Customer Reviews

Garmin StreetPilot i3 1.7-Inch Portable GPS Navigator

5 star:		(75)
4 star:		(56)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I received this unit yesterday and have played with it for a few hours. Prior to this unit I have used a Magellan Sportrack for Geocaching and for my car I have used my Dell Axim pocket PC with Ostia mapping software which is terrible, and more recently I have been using Microsoft Streets and Trips 2005 on my laptop. Streets and Trips is excellent however it does not have voice prompts for turn-by-turn directions and viewing a laptop while you are trying to drive can be tough.


This Garmin I3 has excellent routing capability, very similar to MS Streets and Trips and has plenty of points of interests( POI). The screen is small but it is readable in both daylight and night. The suction mount holds very well on the windshield.
The voice prompts are loud and clear.

There is not much detail shown on the screen because of it's size, such as some street names and no POI's. The map will zoom in more as you are nearing your turn and the voice prompt's will tell you you need to turn in .5 to .3 miles and 400 to 500 ft before the turn.

On the display is also shown the distance to your next turn and an estimated arrival time to your destination. The unit will automatically re-route if you take a wrong turn.

Satellite acquisition time is pretty quick, and the manual states that you should keep batteries in it so that it will find satellites faster. The unit also comes with a cigarette lighter adapter. I do not think that the unit will recharge batteries though, and the battery level indicator is located on the "where to" screen only.

The only controls are a scroll wheel that doubles as a button and a back button and a power button. It is fairly simple to use and easy to figure out.

The included 128mb transflash card is more than adequate for my needs, I fit all of NJ, NY and PA and still had plenty of room.

You can store places in your favorites by adding them in your address screen, or you can store your current position simply by pressing and holding the scroll wheel button in.

Some cons to this unit is that it does not show the total distance of your trips, it just shows distance to the next turn.
If you want to add a stop on your destination it only allows 1 via point, after you visit that point you have to add your next via point. As I mentioned before there isn't too much detail on the screen but it does show you where you need to go.

I would highly recommend this unit above a pocket pc navigation, at least with Ostia software anyway.

For the price of this unit you really can't complain about the cons. This is a simple GPS unit that does what it is supposed to do, get you from point A to point B.

********update 6/15/06***********

Nearly a year and I still love this thing - navigation works great. Now that I am an experienced user I want a fancier touch screen, the scroll wheel is a pain in the neck. I also want a unit that you can put in multi-routes, like if you want to go to garage sales you can put in all the addresses and let the unit decide the best route. However, I will keep this unit longer before I thrown down a few hundred more for an advanced model.

I still haven't found the need to get a larger memory card, I've driven in New Jersey, New York state, Pennsylvania and Washington DC, and Connecticut.

[...]

I have to edit this review, having used the product a bit more. I bought this having never owned a GPS before and still can't compare it to others, but can give a good first-time-owner's perspective.

- Size. You can throw this GPS into a carryon on a flight and use it in a rental car when you arrive. It's totally unobtrusive, you can put it up next to the rear-view-mirror and it blocks none of your view. You can hide it in a car compartment when you're not in a safe location. It does not have a touchscreen - this isn't really a big problem, but this and the size make it slower to enter addresses. It's a tradeoff, but I believe I prefer the size of this unit.

- Satellite tracking. Sometimes it'll take up to 30 seconds or so to acquire satellites when you power on. That's not too bad, but a little annoying. A bigger problem is that occasionally tracking seems to be lost. The GPS seems to think the car is pointed diagonally, or the map stops updating. Had these problems both in downtown Boston and coming from Virginia into DC on the GW Bridge. WAAS seems useless, by the way.

- Route recalculation. Pretty quick - usually happens in < 10 s when you miss a turn. Recalculations are pretty good - and the whole route is recalculated, not a path to the previous route. Once in a while it thinks you're off your route when you're not at all - it has the route coordinates wrong. It readjusts quickly.

- Routing/directions. Generally I think the calculated directions are very good. The program takes you on intelligent routes that are not always the absolute fastest but are pretty close. They could get annoying if you're living near an area in which they're inefficient or just wrong. In Harrisburg, PA it told me repeatedly to turn left on an expressway/bridge that you can't turn left on. If I were living close by (as I once was) this would be enough to return the unit. However, around my area they're fine.

- Prompts/info: I suspect Garmin is getting all its routing info including prompts from Navteq, so these are really Navteq problems common to many GPS devices. Often neither the voice prompt or the screen gives adequate info on which lane you should be in or which particular exit/street you should be taking. This is the most frustrating problem with this unit. When you're downtown, or going past a complicated set of highway entrances and exits, the combination of the voice prompt ("Bear right in 0.5 miles" - there are no voiced road names), the screen text ("Right on Dobbs Highway"), and the map is inadequate to determine where you should be turning. I've heard the StreetPilot i5 has a somewhat better Navteq route info system than this unit does.

