12 out of 12 people found this review helpful.
A great little unit!
Date of Review: Oct 5, 2005
The Bottom Line: A great little unit for the price with TONS of information.
As a Professional Land Surveyor, GPS is something I have studied in some detail. I wanted a unit that would guide me from job to job instead of having a map on my lap and blowing all around while I'm driving. The Garmin quest II is ideal for that.
I got my unit and plugged it in the cigarette lighter outlet to charge overnight and sat down to read the manual. The manual is well done although it is a little lacking in detail as to where some menu items are located. The next morning I was able to power up the unit, let it acquire satellites, and enter in the first address I wanted to get to. It took a few seconds to calculate and we were off. The voice directions are great! You are warned of upcoming turns and the screen automatically zooms in to shown you the turn. This is REALLY handy on interstates as it shows great detail of the ramps. I was amazed when I went off the calculated route to a slightly quicker way out of my neighborhood and heard "off route, recalculating". The unit quickly recalculated the route and we were back on track. As I approached the lot I was going to, I was further amazed to hear the unit say "arriving at destination, on left". ON LEFT! It knew what side of the street the lot was on! Stunning.
Recently I took a road trip with some buddies to the low country in S.C. Very remote with lots of gravel roads. The unit was almost flawless. The one time I got bad directions, a simply searched for an intersection (two GRAVEL roads) instead of an address and we nailed it! I told my host we had some trouble with the GPS and he said "well, there used to be a road that would have gotten you here but a landowner closed it off to public travel". So I'll forgive that one. It was also very cool to ride down the interstate and see restaurants at the various exits and be able to select from Japanese, fast food, barbecue etc. The wife was even impressed by this thing and is considering one for the Mini after I brought it along on a trip with her (it is completely portable car to car or in your pocket!). With the whole U.S. pre-loaded it is great for our road trips. The information in this thing is incredible!
The one thing I wish this unit had is a learning mode. I know a few ways around town that are quicker than the main roads the Garmin tends to favor, and it would be cool to be able to tell it to use those roads instead of the majors, that's minor though.
As you can tell, I'm impressed by this unit and can't recommend it highly enough.
