Sunday, August 12. 2007

GPS Product Overload...Too Many PNDs to Choose From

You are a savvy mapper and GIS guru. But are you ready for the eventual question from friends and family? Which personal navigation device (PND) should I buy?

You scoff at the question because 1) GPS is no big deal to me; 2) How hard could it be to go to a store and pick one off the shelf?

There are 29 PNDs on the market...just from Garmin. There are 16 from Magellan and five from TomTom. That's 45 models. Would you like that PND with traffic information, sir? Or just an MP3 player? Bluetooth, perhaps? Would you like the screen to be 3.25756" or 3.75327."

My friends are always commenting that "Mrs. Garmin" sent me the long way, referring to the pleasurable female voice directions and the option to use only highways or to take the scenic route. My kids decided they liked voice directions with a British accent (Take the bloody right turn!!! Just kidding).

Should we talk about the marine GPS navigation market? 32 models from Garmin. Motorcycles? Outdoor sports? It's getting to be a bit much but get used to it. We really are only scratching the surface as we find more possiblities for GPS.

So, if you have to make a choice, why not go for the models with everything, like the nuvi680, the Maestro 4050, or the TomTom GO 910.

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I used the 910 a bit and really liked the device - the mp3 player and the text to speech on it were really cool functions to have. TomTom also has a brand new device coming out called the 720 which is suppose to be even more amazing and have more advanced features too - I think thats the one I would be looking out for myself.

#1 Kevinr on 2007-08-17 12:09 (Reply)

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