Customer Reviews

Garmin nüvi 1450T 5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator with Traffic and Lifetime Map Updates

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I just purchaced the garmin nuvi 1450t and it works great out of the box. It picked up the satelite quickly. The entire display is updated with much smoother lines and richer colors, and easy to see in the dark or at full sun light. The cigarette lighter power cord isn't the greatest, its too big and it sticks out about 6 to 7 inches it shoud have a smaller knob, this was the biggest dissapointment for me. But so far the unit works great even with out updating it.
Easy unit to work with out of the box, just by playing with the settings and changing the unit too you prefferences.I especially liked the ease of which I could scan for restaurants, gas, and any other point of interst closest to my current location. If you are looking for an easy to use GPS with street names spoken this is the one for you.
I will update this review when i test the unit further.

This is a great and easy unit to use. It has all the features one would need for local and long distance travel. I have done the map & software updates, and have had no problems what so ever, as mentioned with some of the other models. The roads are announced along with the direction that you will be needing to take next, LOUD & CLEAR. The screen size is LARGE, exceptionally clear to view and has no glare. This will be that last unit I will need to own!

So far, I am very pleased with this Garmin 1450T. I've only had this a few weeks, so I can't tell if I will think the same about it six months from now. The general comments and feedback on quality of current GPS's have me a little leery of both Garmin and TomTom, but at this point, all is well. I had previously purchased a 5" TomTom XL550 based on a very favorable user review, and after using it did not like the display or features as much as I liked my two earlier Garmin units. I then bought this 5" Garmin, and much prefer it over the TomTom. The display is easier for me to read, and the Garmin's ability to store routes is a major benefit over the TomTom. The TomTom maps seem to be a little more up to date, but not enough difference to worry about. (Bought both the Garmin and TomTom with lifetime traffic and lifetime map updates.) One thing I have learned, and neither Garmin or TomTom tell you this in advance - the price for "free" lifetime traffic is pop up ads. When I am stopped, or standing in traffic, I get pop up ads for restaurants. Garmin says the only way to stop this is to shut down the traffic feature. These pop-ups are distracting and annoying, but you have to pay something for "free". The Garmin is easier to get started with, but both Garmin and TomTom have unique feature advantages over the other. The TomTom is best for quick switching between 2D and 3D. I prefer the Garmin's features in most other instances. And, the ability to save routes, with waypoints, is a fairly critical criteria in my selection between the two. I'll keep both, but for road trips, the Garmin is my choice, hands down. Finally, be aware that the map updating process is time consuming, so be prepared for this to take a while.

I own a Garmin 205W and had good luck with it. This one is much better. It takes me where I wish to go and has many more options. I bought this also for the life time free map updates. The update process went on without a hitch. It does take a while, an hour or more with my high speed connection. But it was easy. They also offer a CD for updating the map.

I did quite a bit of research before buying this. I looked into other manufactures units and read all the reviews. Garmin had far fewer negative reviews than the others. I'm pleased with my purchase.

I have previously owned 4.3-inch Garmin GPS devices, and have loved them. I don't know how I found my way around without them! But I wear tri-focals (so my vision is far from perfect), and I found it hard to see the 4.3-inch screen very well. I bought this 5-inch screen model about a month ago. It is amazing to me how much a 0.7 inch difference makes! And it seems Garmin has very smartly increased slightly the font size. I can clearly see my speed, speed limit, next turn, etc. I could not be happier with this purchase.

And the kicker is the purchase I made came with traffic device, and lifetime map updates. All for around $265-270. And the suction cup, unlike any other automotive devices I have purchased in the past, actually is great. It has a clip that one locks to make the suction super-strong.

Today I saw the price go down to $262, so I bought 2 more for my other cars. My old Garmins will go to my kids.