Some very, very common situations:
- Road curves right and also exits both left and right. You're told to "Bear right". Which is it, follow the road or exit to the right?
- Two exits both to the right for the same highway, one North and the other South. You're told to "Turn right in 0.5 miles". The screen says "Right on Dobbs Highway". Which is it, exit North or exit South?

- Map Storage: Loading the software and maps was a bit buggy and slow for me the first time. If you intend to bring this on long trips or on air travel it might make sense to pay the extra money for the i5, which has maps preloaded - otherwise you have to load new maps for where you're going.

- Points of interest. Some of the points of interest are out of date or just inaccurate. This seems to be a common problem with GPS's, but it's really aggravating to drive someplace and find it doesn't exist, or that the GPS hasn't provided good enough directions to locate it.

Also, I have no idea if any competing product offers this, but if I'm driving on a route and I want to find a gas station, I obviously would prefer one that is ahead of me along my route. I probably don't want one that is behind me, and one that's off to the side somewhere isn't particularly convenient. But all I get is "Shell 3.5 miles". Could be behind me, ahead of me, anywhere. As far as I know that's 3.5 miles as the crow flies, too. It could be 3.5 miles away but across a river for which there's no bridge close by. This is a commonly used feature that gets annoying - you have to look at where each POI is in relation to your route rather than just picking the first one.

All in all I'm still quite happy with it. I certainly wouldn't pay double the price for a slightly improved one! The advantage at this price is that you can trade it out when newer technology comes out. Can't do that easily with a $2500 in-dash manufacturer nav system.

Garmin StreetPilot I3

Software Version 2.70 (Updated from 2.30)
Audio Version 2.00

General Info:
I purchased the Garmin I3 from Amazon.com for $323.00. I have used it to navigate around a small town and it has worked almost perfectly. I have an Astro van and use one of the coffec cup holders to hold the I3. The cup holder is located about half way down the front console and the Garmin seems to pick up the GPS signals with no problem. I have also taken three 2 ½ hour trips out-of-town and the navigation has been excellent. The audio is excellent and can easily be heard over wind and road noise. I used the garmin Webupdater [...] to update my unit from Version 2.30 to 2.70. The update is completely automatic and takes about 10 - 15 minutes to download and install the updated operating system software.

The I3 has a simulation mode. You can simulate a trip by going to the System->GPS Mode and turning off the GPS. Return to the map mode and the unit will then simulate the trip. Makes for a useful teaching tool or a demo for your friends.

The bad:
I have had only two instances of the unit providing incorrect information. One was at my local post office. The unit directed me to turn left (incorrectly) on a one-way street and did not "know" about a new (about 2 years) off ramp on Interstate 15.

The Via Points (Waypoints) are pretty much useless and you can only have one waypoint active at a time. I have not been able to find any instructions for setting them up in the on-line manuals or anywhere else

The one bug I have found is that the unit will emit two incorrect turn instructions "go left, then go left" when it is first turned on and just after it finds the satellites.

Wish list
The screen is small but useable. If Garmin would update the operating software so that the unit issued statements like "turn right on main street " instead of "turn right in .1 miles" there would be little or no need to look at the screen at all. The more expensive StreetPilot Garmin units have this feature now.

The provided suction cup mount will only work to a degree on windows. You can only use the mount in other places by first PERMANENTLY applying a round mount to your console. I chose not to do this so I don't know if this works. There should be a better solution.

The description of the updates on the Garmin site is inadequate. They do not give a user any clue about what is in the update. I can detect no difference in the operation of the unit after the updates. It would be nice if Garmin would supply some info about the content of the updates.

Despite the nit picks, I am very happy with the Garmin I3 and highly recommend it.

Update:

I have used my Garmin I3 for several more trips and I am delighted with its performance. Ironically it works well every where except for my home town. In my home town , two major chain stores (Wal Mart and Staples) are mis-located to the north of town and one of two Albertsons is not listed at all. I used the GPS twice for yard sales and all the residential addresses were correct. All in all the unit has performed exceptionally well. The audio directions have been superb.

Just for info, you can get a pretty good picture of which maps are loaded by zooming all the way out (this works best if you turn off the GPS navigation first. ) In my case I had first loaded California and Texas, then had to cut back to Southern California and Northern Texas to make room for Arizona and New Mexico. The map on my unit shows full coverage for California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma. Actually I have only partial coverage of Texas and California. I sent a mail message to Garmin and asked them how much memory I would need to load all the States in the U.S. Their reply was 2GB. At this time MicroSD cards only have a maximum of 512MB, so we will have to wait a while to get full coverage.

