Customer Reviews

Garmin City Navigator Australia & New Zealand NT (microSD/SD card)

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

 

 

I arrived yesterday in New Zealand with the latest maps from Garmin in my GPS, ready to go. The first thing I needed to do was locate a branch for my lock bank here. The GPS sent me to an empty farmer's field. Today I wanted to travel several hours cross country. Despite there being a great state highway available, the GPS led me down one-lane dirt roads for about 20% of the trip. After these two experiences I don't think I can trust the machine's directions and will have to double check with real paper maps. I have no idea if it does such a horrible job in Australia.

We got off the plane in Sydney after 20 hours in airplanes and hardly any sleep. As soon as we cleared customs, we got our rental car--and suddenly we were in the middle of a city with a right-hand drive car, everyone driving on the wrong side of the road, jet-lagged bleary and no idea how to get to our destination in the suburbs! I took out this chip, put it in our brand new Garmin Nuvi and prayed that this thing worked! It did. I concentrated on staying on the left side of the road while the voice on the dashboard took us through countless turns, one-way streets, round-abouts and toll-free roads without my having to do anything but turn into the correct lane. Worth every penny over the two weeks we were there. It has some quirks. Unless you spell a street or store exactly right, you get interminable searching, followed by no suggestion. Once we were directed miles out of our way instead of the thing telling us to turn around and go back two blocks. But overall, a lifesaver.

This add-on for Garmin GPS systems looks like it was written by "out-of-towners". Whilst all of the street names are displayed, sometimes the graphics don't match reality. For example, the navigator appears to always know what street you're on, even when no street is shown on the map. Possibly it's better to buy or hire an indigenous navigator in the place you wish to travel as the software for the country of residence will be better tested than this "tourist" software.

Even though the picture of this item indicates that it is a CD ROM, What you get is a micro SD card of the maps. This was okay as it was for a gift but the picture is not indicative of what you get.

Bought the City Navigator Australia & NZ SD card for my Garmin Nuvi 660 before our trip to Australia. It guided us flawlessly out of the Melbourne Airport to our first hotel stay on the Great Ocean Road. Then to our next hotel in the Barossa Valley where it also found several restaurants and wineries. Finally guided us to attractions and wineries in the Adelaide Hills and then to the Hertz car return in downtown Adelaide. Never had any problem except it kept trying to take us off the Great Ocean Road to a shorter route to our hotel. But we had it programmed to find the shortest route so it was just doing its job. Driving on the left side of the road is a daunting enough task without trying to follow a map, especially in Australia where many of the roads are named rather than having route numbers like in the US. It never failed to find what we were searching for, including hotels, restaurants, attractions, and gas stations.Garmin City Navigator Australia & New Zealand NT (microSD/SD card)

Slip in the SD card and it automatically adds to the database. Just program in your destination and go

I can't recommend you purchase this map for a trip to Australia. We visited Australia for 3 weeks and traveled in Sydney, Alice Springs and Cairns. The maps were not too accurate and sometimes directed you to make turns where there was no road. We found ourselves plugging the GPS in,but mostly having to rely on using the tourist maps provided by just about every place we went. Another problem in Sydney not precisely related to the map, but to the GPS in general is that it's hard to get satellite reception on narrow streets between all the skyscrapers. Save the $100+ for a nice tour.

I don't think I can say enough good about this Australian mapping program.
My family and I visited Australia the first couple of weeks of August. We flew into Sydney, then drove from Sydney to Jindabyne, then to Thredbo Ski Area, then back to Sydney. Then we flew to Cairns, drove all around there, as well as up into the Daintree National Park (and World Heritage Site).
While in Sydney we drove around quite a bit. The streets, the directions, the spoken directions were just perfect. I have to admit, I was completely turned around, but the maps got us right where we needed to be.
We installed the maps on my cheapo Nuvi 1300. They installed just fine through the Garmin Mapsource program. I had little hope for the maps (after a disastrous experience we had in Japan last Summer - 2010), but I was very pleasantly surprised.
Everything was perfect about the program. The directions, the various roads, the spoken directions (with an Australian accent!), the ease of inputting POIs to which we wanted to drive. I was very, very impressed. There were zero errors and, as far as I could tell, there were zero misdirections given.
We bought the CD-ROM rather than the SD card, but I don't think the SD cards would be any different.
If you are going to Australia, and if you'll be driving, I highly, highly recommend these maps.
Highest marks to Garmin!

I needed fast service as I was leaving for Australia. The seller responded to all of my requests promptly, giving me all of the information I needed to speed up the delivery. He went the extra mile to send it overnight before I could pay for it. I am extremely grateful for his trust and thoroughly recommend him to anyone wanting honest and reliable efficient turn around. Thank you!

Had no problems while navigating in Australia and New Zealand and I used it to find geocaches as well. Easy to use. Just pop in the chip and you are ready to go!