Anyone Running GPS, What's the Best?

[Sucka]

I'm looking for a GPS unit for my truck. I have fondled some of the Tom Tom's, the Garmin Nuvi's and such. They're very nice for routing, but they lack topographical maps, off road trails, marking waypoints off the road and things like that from what i could tell.

A large chunk of my driving will be on road naturally, but i want to be able to see trails throughout the state as well as mark camp sites, shooting spots, good turn outs for my dogs and stuff like that.

What should i be looking at here?

[claimbuster]

I have a Nuvi 350 and topo maps for specific areas can be loaded from your PC. Had it for a year now and am very happy.

[Marlin]

You can't buy the one I have... it's 11 years old... Doesn't have all the fancy new stuff.. Still works great though...[Tooth]

[Mtn.man]

2nd the NUVI we have only had for a short time but it is great.

[Fourthwind]

3rd the Nuvi. Works great

[Sucka]

Ok, i see where this is going.....lol

What's the best value Nuvi on the market right now? Want a decent one, but don't need ALL the bells and whistles.

[newracer]

I decided on the Nuvi 255W for my wifes car. Best I could find before xmas was at adorama $219.

[Mtn.man]

Costco has em online for like 100$ off can't remember which model, however wally world is reported to have the best prices.

[SigsRule]

Was looking at the 255 anyway to help me find my way around on business trips to NJ and upstate NY. Is it one of the types that can take topo maps?

[Zundfolge]

The Garmin Nuvi 500 (https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?cID=134&pID=13424) comes pre-loaded with USGS Topo data.


If you want a serious off road/back country Topo loaded GPS, the Garmin Oregon 400t (https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?cID=145&pID=14904) or Colorado 400t (https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?cID=145&pID=11022) are the best choices.

[7idl]

over the years I've had 4 different makes of GPS receivers..

1. garmin - by far the best consumer friendly/functionality
2. trimble - best pro
3. magellan - fair, always seemed "cheap" and I was never satisfied
4. Mio - ok, car navigator but it would reboot after a fault every now and then (it did have windows CE)

[Sucka]

So i got to use it a bit today, just on road and navigation stuff. It does the turn left, turn right stuff, but doesn't say the streets by name. That was one of the sacrifices in getting the "cross over" model.

It worked great, I know i'll get a lot of use out of this unit. The only complaint i had was typing in the streets and numbers. The touch screen is a bit clumsy and will take some getting used to. Also the keyboard is an abcd as opposed to qwerty style, i HATE that. Whoever the idiot was that designed it that way should be shot, who the fuck doesn't use qwerty keyboard layout?? Overall though i'm very happy with it.

http://i542.photobucket.com/albums/gg409/suckacottora/gps.jpg

[Sucka]

Opps, i hit edit instead of quote.

I ended up going with the Nuvi 500 for the topo capability. It's supposed to be a cross over style that can be used for car, hiking, biking and marine. Paid a bit more than i would have liked, but i really did want at least some topo capability since i will be using this offroad and for hiking.