First I should state that I have had the full-featured Garmin 2610 for almost three years. The 2610 is larger, heavier, and nothing like the i3, which weighs little and is (as Garmin says) "The size of a baseball". I wanted something smaller and lighter...something I would not have to be concerned about stowing or carrying when I parked the car. The i3 fit my requirements. (No stand-alone GPS unit should be left on your dash or windshield when you leave your car. It will be a sitting duck for thieves.)

Upon opening the i3 box, a quick set-up guide instructs you to insert a DVD into your computer which loads the software and maps. When instructed to do so, I plugged the unit into the computer USB connection. Once my computer recognized the unit, I installed the maps onto the MicroSD (Transflash) card that is in the i3. The maps are much easier to install on the i3 than the 2610. The standard 128 MB card can hold several states. If you know you will never drive out of a certain region, then the 128 MB card should be all that you will ever need. I was able to load about 8 New England/Mid Atlantic states onto the 128MB card. However, I decided to take out the 128 MB card and buy a 1 GB card which can hold all continental 48 states....you never know where you may have to drive to..do you?

Why buy the i3 vs. the i5? The i5 uses a micro hard drive which has all the state maps pre-loaded. It also comes with a 128 MB MicroSD card which is for additional maps or data. The i3 and i2 use a MicroSD flash memory card. My feeling is that anything that has delicate internal moving parts (such as a micro hard drive) is more prone to failure, plus may even be slower than a flash card. I can't see how over time a micro hard drive can withstand the everyday bumps and shakes of moving the unit between your windshield and glove box, or car to car, or whatever. The maps on the i5 hard drive are not upgradeable as they are with the i3/i2. Finally, the cost of the i3, plus a larger card is still less than the i5. You don't need to be tech savvy to load the maps onto the i3. Just follow the easy instructions and you are on your way.

I wont go over all the features of the i3. You can find that on the Garmin site. However, since I have had a Garmin 2610 for awhile, I will compare the i3 to it.

The i3 is very basic, but certainly functional. It turns on as soon as it gets power from the car, or you can turn it on using the power button. It takes 2 AA batteries (claim to last 6 hours), but when in the car, I always run it plugged in. The batteries power the unit when I am out of the car and need to look things up.

Most people who buy their first GPS unit think that once they start their car, the GPS is immediately available for use. Not really. Like all GPS units, the i3 may take several minutes to acquire satellites when starting out from "Cold", meaning you haven't used it for hours, or when you are in a different area from where you last turned it off, since it needs to find different satellites than it did before. Most of the time it is ready to operate in less than 1 minute, but it can take up to 5 minutes to find satellites. In addition, it must have a clear view of the sky to function, meaning no trees, buildings, etc. are blocking it. Satellite acquisition has always presented a problem for me when I first turn it on. Do you start driving, hoping you am going in the correct direction as you wait for the unit to find the satellites, or do you just sit there with the motor running waiting for it to tell you what to do? That is a decision you have to make.

The i3 has a clean interface, with only three things you can push. 1 button for power, 1 button to return to the previous screen, and a scroll wheel/button to scroll and select. The scroll wheel is tedious to use compared to the touch screen on the 2610. You have to scroll through letters and numbers, then press your selection. However, the software is intuitive, in that it narrows down your choices as you select things. Of course this is the way it must be, since the screen is too small to be touch-sensitive. Cant have it all.

In terms of readability, the 2610 is the winner here. It is big, bright, and sharp, easily read even in the sun. The i3's screen almost washes out in the sun,...whether the sun is directly shinning on it or not. I have the screen always at the maximum brightness setting, and even then there are times when it is tough to make things out. (I have read about this gripe in other reviews.) The 2610 screen has a matte-like surface. Unfortunately the i3 screen is very reflective. Not a good design for the car during bright days.

While the screen of the i3 is not as sharp and readable as the 2610, it is still not so bad that I would not buy the unit again. It just is not as good as the better models Garmin makes. (Remember, I have been using a full-featured unit for the past few years. If I never did, I would have nothing to compare the i3 to. If I bought the i3 as my first unit, I would not know any difference and be very happy). As to the size, I thought I would have a hard time using such a small screen., but I don't. It displays only what is really needed. It is acceptable. Besides, most of the time you use the voice prompts to guide you, and one only makes fleeting glances at the screen to confirm the name of the street, highway, or a direction. I just care about where I should be heading, right, left, etc. I don't have to know the names of everything around me. One shouldn't be always looking at that screen anyway. One should be concentrating on the driving first and foremost. Safety is more important than anything. One shoudnt be fiddling with any of the buttons on the unit while driving. All GPS units need much more attention from the user than when using something like a car stereo. One should input all data before the vehicle starts moving. If the driver trys to input data while driving, that is very unsafe. In addtion, in most states you can be ticketed for distracted driving.

