Rating: 
Summary: A most fantastic toy Street Pilot III
Review: I have now been the proud owner of the GPS Street Pilot III for about 3 months. This unit is one of most helpful tools that I have ever owned. The Street Pilot guarantees that you will get to your distination. Once set properly with a route, it is nearly impossible to not find your destination. I love programing in a location and being able to drive to it without looking at any signs or maps. The detail is almost flawless. I have purosely driven off route, and the Street Pilot instantly recalulates to get you back on your way. I find it very easy to use. The feaures are too numerous to list, but I truly like the way it calculates and constantly updates your arrival time. I love it and would never drive anywhere without it.
Rating:
Summary: Directionally Challenged Rejoice
Review: If you have been looking at $2,000 (and up) factory-installed GPS systems, this device will look like a bargain. If, however, you are looking for a hiking-and-biking GPS device, it will seem weirdly expensive. Think of this as an in-vehicle unit that can can be used as a portable if necessary.Factory-installed units typically feature bigger screens, don't intrude on your personal space, and don't leave a power cable hanging off your dash. However, this device has one huge advantage over them: It can be swapped between cars and taken on trips for use in rental cars. At the low end, there are many cheaper GPS units more suitable for the outdoorsman. This unit is best used an in-vehicle GPS -- its battery drain and weight might be an issue for hikers. Test-driving this device for the first time on a commute or a trip to the grocery store, the suggested route may seem odd, crossing and then rejoining a street for no apparent reason. But it can also find shortcuts even in familiar areas. The real value, however, is in driving in unfamiliar territory, where getting lost could cost time, gas, patience, and may even be dangerous. It can find the nearest gas station, restaurant (Italian, fast food, etc.), shopping, airport, hotel, public library, and many other categories of locations. When I broke down on the side of a highway recently, I used it on battery power to find several service stations (it gives phone numbers) within a few miles. When I called one, I was able to tell them my exact distance from which exit, and direct the tow truck to my disabled car. It is also valuable on trips when you rent a car. Just remember to download the maps for your destination and surrounding area -- this should take about 5-10 minutes if you're using a USB cable. A WORD ABOUT SPEED
This GPS calculate routes less quickly than expensive in-dash systems, which should be no great surprise, given that it can run on batteries and costs less. Unlike a calculator that gives you the right answer in the blink of an eye, this unit is more like a chess computer. It seeks the best route (e.g. fastest time, shortest distance) among perhaps thousands of possible solutions for getting from Point A to point B. Deep Blue took some time to beat the best chess player in the world, but nobody calls it slow. What does processing time mean for the average driver? Well, if you take a wrong turn or miss a suggested exit, it announces: "Off route; re-calculating." If you do something unexpected a second time or third time while it is number-crunching, it may re-calculate again. At such times, you may become frustrated that it can't "keep up" with the split-second decisions traffic sometimes requires. This can be annoying, but nine times out of ten you'll probably prefer the tradeoff its designers opted for. The voice prompts are clear and sound more human than robotic. You can adjust the volume, which is helpful especially if you have chatty passengers. These prompts also let you keep your eyes on the road, which is a major safety and convenience advantage over units that don't speak. The color screen is large and easy to read in all but the brightest direct sunlight. It calculates what time the sun sets and can automatically go into night mode (more black background) so your eyes can adjust to the lower light outside -- a nice touch. You can zoom in or out on a map to see as much detail as you need, or you can let it pick the zoom level for you. This lets you strike a balance between over-frequent screen refreshing (if you are driving 65 and zoomed way in, for example), and seeing where you are relative to certain highways or exits, which you might want to zoom out a bit to see. On multi-lane highways, as your exit approaches or lanes divide, it will tell you to keep left or right, which can keep you from getting needlessly into exit-only lanes or from having to cross several lanes. Lest you think this is a complete rave review, there are a few shortcomings. Battery life is fair-to-poor, depending mostly on how bright you want the screen. However, if you use the power adapter and use the battery power as backup, this should not be a problem. You will notice from pictures that there are not many keys cluttering up the front of the device. This was a sound choice from a safety and design standpoint, but it means that you have to flip between screens and scroll to enter addresses, zipping through numbers and letters and entering each -- much the way you might enter your name or initials on an arcade game. It assumes a certain degree of patience and willingness to learn. If your directionally challenged spouse has not yet entered the computer age, this may be more technology than she (or he) is ready for. BOTTOM LINE
Because of some minor quibbles, I give it 4 1/2 stars, but will round that up to 5 because it offers such good value compared to factory-installed in-dash units. Unless the extra money is a huge issue, or unless you rarely travel far from home, spring for the deluxe version and save the headache of buying additional maps, upgrading memory, etc.
