Customer Reviews

Garmin cf Que 1620 North America (010-00290-00)

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

 

 

I've been using the cf Que 1620 in my HP iPAQ for over 4 months now and am very satisfied with it's performance. Unlike the previous reviewer, I have not had major issues with the GPS unit locating satellites. I have used it in many areas of the US and Canada.

For the initial setup, it is very important that the correct Base Map for the area that you are physically located in is installed, otherwise, the GPS cannot coordinate with the satelite with the mapping software properly. Normally you would choose the North American base maps. The unit shipped from Amazon only includes the North American City Select maps which are needed to get local roads, landmarks, and Points of Interest. Maps for other areas of the world are available from Garmin. In addition, the documentation is fairly complete and will explain how to get the GPS to find the satellite quicker under "Initializing the GPS Receiver" in the Applications Guide.

If you purchase the unit and it comes with the version 5.0 of the City Select maps, contact Garmin and they can get you upgraded to the current version. This happened to me and since I had purchased the unit just before the upgrade occurred, they upgraded me for free. I thought this showed excellent customer service. The upgraded maps had all of the exit number changes that have occurred in my area as well as new street names for new housing developments.

Some basics: Your Pocket PC based PDA will need to have an empty CompactFlash (CF) slot for the GPS antenna that comes with the unit (it also has 64 MB of memory space in the same assembly). Since my iPAQ had a Secure Digital slot (like many PDAs) but no CF slot, I had to purchase a CF sleeve for the iPAQ as well. I'm tempted to buy a iPAQ 2215 since it has both slots in the case (no need for the sleeve).

A couple of specifics: It is a very good idea to make sure you are running MS Pocket PC 2003 operating system. My iPAQ originally came with Pocket PC 2002 and the Garmin had many problems locking up along with very slow performance. Once I upgraded, the difference was tremendous. The Garmin CF Que 1620 is now very stable and fast. The bigger the memory card, the more maps you can store. For example, a 512 MB SD card is able to hold the Northeast & Mid Atlantic U.S. from Virginia up to Maine, the Dallas - Ft. Worth area, Southern California, Idaho, and Utah (with some room to spare).

The Negatives:

- Having to add the CF sleeve made the unit thicker than normal. As a result, the supplied dash mount does not hold the unit as securely as it normally would (it still is adequate though)

- The speaking volume for directions is too low if you have a noisy interior (or if you play your music loud). I found two solutions for this. 1) I bought a set of portable powered speakers and connected them through the headphone jack. 2) Bought one of the Belkin Tunecast II Mobile transmitters to broadcast the directions through the radio (which I take on trips with a rental car - nice and small).

The Positives:

- Excellent customer support. As I mentioned above.

- The unit responds very quickly when a re-route is required (especially with all of the construction that is going on seemingly wherever I'm going...) It always gets me back on-course. Its great to get around traffic jams too.

- Lots of flexibility in choosing how the maps will be displayed while driving. For example, the default is for the unit to zoom the map back and forth depending on your location while I prefer to see more detail of the side streets along the path that the car is taking. Uncheck the Auto-zoom box if you don't want the zooming.

- I tested it head-to-head against the Hertz NeverLost GPS system. It was as good and at times much better during my test in Southern California. The Garmin user interface was much easier to use.

- Lots of POIs (Points of Interest). I'm on the road alot and I really appreciate how it can find my hotel, nearby restaurants, fast food, golf courses, airports, gas stations, etc. quickly and accurately.

- The unit also comes with a matching version of the software that loads on your PC. It is very convenient to create the Waypoints (which I can use as Origin or Destination points) on the PC, then have it download into the cf Que. From there, you just select the Waypoint and tell the Garmin to Route to It. It gives you the estimated time of arrival along with the mileage. You can also configure your iPAQ to show Turn-by-Turn instructions with a touch of a button.

Overall, it is an excellent unit. Now that I've used it for a bit of time (everything "high-tech" has a learning curve), I'm more impressed with it every time I use it. Even my techno friends are impressed. Well worth the money. As usual, Amazon got it to me quickly as well.

This device works wonderfully and is very accurate. I have an IPAQ 2215 with a 1gig SD card and I have not had any issues downloading maps, routes, etc... If you are thinking about doing some research on this, stay away from pocketpcmag.com. The 'mantra' of the 'expert' on that site is if you are not buying bluetooth then it sucks.

I've puchased Garmin cfQue1620 for my vacation trip from Philadelphia, PA to Toronto, Canada and back via NY City. I've used this unit with my Axim X5 (400 MHz running under MS PPC 2003).The unit worked fine, with few hickups; while routing to the hotel that I was planning to stay in Niagara Falls (Canadian side) it was directing us to a special bridge on the river that only special card holders are allowed to pass (perhaps Garmin people will fix these issues when they hear these hickups from users). The second hickup occured in Toronto where the unit missed the exit that we supposed to take for shore destination (perhaps I was driving a little fast comparing with US standard ;-)...). Nevertheless, I'm very happy with this purchase and wouldn't leave my home for such a trip without cfQue 1620, good job Garmin!