There are the usual set-up options, but much fewer than the 2610. There are points of interest such as food, fuel, lodging, attractions, shopping, etc. Of course the points of interest are a few years behind from what is current. That is true for all mapping programs.

The i3 uses a suction mount that attaches to the windshield. When it stays put, it is fine. However; too many times it has come off unexpectedly, causing the unit to hit the dash. This has happened so many times, I recently gave up using the suction mount completely and got a friction dash mount. Garmin needs to address the problem with the suction mounts, since it seems to occur with other models that Garmin makes.

The processor in the i3 is not fast. It is slow...really slow. Route calculation and searches for points of interest take much too long. However, it does work. You have to decide if the processing time is too slow for youself. Is it worth it for to you to spend hundreds more to save a few seconds off the processing time?

The i3 has does have many good points. The price affords GPS to an entire market that was not able to enter it before this. The small size enables you to keep one of these in your glove box or center console for ready access. We all have had times where we had no idea which way to go. This unit will lead you to your desination on a leash. Why spend 2 grand for a OEM GPS unit, when for less than 300 dollars you can have this? Finally, this is a great thing to move from car to car. Give it to different family members when they need it. Never be lost in a strange area again. Take it with you the next time you take a airplane trip and are renting a car at the airport. Upon picking up the rental car at the airport, I put the unit on the dash, then wait a few minutes for it to find the satellites. It leads us me to the driveway of our hotel miles away. When on vacation, it is also a great tool to find stores, restaurants, gas stations, etc. I would use the GPS (with the unit in GPS off mode) in the hotel room to investigate all the places I wanted to go the next day (using battery power). They were saved on the unit. Once in the car, the list of the places I wanted to go to was already there under "Recent Finds". I selected my choice from the list, then I choose navigate and it routed me there from wherever I happened to be. One of the best things about it is that I was never afraid of "getting lost". Sometimes we would just drive around exploring new areas. When we were done and wanted to go back to our hotel, I just scrolled to the hotel in the list of recent finds and it got me back easily.

The Garmin 2610 is certainly the more advanced unit. If I have a trip planned and I am driving my own car the entire way, I would choose the 2610. But....when I take my next airplane trip and am going to pickup a rental car, the i3 will be packed in my carry-on. It can't do everything that the 2610 can do, but the size and weight of the i3 makes it more practical for use in a car other than your own. Plus, it is much more practical if others will be using it (such as your children), since if something happens to it you wont feel so bad since the price you paid wasnt exhorbitant.

Yes, the i3 has it's limitations, but that is reflected in the low cost. You are buying price, not the features of a higher end, larger GPS unit. You want something better? Garmin makes many different models. They are trying to cover all market segments. This unit may not be for you. However, if you are reading this, you are somewhat interested in the unit, and you know that you may dont always need to spend more money on something. It all depends on your needs. Do you want a Honda Fit or a Honda Accord? They will both get you there, but in different ways. What do you feel comfortable with, plus what is your budget for this?

If you are debating about buying any GPS unit, an important thing to realize is the secure feeling you will get just by having a GPS system. The security of knowing you will never be lost in a strange area may be the single most important reason for purchasing this. Make a wrong turn during a route? In a few seconds it automatically calculates a new route to get you back on track. Also...another wonderful use for this is searching for an address at night, especially in a dimly lit area. How many times have you tried to find an address in the dark, in a suburb or a rural area? You go up and down the road, hoping to end up at the right house. Try doing that during a heavy rain, and it even gets harder. This unit will work invisibly to lead you where you have to be.

In closing I would like to add that I feel that Garmin has great customer support. (Isn't it amazing how some companies can get away with charging you to speak with them about the problems you are having with the product that you just paid them a significant amount of money for?) You should know that at times you may have to wait up to 30 minutes to talk to someone at Garmin, but the call is toll free, and the support is free for life. Few companies still offer perks like that.

I bought this street pilot for $298 from an online retailer. This GPS has its good, bad, and neutral sides. Let me start with the good ones. Garmin has a good reputation for its GPSs. I did a lot of research and now that I own it, agree with this feedback. When I was having trouble registering my product on Garmin's web-site they immediately had a representative contact me and guide me step by step. If you buy it online make sure you obtain the original purchase receipt, or in case of warranty issues Garmin won't accept a product without a dated purchase receipt. It says right in their warranty conditions. The rep told me they had too many cases with people re-selling used units as new ones, and clueless buyers after receiving dead units tried to file for repair/replacement only to find out they were cheated. So, make sure you buy a unit with a receipt!

