Customer Reviews

Garmin MapSource City Navigator Europe (CD-ROM)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I just returned from a trip to Europe. For our trip we flew in to Rome, drove to a rural area an hour outside Florence, spent a week there and drove to Florence, then on to Parma, the Loire valley and finally on to Paris. I purchased this software with the Garmin GPSMap 60Cx and offer the following comments.

1 - Ignore the picture showing V6 - This REALLY is version 8 for sale.

2 - The software was mostly easy to use. The download / upload process was relatively pain free and reasonably fast. There is no need to delete the existing maps in the unit before loading a new map in - your upload simply writes over the current maps.

3 - The only bugs I noticed have to do with getting at the underlying directions for Routes you create. I found that selecting the route did not always work, but that clicking on the route on the map and then clicking on Properties to get to the Directions solved the problem.

4 - The turn-by-turn directions were mostly spot on. However there were some places in Italy where I ran in to areas that were recently / currently under construction and in these areas, some wrong turns were indicated. The most useful feature in these circumstances was the automatic recalculation for directions.

5 - When you zoom in to a quarter mile radius, the location of restaurants, local attractions, etc show up with useful symbols, sometimes with amusing results. Outside the door of our hotel in Florence I turned on the unit and saw no fewer than 15 pizza symbols (pizzerias) within 2 blocks of our hotel.

Now on to the cons

6 - The Route function does not seem to work as advertised. You are supposed to be able to create a Route between two or more points on your computer and then download them to your device. The only problem is that the Route only works if you also include ALL of the map segments between the points. With a 64 MB limit on my device, this was often impossible. The result is that I had to download subsets of the map segments for my drive from Parma to Paris and then create routes for segments of the drive. If I did not have my laptop with me, I would have been out of luck.

A couple of suggestions for version 9. Please break up some of the larger areas into smaller maps. On the segment from Geneva to Paris, I passed through the very northwest corner of one map segment for maybe 15 miles. However I had to load the ENTIRE 6 MB segment in to memory. Alternatively, if the Route function can allow you to load in only the portion of the segment you will drive through, I would be VERY happy.

Also, I was shocked to find that the toll through the Mont Blanc tunnel was 39 euros. There were also numerous other tolls along the way from Parma to Paris - totaling over 115 euros. It would be nice to know this in advance to allow for planning purposes. Considering the fact that thousands of pizzerias are pre-loaded, information about toll roads doesn't seem like too much to ask for.

I ordered v8 as soon as it was advertised by Garmin but they shipped v7 instead. Six weeks later I got the v8 update dvd. My wife and kids had to make due with v7 while in Madrid. She was pleased with the accuracy and said it enabled her to travel around with confidence. However, she noted that Madrid was undergoing quite a bit of major road construction and she got stuck in multiple traffic jams on the major highways. In the end, she would veer away from the major roads and let the unit re-calculate her route.

I bought this CD summer 06 just before a month long road trip through Italy and I can tell it saved my trip. Without it, every day would have been a nightmare. Driving through the busy streets of Rome, Florence, Milan, Napoli went like a breeze. The automatic recalculation of routes was quick and a must when driving through very crowded streets. I was amazed how my Garmin 350 could figure out the most complicated path in the Alps and the Riviera and Amalfi coast. To build my trip, I simply entered each of my hotels in "My Favorites" as well as the major sites i wanted to visit. I then entered the destination with one waypoint each day and it went very well.

POSITIVE:

- Very accurate picture of the curves, exits, roundabouts

- Excellent mapping of the streets at the highest zoom

- Precise mapping of POI, parks, sights

NEGATIVE:

- Garmin sometime confuse roads suitable for scooters only with major roads

- Automatic unzooming and zooming should be disabled. I used high zoom most of the time

- Inaccuracies were rare but already present (some inexistant exits and wrong one-ways)

Good product - Works as advertised. But....

Note that Version 8 is not the most recent product. Version 9 has been around since late 2006 - Apparently lots of improvements, and greater coverage of Europe. I am contacting Garmin directly to see if I can upgrade for free. I would have bought v9 if I had known it existed!!

There are lots of road building projects in Europe and things have moved on since Version 8. I came up against at least 2 situations where new motorways (in Germany) completed in the last 1 - 2 years were not shown at all, and I was taken on a bit of a round about journey.

City Navigator v9 proved a vital asset while traveling in Germany. All local streets and major roads were well represented in and around Munich. While not all that many Biergartens were listed in the Points of Interest (POI) list, some were. If I had an address, it was easy enough to plug in that address and my Garmin 276C never failed to route me exactly to that point. My only major disappoint is that CN Europe is keyed for access to one Garmin unit only. To use CN Europe on a second unit requires the purchase of a second key, where CN North America allows two units to be accessed before requiring a second key. Overall, an excellent product, if a bit expensive.

Software made my last trip to Europe a pleasure. I pre-programmed all my appointments and hotels before I left the USA. GPS data was very accurate in Germany and Austria (is this a surprise?), but in Italy, accuracy was less than perfect. Be careful in countries where Garmin says data may be incomplete. That is the only reason I gave it 4 stars. Cost is high, but with expensive European fuel prices, missing a turn, etc. can add up.

The item is great as such. It has more potential than City Select as it comes with more number of mapping attributes for automatic route calculation. However do shop around for a better price than Amazon, the current price is $599.99 which is almost double the Suggested Retail Price given at Garmin's website!

Way way too expensive but worth every penny when walking and trying not to get lost in the back streets of London, Rome and Athens while guilding my directionally challenged wife. Nothing beats a hand held Garmin GPS with a great city map in a foreign city. Garmin if you listening, how about producing a City Navigator that covers all the cruise port cities in Asia?

Excellent product. I have managed to navigate through Europe on my trip without any issues. The data is still very accurate.

I recently used this product in my Nuvi 360 for three weeks in Austria and Germany and found it highly accurate and the equal of the guide for the USA in terms of driving directions and POI's. It got us through the winding streets of Vienna, Munich and other towns and highways along the way with no problems. We were also in Budapest, though without a car, and it appeared to have a very complete map of that city. We found that the American English voice (Jill) butchered the pronunciation of German street names so switch to the German voice if you understand German. If you know no German (or other local languages as the case may be), then the American pronounciation will probably be useful in recognizing street names phonetically, and of course you will get the driving directions in English.

The Garmin card has absolutely no instructions regarding how to boot it. You must insert the card, turn on the device, then go to Tools>Maps>Map Info and check the Europe Navigator.