Garmin 5" GPS w/ Lifetime Maps & Traffic Price: $114.99 Shipping Options:: $5 Standard Shipping Estimates: Ships in 1-2 business days (Friday, Nov 20 to Monday, Nov 23) + transit Condition: Factory Reconditioned
This device is preloaded with the North American maps only and you’d have to pay a good bit to load South Bahamas/South American maps on it. The lifetime program only includes the maps for the region that the device was originally loaded with by the factory.
Potentially you could load maps from here or someplace like it.
The 2589 is the one I planned to get myself for xmas. It was on at least one Recommended list and has the voice activation that started dying on my old Garmin, and which I miss. Slightly larger screen too. Might go ahead and get this one today.
Just a note of caution. I had purchased from Woot a 3490LMT factory re-conditioned device as well, but recently had to purchase the maps again since the device only had the standard 1 year free map updates. If it is guaranteed to really have the lifetime maps, it is a good price, otherwise, add another $90 in a year or so.
I bought this new several years ago. The lifetime maps was a big selling point for me. Several observations:
The update process is S-L-O-O-O-W. I have Comcast’s highest tier internet, around 50mbps avg. download. New maps or updates take forever. I mean, dial-up forever. Be warned.
The “traffic” feature is worthless. We were running late getting to Logan airport in Boston once and the traffic was horrible. We decided to let the Garmin route us around it. We ended up on surface streets that were slower than the traffic we’d just bailed out of. We missed our flight.
It’s actually a nice unit and is much easier to use than trying to navigate with your smartphone.
If you use it a lot, after a year or two you may start to experience crummy battery life. On one trip back east, I had only taken the USB cord by mistake and not the 12v car adapter. When I plugged it into the rental car’s USB port, instead of charging, it kept thinking I had connected it to a PC. Fail.
All in all for this price, if you plan to travel a lot in North America/Canada, the free lifetime maps and the good user interface/voice navigation make it a good deal. I also like the way Garmin zooms down and clearly breaks out the street detail when you’re coming up on a confusing merge/diverge in freeway spaghetti.