Now, about the features I liked. When you are driving, this pilot knows the exact car's location, speed, calculates estimated arrival time and even shows blue water when passing a bridge! The map is pretty up to date and I would say its GPS accuracy is about 3-4 feet. The screen is about 2*2 inches, you can adjust the volume, screen's brightness (or set it to autimatic and as it gets dark outside the screen highlights the road in bright color while the background is dark blue - very easy to see in the dark), view map in several dimensions (2D, 3D) and close up or zoomed out, tilt the screen up-down and sideways. If you make a wrong turn, it re-routes itself in a matter of 30 seconds and tells you how to drive from there to go to the planned destination. You can even enter favorite places that you visit frequently, so no need to enter them over and over. Has a pre-loaded list of major destinations, such as parks, restaurants, etc. When you turn off the car, it turns itself off too to preserve the AA batteries (though normally it runs of a power cord you plug into your car lighter). This unit came with a dashboard and a window mounter, mapping software, computer cable, and a power adapter. I do not think you need an antenna, as the reception is very good. I never lost a signal, except once in the middle of a long underwater tunnel.

What I am neutral about: you must own a computer to use this product because maps are not pre-loaded. Its memory card was big enough to load part of the east coast from NY to VA, but for a cross-country trip you will need a laptop to load the new maps as you travel.

Now what I disliked: instead of taking major highways it kept telling me to get off onto smaller roads. I checked the settings to use the fastest route instead of the shortest route but it did not help. Eventually, I had to ignore it and kept going on a highway until at some point GPS picked up my desired route. Also, this GPS does not tell you names of streets or exits to take, it tells you to turn left or right, or take an exit in XX feet (Metric users, you can set it to use meters instead of feet). To avoid taking a wrong turn you must glance at the screen, which has the name of the street/exit written on the top part of the screen. Sometimes if the street's name is long, it is hard to read the name of the street on a screen because it reduces the font to fit the name. So if you have bad vision consider a more expensive GPS that announces streets or have a passenger to help you navigate.

Recent update: the suction cup started falling of the windshield, causing the pilot to fall on the dashboard/floor. I called the company and they are sending a replacement for free. If you have the same problem, make sure to call while warranty is valid. Plus, the more they hear the same problem the more likely they are to re-design it.

One more update: if you just bought this unit or own it, go to the Garmin's website and run update of the mapping program. The new version is a lot better: instead of just saying "turn in ... feet" it now also warns "turn R/L here" so there is less guessing whether you passed the turn or not.

I just received this unit today about 3 hours ago.
After playing around with it and taking it out for a short 20 minute drive, I think I got my money's worth.

Installing maps to this unit took almost an hour.
1. DVD setup copies everything to your computer. 25min
2. Select states and it zips it or something. 15min
3. Copy map to i3 unit. (<5min)
4. Acquiring satelite. (~5min)

I was able to add.
VA, MD, NJ, NY, DE, PA, WV.
I might have added couple more but I am not sure.

I also added couple customer POI that I downloaded from some site.

Screen Size.
I was afraid it might be too small, but actually it's not that bad. Plus with voice prompt, all I had to do was glance at it from time to time to see if I am on the right track.

Navigation.
It might be the map, but sometimes when I pass an intersection, I don't see anything on my i3 unit. Or the name is different.
I was navigating to my office right across the street, but i3 told me to make left turn and go around instead of just heading straight.

I have 2005 Civic and mounting was kinda tricky.
First, I placed it lower middle of the windshield, but it was hard to reach.
So I placed it right on the center, it was easy to reach, but the cable bothered me.
I need to find the perfect spot to place this, or get batteries.

Being a first time GPS user, I am not 100% satisfied.
May be I was expecting too much for this price, but I think the whole calculating/locating/navigating/getting from satelite could be little faster.
But I am very satisfied for this price.

I am going on a trip to NY tonight and we'll see if it was really worth $300 or I should've paid couple extra for a better unit.

---
Edited Nov 29, 2005.
I came back from my trip to NY from DC.
It was great. I lost signal in tunnels and in the middle of NY city, skyscrapers, but it came back alive pretty quickly.

I left the unit zoomed in, and it zoomed out automatically when I was on highway going over 60MPH. It zoomed back in when I got off highway. Pretty neat.

It also zooms in when I need to make turn or exit.

The only issue i had was the map.
It would be nice to be able to setup the map to show gasstation, restaurant, restarea, etc..
If I was looking for McDonalds, I have to search and see map on every single McDonalds from the POI to see which one is on my way and not far from my route.

Another neat thing with POI is that they also provide phone number with address. No more 411 necessary.

It was small enough to fit in my civic glovebox with the car adapter.

I love it.

I've owned this unit for about 3 months now and I've taken it on both long trips and short ones. I mostly keep it in my glove compartment and if I need it, can't find my way, or I get lost I just pull over, mount it, and wait for the satellites to acquire (anywhere from 10 to 60 seconds usually).

