Garmin V

Hi Boys and Girls,
I have to admit that all your talk about how great GPS is has me drooling to get one. However I don't (read can't) want to break the bank. On ebay in the states it is possible to get a new one for 300Euros. So how much/difficult is it to get the european road db rather than the states where I have no intention of going.
Thanks for the info. 300Euros is great value for money don't yawl think.

Richie

Attractive as this option appears to be, I think that there are a number of problems.

Firstly, you would have to buy a version of European City Navigator. You cannot just 'borrow' this from someone else as Garmin have got the licencing codes well stitched up and linked to unit serial numbers etc. That would cost you £££s

Although you could use mapping data other than City Navigator (which would be cheaper), you would not be able to use the turn by turn navigation which is a feature of the Garmin V.

Secondly, the relatively small memory of the Garmin V limits the amount of mapping data that you can store. My guess is that, particularly on a longer journey, you would want to be running on the Euro basemap (which yours wouldn't have), leaving you reverting to maps. Kinda defeats the object?

You might do better if you could run to the SPIII since it has a much larger memory card and you hardly ever run on the basemap - but you still have the problem of having to buy City Navigator. I think that this is only a realistic option if you travel extensively in Europe and in the US (a US supplied unit would come with City Navigator - North America).

My recommendation would be to either buy a lower spec unit or go for broke and get a proper Euro version.

Greg

Thanks

OK thanks for the advice i'll be looking out for a euro spec GPS then.

Well yes and no.

A Euro spec GPSR will have a European basemap with main highways and coastlines and a turn by turn auto-routing GPSR (like the GPS V) will auto-route on the basemap.
However, this is of limited usefulness and you really need to get one of the Garmin Mapsource mapping products as well (for its much greater detail).

GPS V usually come packaged with Mapsource City Select which supports auto-routing.

Now you get into a cost benefit argument; the GPS V comes with only 19MB of internal memory. This will not load all of the UK from City Select so the question now becomes; how much of the areas that you normally travel to can be loaded. ? You can load different areas at different times but you need a PC to do it.

An SPIII comes with Mapsource City Navigator which is also an auto-routing map product. The SPIII has removeable memory cards (up to 128MB) so you can load a lot more maps. Neither the SPIII or its memory cards are cheap.

If you want a big screen moving map GPSR then you should also look at the GPSmap 176 (monochrome) and GPSmap 176c (colour). This unit does not do turn by turn auto-routing just straight line 'gotos'. It is still very useful.
The GPSmap 176 uses Mapsource Metroguide maps which are cheaper. You also need to include a memory card in your pricing.

When pricing a mapping GPSR you need to include the mapping product as well and sometimes the US purchases are not that cheap when everything is included.