of our Hotel was not the map in Rick Steve's France book, but it was indeed in this SD, as you would expect.

I have not yet tried it in places other than Paris, Nice, and the vicinity.

Ordered a used current version of the Garmin City Navigator Europe NT on MicroSD and it worked perfectly on our trip to Germany, Austria, Italy and Slovenia. Have taken other trips to Euope with old fashioned maps and had no problems, however, can't imagine not having the Garmin with me in the future, because it maximizes your vacation time and gets you there fast!
Highly recommend!

City Navigator NY (Europe) worked GREAT in my Garmin Nuvi 760. I got the plug-in SD card and plugged it in, turned it on and it saw Europe. Clocked the Lyon-Paris Bullet Train at 193 mph!
In Nice, France we noticed the voice at times seemed to disagree with the map- so we quickly learned to follow the map and it took us right where we wanted to go. Without it I would have driven in circles for hours trying to get to the super highway.
In Aix-en Provence it found the restaurant distrct for us in a small beautiful city where we had no clue where to turn.
Wouldn't have made it without the City Navigator.

I bought this product for our camping trip this summer in Germany, Holland and Czech Republic. When I type in all the addresses it seems work fine. I haven't try it on the road yet. I bet it is very useful and convinent. The only thing is the price. If it can be cheaper that would even be better

Anna Lee(NJ)

This was a life saver in Prague since the streets are unmarked, very crooked and narrow, and after a while it all looks the same like in a maze.

I purchased the Garmin Europe data base("GARMIN City Navigator Europe NT On MicroSD") from Amazon.com on an SD card for my older model nuvi 350. We are leaving for Spain/France next week. I delayed ordering the data base specifically to make sure I was getting the most recent data -- not thinking that I'd have technical problems once the SD chip was in hand. So much for pesky assumptions.

To be fair, One Star rates my experience, not necessarily the Garmin product. As you will see, I don't really know how to evaluate the product, since it never loaded.

When I got the above data base on the microSD card (in a full-sized SD adapter), I looked for the step-wise directions on its installation. Nothing! Well, the slip of paper in the sealed official-looking Garmin envelope had instructions for physically inserting the card depending on whether your unit took the microSD or the full-sized SD card. That's it. No step-wise anything.

So I went to the Garmin website and also found -- NOTHING by way of step-wise instructions on installing the card. Ditto the user forums I found. In the process I had determined that it would be smart to upgrade the unit's operating system (I was about 2 revs behind), so I connected the nuvi to my Mac and did that without incident.

So I shut the unit down, pushed the SD card into the [never-used] SD slot and turned the nuvi back on. What came up was my North American maps as usual, vintage 2008. I found the Settings / Map / Map Info trail to the screen where data bases should appear (thank you, user forums), and there was North America -- no Europe. That's when I wrote an email to Garmin Support (no weekend phone hours), and actually got a response by Sunday -- prompt, but not useful: Upgrade your operating system software [which I'd already done], and try, try again.

After this correspondence, early Monday morning, I called Garmin Support. The cheerful and helpful tech stepped me through a complete reset of my unit (which erases all your personal settings and saved stuff -- oh well), after which he had me re-insert the SD card with my Europe data base. The nuvi would still not recognize the card. So believe it or not, I was sent to the local Best Buy to see if techs there could figure out what the issue was!! So Garmin's support of last resort is Best Buy? Oh my. Again, to be fair, the Garmin Support tech knew by now that I had a time crunch, and that there was no way I'd get this problem resolved in time through more-normal channels.

Needless to say, the tech in our local Best Buy automotive department was not able to help. So I will be returning the SD card to the Amazon vendor. I just hope they will take it back.

So again, One Star for my experience. No idea how to rate the SD-based Europe Maps data base itself, since it never made an appearance. I've contacted Hertz and they'll provide me a NeverLost on our rental. For a price, of course. Sigh. And my experience shouldn't dissuade you from ordering this product. But at least give yourself some "recoup time" (Plan B) in case my experience is not unique. [I do seriously fault Garmin for their complete lack of step-wise instructions. That should be easy to fix, Garmin -- just do it!]

It worked great and without it our driving trip to northern Spain would have been a disaster. The only problem is that the voice giving directions saying the names of the streets in Spanish should be someone who can pronounce the Spanish names. The pronounciation was sometimes so far off I could not tell it what was being said, particularly since it is also a mechanical pronounciation (I think the company can program the computer to pronounce things in Spanish more clearly and accurately).

Purchased used for my garmin 255WT for my vacation to UK, France and Italy. Worked flawlessly and gave same in-depth information as US maps