SCREEN SIZE:
I must have gone to the store 3 times looking at the i3 then comparing the screen size to the larger c330. I finally ordered the i3 and hoped. I was not disappointed. First off, remember that this is not a TV. The screen is there for direction verification (IE if you are unsure of the voice directions). I don't think that the screen is too small and I actually prefer the size because I don't want something much larger on my dash or hanging off of my window.

ACCURACY:
Very happy. The unit has lead me to about 90% of my destinations without fail. A few times it will drop me a couple of houses short or it will state that it is on the left when it is on the right but I'm O.K. with that.
Please note that it is a computer program not an actual person. And by that I mean it is not smart enough to know when rush hour is or if there is an accident up ahead or anything like that. There are some other models that will provide that information in certain cities but I have never used them so I can't comment.

STORAGE: It comes with a mini memory card that is 128 MB. I put on MN, IA, WI, MI, NE, SD, ND, IL and a couple of other states that I will never go to and still had a little space left. You can get a bigger card pretty cheap if you need the whole USA but how many of us actually NEED it. If you do much traveling you may consider getting the i3 and upgrading the memory card (maybe 50 bucks at Best Buy?). That will save you around $100.00 bucks over the i5 and you don't loose any functionality.

OTHER:
--Garmin just released an update and it is a good one. It has a bunch of other enhancements for other countries but the main one is that they voice is much better at giving directions at the correct time. For instance, it will warn you 50 feet from your turn now instead of 10 feet in city driving.

--This is not made to operate and drive at the same time. You can but please don't get into an accident. Pull over and spend 60 precious seconds safely.

--Yes, the screen is a little hard to see in the sunlight. I know that the other garmins (c3xx series) have the same problem.

--Lastly, when I went to the stores the clerk tried to convince me that the more expensive models had better maps and navigation ability. This is just not true. You get the same maps and the same software with the ix series as you do with the c3xx series. While the c3xx series can do a few more things, the i3 will give the you the same directions from point A to point B as will a GPS in the c3xx series. Don't be fooled.

--ANTENNA
I was a little worried about how such a little unit would handle satellite reception so I got on e-bay and bought an antenna. I'm sure that it will help a little but so far, I have never needed to use it so it just sits in my glove compartment.

CONCLUSION:
I am more than happy with my decision for the smaller GPS. It does exactly what I wanted. I too was getting caught up in all of the extra features and stuff that other units provided but now I know that they are just fluff to add more money to the price. I would recommend this to anyone who asked.

I've had this GPS for several months now, and I have used it in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey, Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, California and probably a few other states that I don't remember offhand. It's a terrific buy for the price.

There are some quirks with it. One is that it frequently "recalculates" your route right in the middle of heavy traffic on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. That can get annoying. This happened to me a lot in Boston which drove me nuts. Another problem is that when you first turn it on, it can take a couple of minutes to connect to a satellite. In one instance, it took about an hour and a half. Ouch! After all that, why would anyone buy one? Well, if you have never used GPS before, you're in for a real treat. I'm hooked on GPS, and I don't know why anyone would bother using a map anymore except on those days when it takes an hour and a half to connect to a satellite.

This particular device is a bargain. For one, it's portable meaning you can put it in any car you want, particularly a rental car when you're on vacation. If you own two cars, you can switch it back and forth.

Do not buy the carrying case from Garmin! Those things are the pits. Way too small. I bought a basic overnight bag where I put spare batteries, a battery charger and other small gadgets in. I highly recommend getting rechargeable AA batteries as well. The adapter for the car works fine, but I had one rental car where it did not work. The other reason is that when you are driving, if you stop for gas and turn off the engine, with no batteries, the power goes out meaning that you have to retype your route and connect to a satellite again. Having the batteries in at all times means that when you stop, you can just leave it on. I highly recommend that.

I have used mine for dozens and dozens of driving hours in several different states, and I will NEVER travel without a GPS again. If you have never tried a GPS before, rent a car from Thrifty or Enterprise or whomever and pay the $10 per day for the GPS. I'm absolutely wild about mine.

The points of interest part of it works fairly well. Basically, if you're in town somewhere, you can simply hit the fuel button, and it will tell you all the nearest gas stations. Well, if one has closed, you're out of luck. I tried to find a Chevron once and ended up at a Shell station. I also tried to find a pizza joint with the food button, but it said "arriving at destination" while I was cruising south on the New Jersey Turnpike. Okay, it's not perfect, but I can say that most of the time when you're looking for a restaurant, you'll find one. Same with hotels, gas stations and particularly parks. I LOVE that function. I was on my way to Fort McHenry for Flag Day back in June. I think there were detours on the road. I searched for historical landmarks or parks, and I clicked on Fort McHenry. It took me right there.

