Garmin StreetPilot 2620
Clarity of Instructions
Ease of Use
Map Accuracy
Garmin StreetPilot 2620
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User Reviews
Value For Money
Ease of Use
Clarity of Instructions
Map Accuracy
Purchased New In 2004 For Over £1,000 This U
Purchased new in 2004 for over £1,000 this unit is now obsolete and cannot be uploaded with the latest mapping as the memory is too small. Having recently travelled extensively in Europe I found that there were many roads which were not shown on the sat nav. One being the Millau Viaduct in France which has been open for several years. If that is the best Garmin can do for longevity of product life I would not recommend purchase of any Garmin product.
Value For Money
Ease of Use
Clarity of Instructions
Map Accuracy
What A Great Piece Of Navigation Equipment The Gar
What a great piece of navigation equipment the Garmin StreetPilot 2620 is. I have used the device now for about two months and it continues to amaze me, I just trimmed 40 miles off a regular journey I make to the west of England. This single piece of kit is destined to pay for itself over time in fuel savings alone. It does not have gimmicks such as 3D view or real road view (where actual road lanes can be seen in 3-D) but it is waterproof and is also therefore suitable for motorcycle use. I have found the maps (City Navigator Europe V.9) to be accurate and the clear English speech to guide the driver means that I have seldom needed to pay more than a cursory glance at the large, clear touchscreen. I have experienced the odd loss of satellite reception, but that has quickly returned without too much delay (Garmin can't control atmospheric conditions and topography). The StreetPilot 2620 is a feature-packed, user configurable, robust and functional navigation aid. It's worth mentioning that as this type of technology is always being superseded by new models, so there are some real bargains to be had for these older, tried and tested sat-navs (I paid less than £200 new! Who says newer is always better?).
In summary, I'm a very satisfied end user of the Garmin StreetPilot 2620 and can only recommend it.
Value For Money
After Trying Unsuccessfully To Route An Accurate T
After trying unsuccessfully to route an accurate trip from Las Vegas to Wisconsin via Denver and Rapid City, SD over a dozen times with the Garmin Streetpilot 2620 Satellite navigation system, I installed the latest software and called Garmin Technical Support. I spent about four hours on the telephone with them, and they insisted that they could not reproduce the problem (haven't we all heard that before!). I finally took the relatively expensive unit back to the store where I had purchased it, and I exchanged it for another one. Same problem!
It obviously isn't the particular unit -- it is the design! The StreetPilot 2620 clearly cannot accurately route a trip through the Denver and Southeastern Wyoming area without including inane, circular detours which, if you followed the route, would take you over the same roads two or three times.
This unit is a relatively new product and is clearly "not ready for prime time." Avoid it.
Your experience with a BusinessWeek review just shows, again, why people should never rely on product reviews from publications in which the supplier of the product places advertising in the magazine. It is only at Web sites like this one that you can expect to learn the truth about any product. Garmin Technial Support was eventually able to reproduce my problem (when they stopped using their desktop computer simulators and began using a real product), but they had no solution for this really blatant and serious software error. They told me to wait for an update release to the software. Well, they've had a couple of software update releases for this model, and they have added some really "useful" features, like navigating the streets of London, England, but their release notes have not indicated that the software problems that prevented me from using my Garmin 2620 had ever even been addressed -- much less solved. I think that Garmin is trading on its name, and I think that BusinessWeek did its readers a disservice.
Just out of the box, my Garmin 2620 is telling me it cannot find satellites in the USA. It is trying to program from a "home" in Singapore, more than 7000 miles from my home just outside of NYC and then telling me there are no streets (of course not, it's ocean!) to chart that course. Although this model was recently praised as one of the best in Business Week and has many devotees on Amazon, one previous Amazon buyer also noted the unit's inability to reprogram to a US satellite system. Obviously, this is a glitch which hasn't been recitifed. In the program setup guide, no mention is made of possible satellite complications. I guess I will be returning the item and hoping for a better outcome.
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