Customer Reviews

Garmin Mobile for BlackBerry with GPS 20SM - GPS kit

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

 

 

Using mine since Feb '07, first with a BlackBerry 7100, then with the faster 8100 Pearl. Absolutely fabulous. One particularly useful feature when in other (boroughs or) cities is the finder, which provides all locations of a post office, particular chain, bank branch etc. starting with the nearest, as well as standalone, specific stores, restaurants etc. No unnecessary bells and whistles, its a grown-up GPS in a tiny package. In a pinch, I have even used in on the motorcycle -- in a plastic bag taped to the tank bag. Performed as well as my $900 Tom-Tom Rider (although the BlackBerry will run out of juice quickly unless connected to the car or cycle electrical system).

I bought this for my Blackberry Curve becase the built in GPS is garbage. This acquires satelite very fast, is very accurate so far. Has a cord to plug in your phone for charging. Hands free speaker phone works well. I was looking at buying a seperate GPS Navigator, but those that had bluetooth are close to $200. For the price of this you get bluetooth speaker phone, accurate GPS, turn by turn....the software subscription that comes with this is $100 alone if you bought it from Garmin for your blackberry. I saw this on wal-mart for about $180. It truely is worth the money.

I had high expectations for anything with the Garmin name on it, but I was disappointed.
- The suction device is very poor and falls off the windshield after a few miles.
- The holder takes two hands to operate and is very awkward to use. Makes taking the blackberry out of the holder or putting it in a real struggle.
- I did not buy the charger cable, because I assumed it would a standard USB-type cable - it does not.
- The Bluetooth device has no (or very poor) echo cancelling, so the person on the other end of your call hears their own voice transmitted back to them at a slight delay, making conversations nearly impossible. The work-around is to turn the volume way down - but then you can't hear well.
- All in all I think this was a very poor purchase decision.