Rating: 
Summary: Not exactly what I was expecting
Review: I have never owned a GPS before I purchased this one. Since I do a lot of travel for my job, I thought I'd finally bite the bullet and buy this one since it was the new Deluxe version. Some of the good things about this are that it has shown me new directions to locations I have been driving to the same way for years. It turns out that I was going a longer distance for all this time. The bad part of this is sometimes it takes you on awkward or strange routes to get you to your destination. Yes, this is what it's supposed to do but the routes are not always practical and it gets a little embarrassing when you go down tiny hidden roads just because the calulation saved you 50 feet or so from going on a larger road. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and generally I don't have trouble with satellite reception. There is this one place on a freeway where it ALWAYS gets lost. Every time I go down this spot it says "off route, recalculating". This is not a new freeway and there are no buildings or hills around. The biggest complaint I have about this, however, is that if you go off the route it chooses for you, look out! It can take around three to four mintues to recalculate. And if you're in a city like San Francisco. You can't just pull over in San Francisco and wait for it to catch up. There's no place to park! And by the time it's done recalculating, it realizes it needs to recalculate again because you are off track from where it thought you were. Aaarrrggg! (And I'm trying to impress my wife on the decision I made to spend so much money on this thing!) I would not recommend throwing all caution to the wind and just relying on this. 1) Keep a Thomas' Guide (map) in the car with you as a cross reference. 2) Do a dry run of the calculation before you jump in the car by "using Indoors" and take a close look at the route it's going to choose for you. 3) Try to not make it recalculate by getting yourself "off route". I spent almost a thousand bucks on this thing and I am disappointed that I cant really put all my faith in it.
Rating: 
Summary: Hopelessly underpowered
Review: GPS systems are great! This one, however, is hopelessly
underpowered. Its processor tends to be busy updating
the display when you need it the most. If you miss a
turn because of that, it notices - once it finished
updating the display - that you are "off route". The
subsequent search for a new route may easily take 30+
seconds, and once it is finished, guess what. You
probably took a wrong turn again. So it starts
searching again. Get the picture? The unit is terrific
if you are brave (and patient) enough to stop and wait
whenever it is busy. I didn't have the guts to stop on
highways, but at places with few roads I found the unit
to be really helpful. Too bad the manufacturer didn't
spend the additional 5 bucks to equip the unit with a
reasonable CPU.
Rating:
Summary: Processer hopelessly slow
Review: GPS systems are great! This one, however, is hopelessly
underpowered. Frequently, when needing directions, the
system was busy refreshing its graphical display.
So I had to take a guess. When the guess was wrong, the
system would realize I am "off route" and start searching
for a new route. During this time (20 sec??), I would likely
fail to anticipate the correct route - so when the
super-slow search algorithm finally returned with a route,
it immediately realized I was off route again. And again.
You get the picture? It's painful to purchase a unit for
serious money just to find out that the manufacturer saves [money] on a decent microprocessor.
It's a great unit for patient people (and people who are
brave enough to stop on highways!). When its screen is
updated, it gives great advice!
Rating: 
Summary: Great product, but you may have different expectations...
Review: This is by far the best GPS I have ever used. The only thing I would caution is how fast this GPS does its recalculation. Here are some examples:
1. I programmed the destination information for my wife to travel from my friend's house, she jumped into the car and was ready to go. The GPS showed that it was ready to navigate, but for first 15 seconds of driving, it was actually computing the route, and was really not ready to navigate. At the end of the first 15 seconds, my wife was lost already. She had to stop and wait for the GPS to re-calculate the route.
2. It told me to turn left onto another street, I was at the right-most left turn lanes (out of the 3) ready to turn left, it interpreted as I was ready to turn right and started the re-calculation, it quickly corrected itself. But was confusing enough.
3. As one of the users mentioned, it took about 5 seconds to re-calculate, and a lot of things can happen in that 5 seconds, and you may have already missed the re-calculated route. I don't think other GPS can perform as well, but you really need to have a realistic expectations.
Rating:
Summary: Extraordinary
Review: I was recently looking for real estate in Los Angeles area and only thanks to this beautiful device I was able to visit around 20 hard-to-find locations in 1 day (looking for vacant land in hilly areas). I cannot imagine this being possible with a map, a guide, or even Garmin StreetPilot, which I also have.
The old SteetPilot shows straight line from the point where the device is located to the destination and lets the driver figure out his way around. Much more advanced StreetPilot III provides exceptionally accurate turn-by-turn directions.
StreetPilot III is not without glitches and sometimes it can get you temporarily lost if you don't pay attention to the road and signs. For example going from San Francisco to Los Angeles and then to Las Vegas, we've twice mistakenly exitted from the freeway by following Garmin's suggestion to "keep right", but then it helped us get back on the road.
Also, if you're in a familiar area, follow your instinct and knowledge as sometimes Garmin may choose a longer route by not knowing that some highways have traffic lights, or not knowing that a freeway exit is closed.