I annoy friends when I visit because all I ever ask for is an address, but they start giving me directions. The only people who don't like or understand GPS are those who have never used one. Once you start, you'll never stop. Vacations are fun, but they're more fun when you spend time getting where you're going and not fumbling around looking at a map. Time is money.

I recommend this device over the more expensive one because technology changes so rapidly. You'll upgrade eventually anyway. Also, I would buy a larger chip. It comes with 128 mb which is enough to load a couple of states. The only annoyance is that I have to load states into it whenever I travel. If you're using it for home, no problem. On 128 mb, you can fit the western U.S. on it. I upgraded to 512 mb because I prefer to store more states. Also, you need a DVD drive to load the software. I recommend having a laptop computer with DVD drive to take with you when you travel. Just in case, you can reload the maps onto the GPS from your laptop. Once you load the software from the DVD, you don't need to carry the DVD with you.

I absolutely love GPS technology. It's going to become very commonplace very soon. Don't waste your money on a device installed in your car. It will go out of date sooner or later, and you can only use it in that car. You can't transfer it to another one. Eventually all cars will have one, but until then, get something cheap.

I just bought the i3 from Amazon. I am a first time GPSer, and I fell in love with my i3. I have been traveling to new cities and the i3 works great. It allows you to pick a type of store or location that you want, lists them from closest to farthest within the given city, then not only shows you step by step how to get there, but also gives you the phone number in case you need to call ahead. I opted for the i3, over the i2, because the color really looks great. Each street is easy to see. I have not seen the i2, but I can only image that it looks just ok, while the i3 looks excellent. I do not need the built in maps that the i5 comes with, because I never go to that many states at once. The memory card that comes with the i3 and i2 holds about five large states worth of detailed information. You can always buy an additional memory card, or additional larger memory card. I would recommend this to anyone who ever has been lost in the past. This is an excellent device, and extremely easy to use.
-Adam

p.s. I enjoy the British accent that you can load from the DVD that is included.

I moved to New Jersey a little over a year ago, and the roads here are ridiculously confusing and never failed to get me hopelessly lost. Being from California and then Las Vegas where all the streets are a straight line and addresses are printed on street signs and buildings and the like, it was a shock to come to NJ where you can't turn left or right if there is a jughandle (and you never know if there's going to be a jughandle or a left and right turn lane), where the streets resemble curly fries and spaghetti, where there are no address signs to speak of and half of the businesses don't even know their own street address, where roads are named with numbers instead of words, and where the cities used on business cards are actually boroughs that are "nicknames" for certain areas, not the city registered with the zip code for the area. Not a nice place to drive if you ask me.

So I asked for and got this little baby for a Christmas gift from my mom!

I have actually tried the Magellan Roadmate 300/360 before and I prefer the Garmin StreetPilot hands down. It may be a cheaper unit, but suffice it to say that less expensive doesn't necesarily mean less quality.

Wondering which model to buy? Let me start by comparing the two! I used the Roadmate for a four-day long roadtrip with my friend who owned it (I was the only one driving), so I had a pretty good feel for it by the time the four days were up.

The Magellan Roadmate took up to 15 minutes to pick up the sattelite signal, my Garmin i3 has never taken more than one minute to boot up, save the initial use which took about 4-5 minutes. This is particularly important when leaving to go somewhere and you are running late, or if you drive under a brige and the signal is lost. For the more pricey Roadmate to take an extra 5 minutes to reboot itself with the sattelite signal is absurd while you are driving around aimlessly in the meantime.

Another thing that annoyed me about the Magellan roadmate was that it made this absurd low buzzing noise everytime it would give a voice command, which got pretty annoying after a while. My Garmin i3 has never made any strange noises at all.

The Magellan also has less accurate maps than my Garmin does. There were several times, when driving with the Magellan that we would hit a dead end or closed road and it seemed to think that the road still existed. Even on roads that had obviously been closed off for years. While my Garmin is not foolproof when it comes to maps, I had more false roads and nonexistent points-of-interest locations with the Magellan in 4 days than I have had with my Garmin in three months.

It is probably obvious, but I haven't been lost a single time since I got my i3 streetpilot. If I had bought one of these when I first moved here instead of waiting a year, it would have already paid for itself in gas. I would buy this thing ten times over, because (pun intended!) I would truly be lost without it!

Don't worry about leaving the unit in your car or it being exposed to extreme temperatures. I leave mine in the glovebox (with the car locked of course!) and I have never had a problem with it despite many freezing nights and days.

And don't worry about the screen. I have never ever had a problem seeing it clearly, be it night or day, rain or shine, glare or no glare. It is big enough to see very well without being bulky and huge.

