Garmin City Navigator North America for Detailed Maps of the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico (DVD)
Ratings: 3.5 from total of 99 ratings.
Price: $149.99
Price: $149.99
Product Features:
- Displays nearly 6 million points of interest, including hotels, restaurants, parking, entertainment, fuel and shopping
- Includes highways, interstates, and business and residential roads in metropolitan and rural areas
- Includes turn-by-turn directions, turn restrictions, roundabout guidance, speed categories
- Contains traffic data for compatible devices with traffic receivers
- Includes MapSource, Windows
Copy/piracy protection for their maps is so obsessive that even their own staff cannot easily circumvent it in the (inevitable) case where copying is necessary. In my own case, I had to replace my 705 with another, but since I had already downloaded my (purchased) North American DVD of maps, I was unable to unlock the map without 3 hours (!) of telephone assistance from technical support. ! This is supposed to be called customer service?? There just has to be a better way…
Bought this map for my Colorado 300. Installation was relatively easy – hardest part was getting the computer to recognize the GPS and the SD card (treats as two separate drives). Once there, downloading into the GPS was easy although it took almost two hours to load the entire map (1.09GB), which amounted to about a tranfer rate of about 165 kB/s; not good at all for USB. However, once downloaded into the GPS and powering it up, the map came up a soon as the GPS got the location; no adjustments were needed.
Map is very well detailed and has most of the key points of interest (food, gas, shopping, parks, etc.). Is very easy to use. Does a reasonbly good job of getting you from point A to B, but if you want to avoid a route(s) or add in-between stops, plan to the route on the computer first using MapSource (must buy the DVD version to get this), then download into the GPS.
You will not need to buy this product (North America City Navigator) if you have a Nuvi.
In spite of minor glitches (few missing POIs and very few outdated names), I have no regrets buying the product. POIs (waypoints) can be added into the GPS and MapSource.
It took a week and a half for it to show up. The tracking # showed it having arrived but it didn’t show up for another three days. When it did arrive it was the wrong item. Got an RMA real quick.
After reading the reviews, I knew the installation process was going to be lengthy. Okay, I got that. What I couldn’t stand was they had absolutely no tutorial for the product. I consider myself to be somewhat savvy when it comes to figuring out how to work programs, but this was ridiculous. It took hours just to figure out the basics. Maybe they expect you to have already purchased their maps before. Once I have figured out how to navigate my way through the basics, yes they give good directions and are accurate. It’s just hard to get past the fact that they told tell you how to use it.
I based my purchase on the part number as it matched Garmin’s part number for City Navigator North America NT 2010. The Amazon image associated with this item did not match what I received, thankfully. The received package exactly matched the current Garmin website product. Installation was simple and painless. Activation however, as mentioned in many other reviews, did require association with one of the Garmin GPSr’s that are compatible with this map release. My Garmin eTrex Vista is NOT compatible, but my Garmin Oregon 450 is. Garmin has everything pretty tied to their website now, so I recommend creation of a myGarmin account before doing the installation. Caveat: I did already have MapSource loaded with maps for my eTrex Vista so I don’t know if there are complications with the install due to MapSource. Looked at the map for the new streets in my area and they were there. Noticed some of the POI’s are outdated by at least 3 years though. After installation, myGarmin, showed that there was an available map update which did correct come of the outdated or missing POI’s in my area.
I have the National Geographic Weekend Explorer 3D and compared to this Garmin product it is flat out horrible. This Garmin map is light years better…if you have a compatible Garmin GPSr. 4 stars rather than 5 because software requires a Garmin GPSr to activate.