Despite these and some other minor glitches I cannot imagine this device being any better than it already is. The most amazing feature is probably its ability to tell which lane to stay in. For example when exitting a freeway with complex ramp, Garmin instructs to "keep left, then keep right", without which I could easily exit into wrong direction or into another freeway/highway. And when the freeway splits, Garmin also instructs "keep left" or "keep right", depending on which route I'm supposed to take.
Another amazing thing is that if I miss an exit or a turn, Garmin will often recalculate a completely different route that doesn't require U-turns. This is especially useful when I don't agree with Garmin and purposely miss a turn, then I look with amazement at Garmin recalculating my route in agreement with the route I decided to take. Garmin seems to have extremely detailed maps, including almost all streets and roads, no matter how small, even many unpaved ones.
But its database of "points of interests" is not nearly as good. For example while on a freeway Garmin found the nearest gas station within 30 miles, while there were 3 gas stations at the next exit within less than 5 miles. The number of restaurants, stores, etc. is very large, but Garmin still seems to have only about 75% of restaurants in certain areas. Garmin doesn't require any installation. Simply set it on top of your dashboard (mounted into the included base) and connect to the lighter adapter. You can even carry Garmin from one car to another without any mounting/unmounting needed. Special sand-filled base is needed for this though, which I think is included only with the Deluxe version.
The speaker is built inside the lighter adapter, thus no speaker installation is needed either. And the speaker works off the batteries too, even if the lighter plug is not plugged anywhere. Additional things to keep in mind:
- The device can be very slow when calculating many turns (for example in dense areas or long-distance trips). Sometimes you need to make a turn, but Garmin is still calculating directions.
- StreePilot III is very configurable and allows the user to set many preferences. For example you can change the speed of calculations to "Quick", so that you don't need to wait for directions too long (although this decreases the number of potential routes that Garmin evaluates ).
- There is a way to increase the volume, although it's hard to figure out: hold the "Speak" button for 2 seconds. Overall I love this device and in 2 months I learned to completely depend on it. Now I can find virtually any address without asking anyone for directions and almost without risk of getting lost.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing Product
Review: My mother is 70 years old and still drives very well and wants to stay independent as long as possible. She was starting to be fearful of getting lost while driving so I purchased this product to see if it would help her remain confident in her car. As a test, I took a vacation with her in Canada and brought this gem along. Wow! Unbeliveable that a product can make such a positive impact on a vacation. It located our rental car exactly and maintained proper direction and satillite communication even in between tall buildings. Everyplace we wanted to visit was easy to find and route, making our vacation much more enjoyable than constantly searching maps and straining to read tiny writing. Driving in an unfamiliar city with this GPS becomes a pleasure as you always know you are going in the right direction and will get to your intended destination. During our seven days in Canada, my 70 year old mother mastered it's very easy to use functions. She now uses it everyday at home and takes it on all of her vacations. Very few products can impact a person's everyday life. This one does. If you know anyone who gets lost easy or just needs a little help staying on course, I highly recommend buying this GPS for them. A truly great product.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing
Review: I am 45 yrears old and have been "lost" for the most part of my driving age & I have never written a review before. This thing is better than sliced bread. The freeway stopped the other day and I was on my way to the airport. I got off and was totally lost in the Santa Cruz mountains trying to find hwy 17.. in moments the streetpilot anounced "off route recalulculating" it was like having a person from AAA sitting next to me.. She talked me through all these little tiny winding roads and cut my trip in half! I would still be wondering around those hills!
Rating:
Summary: Great product!
Review: For several years, I have envied the owners of high end cars equipped with navigation systems. I considered getting an aftermarket in-dash system, but the price was too steep. The StreetPilot III Deluxe is just what I have been looking for. It is a reliable, well-designed, and just plain fun gadget that will please the electronics junkie and the casual user alike. The high resolution screen is gorgeous and remains clearly visible even in bright sunlight. At sundown (automatically calculated by the StreetPilot), the display switches to black and white and can still be read easily without distracting the driver. Operation is very easy once you get the hang of it. The 128 MB data card included with the deluxe version can store maps covering a radius of 500+ miles. It should be adequate for almost all trips. Programming the card is fairly easy, although the software is probably the system's weakest link. The interface is poorly designed but functional. The system's autorouting function works very well, but because it cannot account for traffic volume or terrain, it sometimes underestimates drive time and thus doesn't choose the quickest route. 95% of the time, however, the system chooses the best route, and it has identified new and better directions for several of my most common trips. The vocal prompts are excellent. A sophisticated trip computer is an included feature and is a welcome addition if your car does not have one. I cannot praise the StreetPilot highly enough. In many ways, I think it is superior to an in-dash system, in terms of price and portability (since you can transfer the device between cars). It is the rare gadget that is both useful and fun. You'll wonder how you ever lived without it.
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