Reviews Written by bmwdr

Garmin StreetPilot c330: Best in Class

Pros: Touch screen; intuitive; quality image and voice

Cons: It's pricey, but competitive to others in its class

I've had my c330 for about three months now. I did tons of research and decided that only Garmin, Tom-Tom, and Magellan offered what I wanted: portability, touch screen, ease of use, and quality. To make a long story short I decided on the Garmin, mainly due to my previous positive experience with a Garmin aviation GPS unit.

Things I've noticed about the unit:

1) It's nicely portable: I remove it from my windshield and put it in the glove box every time I park.

2) The data base is very extensive and easy to use: For example, the other day I wanted to go to a sporting goods store. I only knew part of the name of the store. So I put "Mel" into the unit, and it came back with "Mel Cotton's Sporting Goods". Right next to that was a green button that said "GO". I touched the button and the unit started directing me to the store!

3) The unit has many great things about it that I'm not going to list here. Suffice it to say that I'm very happy with mine.

Having said that, I think it's important to mention that it's not perfect. And here are some of the unit's shortcomings that you should know about:

1) I've read other reviews which complain about the screen. I've found the screen to be nearly perfect in all conditions...except one: the screen nearly disappears if you put on polarized sunglasses.

2) It would be nice to track routes (where you've been, how you got to where you are).

3) The time to destination and time to turn should change with your speed (The Tom-Tom has this feature).

4) It would be nice to zoom all the way out to see where you are in a city. The c330 only zooms out enough to see a few blocks.

5) The unit gives voice directions something like this: "In 300 feet, turn right". At first, I thought the unit should say something like, "In 300 feet, turn right onto Smith Avenue". The problem with this of course is pronunciation. Some streets are pronounced differently by different people. Imagine the cost involved in programming a unit to say street names like: "In 300 feet, turn right onto Auzerais Street" - an actual street in San Jose, CA.

In conclusion, I recommend the c330. It does what I want it to do, which is get me places without having to go inside, turn on my computer, enter relevent data, print it up, etc. Also, being male, I don't like to ask for directions ;-) ...