Now for the pros and cons of this unit:

Cons:

It is going to spoil you in a very similar a manner as to that of having a cell phone for the first time! You will wonder how you ever got on without it.

It cannot search a city by zip code, only by city name. Or you can skip that and search all cities if you don't know. But that broadens your search quite a bit!

There have been a few times where it took me somewhere besides the exact address of my destination. I am not sure if this is just because NJ is wierd when it comes to roads and addresses (because it is) or if it is because the map is off, but when it happened it was only a short distance from the destination, close enough for me to easily find my way there, anyway. It could also be because there are sometimes a 400 North Main Street and a 400 South Main St. that may not be specified if the streets aren't long enough. But the Magellan did this too, so it doesn't really count much when making a comparison in this price range.

Some of the Point of Interest destinations don't exist. This seems to happen mainly with gas stations for some reason. One time I put in a gas station and it took me to a residential area. So the destinations aren't always guaranteed, but for the most part they do exist.

The suction cup on this unit could be a lot better. That was the only thing that the Magellan won out over this system, and really the only thing I hate about it. If your windshield is overly cold it might fall off the window and sit on the dashboard, or worse, onto the floor or into an open cup of liquid in the cup holder! I usually moisten mine and fasten it relatively low on the windshield of my 2005 Hyundai Accent so it stays stuck on, and if it's really cold I put on the defogger so the window stays warm.

The unit doesn't have any internal memory. The Magellan has 60 mb of internal memory, so if the memory card suddenly goes kaput, you are not totally screwed. But that can easily be remedied by carrying an additional inexpensive memory card in the car incase yours malfunctions.

My other complaint is that the memory card that came with this unit did not work in the GPS. For some reason it works in my digital camera, but the Garmin couldn't read it and I could not upload the maps to the card. I was going to buy a larger 250 mb card anyway, so it didn't bother me much, but it was still annoying. The new card works just fine, the first must have been defective. My GPS was purchased at Costco, which was only $289.00, but the memory card WAS broken!

Pros:

I never get lost, and I can decide to go somewhere on a whim without worrying about printing confusing directions from mapquest or being at the mercy of people wih good intentions who give out bad directions.

It saves me tons of money on gas. If you get lost frequently or have moved to a new city recently, or are military like me and move or travel a lot, this is your ticket!

The menu with its little built-in phone book is absolutely fabulous. I have been out so many times in unfamiliar areas and wanted a particular restuaraunt or type of food (I have found many awesome restaraunts by doing this) and looked at the menu to see what was nearby. Same thing with wanting a certain store like Target or Sporting Goods or a mall, and not knowing where one was. Now I can go wherever I want and find things I normally would never have found or known existed if I didn't have the GPS.

Liberty! This wonderful gem gives you the liberty to take road trips without getting lost or lugging around heavy books and confusing maps to tell you where to go. And if you decide you want to go to a certain spot while you are out, just punch in the address or look it up in the database, and you're there! You can go wherever you want on a whim.

No more wondering "How long does it take to get there?" The StreetPilot gives you an arrival time that is pretty damn accurate.

Never pass another freeway exit or miss another turn (and if you do, don't worry! It automatically recalculates a new route for you). It tells you to "keep right" or "keep left" in .4 miles or whatever and dings right where you are supposed to turn.

Never be confused about forks in roads or anything of that nature. It tells you to "bear right" or something of that nature in confusing situations such as forked roads, freeway interchanges, airports, and roundabouts.

It will teach you how to navigate the area. After using it for a while, you will learn how to get places that only got you lost before when trying to follow mapquest's written directions or a confusing map.

It is fun to drive with! I like having it on even if I know where i'm going, it adds a measure of security and I love the voice that I chose (The lady with an English accent).

It has a detour setting. That means if you run into a closed road or something, just go into the menu and select "detour", and it calculates a new route for you!

That's pretty much the gist of it!

And here's a tip for anyone living in New Jersey. A lot of businesses insist that they are in a certain city when it is a nickname and doesn't really exist. THIS IS NOT THE GPS's FAULT! This is a bad habit of NJ residents who like to give their city areas nicknames and aliases! You can easily circumvent this problem by going to a website (google "zip codes") that looks up zip codes, and type in the zip code for the destination. You will find that certain cities are actually technically other cities by the zip code, and there should be a list of "aliases" for your city name. 10 times out of 10, if the GPS doesn't show the city I am looking for, it is because of this problem. Know before you go!

And good luck getting a simple street address from anyone in NJ over the phone! I have noticed that most New Jersey-ers take pride in giving confusing verbal instructions and most of the time have no clue what the address is! They think their instructions are easy to follow for some reason and look at me like i'm batty when I mention I have a GPS. Have fun!