Review of Garmin Quest

[MusicMan]

Hi all,

As I am now the proud owner of a Garmin Quest over here in the UK, I thought that I would give some opinions of the unit for people to think over or discuss.

The unit in the UK comes with some 248Mb of RAM and the City Select CD's version 6.3. the Price was some £399.99 inc VAT (of course if you can purchase it as a business tool you can claim the VAT back)

First Impressions:

Physical attributes:
Its small, :D only smaller in demensions than a PDA but slightly deeper. Makes it easy to put in to a pocket when removing from the car. After all who wants to leave their new toy in a play where it can be stolen.
Garmin claim it will last upto 20 hours on battery, I hope to try this sometime and will let you know the results. Connection to your PC is through USB. There is a connection for an external aerial if you have problems with heated windscreens.

Display:
Really clear. I suffer relection on my PDA when trying to use it with bright sunlight. I have not noticed the same problem when the Quest is mounted in the car. The unit has both night and day modes which can be set manually or automatically at dawn/dusk.

Mounting Kit:
It is a windscreen mount supplied with the unit. It seems to secure really well to the windscreen. The unit can be a little difficult to remove, I will have to see how well it lasts over time. The cradle has a fixed cable which plugs into the cigarette lighter. This end also houses the speaker for the unit. The speaker is a little "Tinny" on sound but is fairly load.

You also receive a cradle and charger for home

When the unit first arrives it takes some time to locate the satellites, which is to be expected as it thouht it was last in Taiwan.

Pre-programmed is the Europe base maps, before navigating you will need to install the software on you PC, connect the Quest and then download you choosen Maps. I have choose the whole of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, the area around the channel tunnel in france with some of the other European major cities.

One loaded and the satelittes located you are ready to make some personal confuguration settings.

Many of the screens and functions are customisable.

For example:
When of the map scree do you want the datafields, if you do how do you want them configured, speed? time to destination, time to next turn, distance to next turn, location etc
There are many options for configuring the unit to your preferences.

There are 3 major navigations creens:
Map, Directions, speed/trip counters (bit like your car dashboard) each can be customised.

Routing:
There are several routing options, these are:
1) Setting off route options (Promted, Automatic or off)
2) Route Preference (Faster Time, Shortest Distance, off road, promted)
3) Calcualtion method (4 options Quickest to Best)
4) Vechicle Type (Car/Motorcycle, Pedestrian, Truck, Bus etc)

The routing seems fairly quick. For the routes i have asked it to calculate so far it has taken (on best):
29 seconds to calculate a 64 mile route.
30 seconds to calculate a 205 mile route

The first was from a town of the cost to a location in London.
The 2nd from the same start point but to a place outside of Birmingham in the Midlands.

checking on some smaller routers it does sometimes does offer routes that we has drivers might not use, for example going through the town when it is possible to avoid it, but we must remember it is providing a route to somewhere we may have never been, so if its not the best route that is possible it will at least get us there.

One thing to mention the Quest uses Navtech maps, it does not have postcode routing. (though some say that they are more acurate than tele-atlas, can any one confirm this?)

We know that the device can get us to and from our locations but better is to come and the reason I settled with this unit, and that is the tracking log.

The unit can track your journey, it can then be downloaded to your PC and overlaid over the PC maps. Wonderfull if you forget to record your business mileage, just download the track date, display it on the maps, and hey presto a mileage log. :D :D :D

Using this Software it is also possible to created and upload and download your own waypoints.

Point to remember that when uploading any waypoints or routes it will delete any existing points stored, so if updating remember to download, modify and then upload again.

Which brings me onto another point, As waypoints can be created and uploaded through the City Select, it is possible to convert the Speed Camera databases to PCX5 waypoint format? If it is then the quest will have a function that the tom tom has. It would be usefull even if the Quest will not announce them they will at least be displayed on screen.

Overall What do I think of the unit?
I like it. There are one or two little issues, but nothing that can not be worked around. true it does not have 3d maps, but who cares, it has a logging facility that is much more usefull.

If you have any questions about the unit then drop a note of the forum and I will do my best to find to answer.

Music Man.

[MusicMan]

I was wrong on one point, uploading Waypoints does NOT delete the existing ones.

BUT
when uploading maps it deos delete all the existing ones.

Further to the Speedcamera issue there is software that will convert the OV2 to PCX5 format. Only problem is when uploading the database the quest reports that the "My Locations" memory is full.

Only 500 waypoints can be uploaded.

Musicman

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