It isn't everything it could be. Maybe it isn't fair to compare something to what I want as opposed to letting it stand on its own merits, but then again that's part of what a review is for. First off a bit of history. My first automotive GPS was a Garmin Streetpilot 3+, a beast of a unit that was huge and heavy (due in no small part to the fistful of batteries required for out-of-car use) and that used a rather small memory card to hold area maps instead of the entire U.S. While it was a nice unit for its time and quite sturdy, it was very slow and ungainly. My next unit, a Garmin Streetpilot 2620, served me fabulously well from 2005 until a few weeks ago when the hard drive failed. I also own a Garmin 7200 with a seven inch screen and XM radio which my wife has commandeered. The 2620 and 7200 are, in my opinion, a couple of the finest GPS's ever built and have forever altered my perception of what a GPS should truly be. Since receiving my Nuvi I have had the chance to give it a small workout and find it quite similar to my other Garmins with some updated graphics and better spoken information. My other units showed an arrow as a track marker while the Nuvi has optional markers that look like cars, trucks, even feet! The entire display is updated with much smoother lines and richer colors. It's a bit like moving from VGA graphics to a 32-bit true-color PC display, nice to look at and much easier to tell what things are. This unit continues Garmin's wonderful tradition of announcing which side of the road the destination is located on, a feature lacking in some units, and adds a (new to me) feature of speaking names of destinations rather than simply calling them "destination" as with my older units. Satellite acquisition is fairly fast compared to my other Garmins and location data appears to be very accurate. I haven't had the opportunity to experience the intersection lane position feature, but am looking forward to that. The suction cup mount is the first one I have ever used and is surprisingly good! The lifetime traffic and maps features should prove to be worthwhile options and I intend to make use of them both. The database of businesses is in typical Garmin style well represented with even small 'mom and pop' establishments listed. Routing is intuitive and works as well as my older Garmins which is a real blessing. You might be wondering why I didn't give it five stars instead of four. Well, one really huge disappointment for me is the lack of a remote control. My 2620 and 7200 both have remotes and I can't begin to tell you how much I grew to depend on them. It is so much easier to input route information with a remote while driving since you don't have to take your mind off your driving and lean forward to fiddle with the touchscreen. Ask yourself this: would you like to go back to changing TV channels without a remote? If you've ever had a GPS with a remote you probably won't be satisfied with one that doesn't have one. Unfortunately you would have a hard time finding one with a remote anymore since everybody is going for tiny ultralight units. Bad decision!!! Another sticking point, and this one is minor although it does bother me, is something Garmin started somewhere between the 2620 and the 7200 and has continued to the Nuvi. Sometimes the voice prompt will say "...please navigate to the highlighted route..." without telling you how to get there. My 2620 would NEVER tell me that! The 2620 told me exactly where to go at all times. The 7200 and the Nuvi, however, both have this same deficiency and I am not sure why Garmin is not correcting it!?!? Minor, but an issue nonetheless. Another area where the Nuvi is lacking is the absence of a way to connect an external GPS antenna. OK, so if you always mount the GPS on the windshield that will never be a problem, but with my 2620 and 7200 units I could put them on the floor on top of the tranny hump where they were out of the direct sunlight and put an external antenna on the dash or on the roof and get wonderful reception. In fact, an external antenna produced MUCH better reception at all times compared to the internal antenna. So why did Garmin do away with the connector? Ignoring the things I prefer, this GPS rates very high in functionality and features and is a worthy unit. I anticipate it serving me well for a long time. One other thing: some folks have indicated that the cigarette lighter power cord isn't up to the challenge of operating the GPS and keeping it charged at the same time. This unit offers to turn off whenever the cord is disconnected which leads me to believe that the cord is plenty able to handle the power requirements of the GPS. I would expect nothing less from Garmin!

This was our first GPS, so as a newbie I did quite a bit of research before choosing this model. Very happy so far. On the plus side, it was inexpensive, comes with lifetime map updates (you don't need to buy the more costly LMT model to get this), and has a big, bright screen. We had no setup or update problems whatever, although map downloads are expectedly slow. We used the GPS on a holiday trip to D.C. and it negotiated the complicated traffic pattern well. But we learned a couple of things too, and if you're buying your first GPS I'd recommend that whatever brand or model you select you DON'T pay for two apparently-useless features. One is the traffic warnings; despite D.C.'s usual heavy traffic we got no warnings at all until Sunday morning at 6:00 AM, when we were on an almost deserted 8-lane interstate... and the traffic alert sounded for the first time. A complete false alarm, nobody around anywhere. Obviously this idea needs some work! The other useless feature is the intersection view. This becomes available only when you're very close to a major intersection, too late to do any real planning if traffic is heavy, and of course looking at the screen is the last thing you'd want to do at that point when entering a dangerous intersection traffic pattern. But overall the Garmin is a good piece of gear and I'd recommend it.

This Garmin has been an outstanding purchase. It was of excellent value per purchase price and I would highly recommend the unit. It locks on the satellites very quickly and is very accurate. I could not have been happier with the purchase. I would not have a problem purchasing this way again. Amazon.com is definitely the way to purchase items. High quality all around, from products to service.

If Garmin expects to compete with smartphones, it has to improve its download function. After wasting considerable time trying to find the map updates on Garmin's needlessly complicated website, I wasted more time in a futile attempt to download the updates. After churning for several minutes, the site delivered an error message. A couple more failed attempts, and back it went to Amazon. The unit seemed to work well otherwise, but I don't see spending extra for lifetime maps that turn out to be no maps.

I bought this to replace my older Garmin. The cost of lifetime map updates for the older one was only slightly less than this unit which comes with lifetime map updates and traffic. This newer one is faster with more features. It has a qwerty keyboard layout which makes for faster address entry. It also seems to recognize names faster. I am an appraiser and rely on this to get around to multiple comps. The multi-destination feature was dissapointing because you have to name the order that you want to go to each one. I was hoping that I could just put in a list of addresses and it would find the fastest way to hit each one, when order desn't matter. But it doesn't, so I have to do it the old fashioned way. Still, I'm pretty pleased with it.

Another thing I didn't know is that you get little adds for restaunts and such, I guess as part of the free maps and traffic. At first I was a little peeved, but they are really unobtusive, and who knows, maybe I might want unlimited salad and breadsticks when I'm on the road?

Here's an example of how coold this thing is: We were coming back from Northern California over the Grapevine into the LA area and all of the sudden, traffic was at a stand-still (how odd.. yeah, right..) I pushed the detour button, an it gave us a route that bypassed the entire, 15 mile quagmire and saved us at least an hour! When we're on the road and need gas or food, this will find it for us. It rocks.

It is not perfect, however. I has little routing quirks, and you need to use common sense sometimes. It has a tendency to lead you in a big circle around to an address that is right behind you and a few yards away with a u-turn. Sometimes the food and gas places it leads you to are not there, and sometimes it passes ones that don't show up on the device.

All in all, however, it is a great unit and I would recommend it to anyone. I never leave home without it!