Which new Garmin advice

[JakesterUK]

I've had a Garmin Nuvi 300 for several years which has served me really well, but has just finally died.

I'm looking to replace with another Garmin but on searching online and in the local suppliers am somewhat swamped by all the models and don't want to end up with a lemon model.

My budget is upto 130 and it needs to have bluetooth capacity

Can anyone make any recommendations?

Thanks

[JakesterUK]

Anyone??

[nickwilcock]

Amazon are doing a good £120 deal on the Garmin nüvi 1390. This is a 4.3" widescreen model with traffic receiver - it also has Bluetooth and comes with UK and European mapping.

The only thing I don't like about it is that the power cable plugs direct to the unit rather than to the vehicle mount.

[nickwilcock]

No, the later series have a power socket in the mount.

[mch]

I've just swapped out my trusty old Nuvi 350 for one of the new Nuvi 1490T models (£130). I did this because the old Nuvi can't accept routes uploaded from a PC, whereas the 1490T can.

In general I'm happy with the 1490T, but there are a couple of bad points: The 1490T has the annoying "auto-zoom" feature, where the map zooms in and out depending on how fast you are going. Note that this CANNOT be disabled. Normally I like to have the map at a fixed magnification, so I can get an idea how tight upcoming curves are on an unknown road: Not possible on the 1490T (or any of the newer Nuvis, I am told). Secondly I did not realise that you can't transfer any mapsource files from the older Nuvi: I had maps of America, South Africa, and various other countries registered on the old unit, and I need to buy new copies for the 1490T.

Hope this helps.....

Mike

[JakesterUK]

Thanks all for the input brought a 1410 which seems to be OK'ish although to be honest I miss the old 300 which just seemed a 'logical' piece of kit

[nickwilcock]

I've never found a 'disable autozoom' option on my Garmin nüvi 660 - but if you zoom all the way in during a journey using the navigation feature (e.g. 'Go Home'), rather than just the map, it seems to lock itself at 500ft scale.

Same with the map function. Zoom all the way in, let it gather its wits, then zoom out to, say, 300ft scale.

Which is fine by me!

Autozoom is pretty pointless - and should most definitely be a user-selectable feature.