I purchased my CF Que 1620 from an Ebay seller 1 month ago. The seller did not have the MapSource unlock code, but Garmin's excellent customer service dept. provided me with the code for my unit once it was determined the code had not been activated by the previous owner. I give Garmin's customer service department 5+ stars, they even offered to stay on the phone with me as I unlocked the product (after normal business hours!). The product was shipped to me with Mapsource v5 and since a newer version was available (v6) I signed up on Garmin's website to receive the updated software (free upgrade / free shipping). It arrived about a week later and installed with no problem (using a new unlock code). My initial tests with the CF Que were not good. After inserting the CF Que into my PDA (an Ipaq hx2415) I would have satellite lock within 1 minute, but after 10-20 minutes satellite lock would be lost permanently. The only way to reset the CF Que (and regain satellite lock) was to re-insert it into my PDA and hope it worked again. At first I thought I had a defective CF Que but I soon received an email from HP (manufacturer of my Ipaq) that a problem had been discovered with the CF slot dropping "modem connections". Since the CF Que acts as a modem in the CF slot I decided to try the upgraded ROM for my PDA provided by HP. Wow, what a difference the ROM upgrade made. Satellite lock occurs in 1 minute like before, but the CF Que doesn't drop satellite connection now. I used my Ipaq and CF Que to make a 5 hour trip into West Virginia last weekend and lost satellite connection only once, during a 180 degree turn up a steep mountain road. Within 20 seconds the CF Que had re-established satellite lock and never lost it again even after several more 180 degree turns. I am very pleased with my CF Que now that my Ipaq CF problem has been resolved and would recommend the CF Que to anyone needing robust turn by turn PDA-GPS capability.

I have an iPAQ H3955 with CompactFlash expansion and been looked for GPS solution for a long time. This Garmin product becomes my final decision. First of all, its unique multi-angle flip antenna is very convenient for different usages like driving, hiking and biking. When not using it, just flip the antenna all the way down to store my pocket pc in the pocket.

The display modes are not as fancy as other products but the most important is the calculation is much more accurate than other products I have used. It never guides me into the wrong direction of a one-way. (Well, other product did that to me.)

Garmin provides wide range of maps for different purposes. For example, MapSource US TOPO is compatible with cf que 1620, this is good for outdoor activity lovers.

I don't worry about getting lost in Europe trip anymore because Garmin also has Europe street map available.

H3955's built-in speaker is loud and clear so I don't need ear phone or external speaker. If your pocket pc's speaker is not loud enough, you may consider a "PDA holder with speaker".

Overall, it is an excellent unit as compare to my previous products (other brands).

I purchased this unit with great expectations and was greatly disappointed with it and had to return it. Garmin is a great company (I have had a handheld unit for several years), and I had great service with their technical support, but the bottom line is that the unit was forever "acquiring satellites" and when it would finally find a few, the screen would blink and they would all disappear and it would start all over again. Garmin technical support did acknowledge that there were some compatibility issues with some Dell Axim models. I tried the ActiveSync patch mentioned on the web, but it made no difference. I think that the design is fine and it probably works well on other PDAs, but if you have an Axim X51, don't waste your time with this one.

Well, I love the design of this unit, and the Garmin navigation software is fantastic, but there's a huge catch. It won't work with newer Pocket PCs. According to an email I received from tech support at Garmin: "unfortunately the Garmin CF Que 1620 is only designed to work with Pocket PC 2003 and does not work well, if at all, with the Window Mobile 5 operating systems". Sooo, if you have an older PPC, I'd say go for it, but if you're on WM5, and you want a Garmin unit, take a look at the GPS 10 (a bluetooth GPS module).

I received a Faulty CF 1620 !!
Sometimes works and most of the time get Frozen .
I have an Ipaq 2495 with it and it works Randomly.
Very dissapointed with this Product !!

Jose Quintero

Ordered the item on Sunday and arrived on Tuesday! Plugged it in, loaded the base map and used it that day. Comes with a great mounting device (non slip weighted bag type that does not require any mounting screws on the dash). The system works as well as my BMW's $1700 navigation system without the cost.

I own it for over a year. I finally worked out the procedure to keep it running on Dell (it crashed frequently, forcing hard resets and loosing all info and programs). You need your laptop, USB cradle, and Setup CD with you all the time in order to reinstall the program, when it happens. I keep the Dell running on cigarette lighter power supply, with all the power saving options off. It seems unstable when running on less-than-full battery. Dell has its own issues with reporting level of battery charge- see their website and software patches. It took me one year to figure the sequence out. When closing, I close Garmin software first (settings-system-memory-running programs), then remove the unit from CF slot, then shut down Dell. Starting, I start the program, touch the screen when prompted, and then insert the unit into CF slot. Unit will crash anyway from time to time or show CF card error messages. Unit sometimes cannot find any satellites, when it happens, look at the satellite window, and if no satellites are displayed, just follow the closing procedure, than start over again. I kept updating the software: system and sync, but it doesn't help. Garmin customer support is nice, responsive, and willing to cooperate, but incompetent or uninformed. They promptly sent me a replacement unit, which exhibits the same bad behavior as the old one. Other issues: Florida maps are terribly outdated. Naples, Clearwater, Miami - don't buy. Lots of hours and gallons of gasoline I have lost looking for missing roads, bridges, and businesses.

Other people complain about the slow satellite search- this particular complaint does not sound legitimate to me: 1. There is a procedure for a user-induced search when you moved to a new place - read the manual! 2. Any handheld unit seems in some way inferior to permanent units, for multiple reasons: level of exposure, shielding by glass coating, continuity of powers supply, etc.

Also, complaint about loosing satellites when in the city doesn't sound right- I know some silly movies show people finding their way with GPS when crawling in municipal sewer system, but Hollywood fantasies were always far from reality. Please, accept that GPS must see satellites in order to establish location. In the concrete jungle of skyscrapers- just forget it. Write down the directions, before you loose the connection.