Thursday, April 7, 2011

Garmin iQue 3600 PDA/GPS Handheld System with Americas Detailed Street Mapping (Electronics)


This review is from: Garmin iQue 3600 PDA/GPS Handheld System with Americas Detailed Street Mapping (Electronics)


Igot the Garmin iQue after much deliberation. I wanted something portable that could also be used in the car, with voice prompting. First thing I did was try it out in my office, but found you can't use it indoors. I went outside and stood under an awning next to our parking lot, and still got almost no satellite signals. It was raining a lot (this is Oregon, so it's expected) so I then took an umbrella and stood out in the rain. Got a few signals, and eventually got enough signals for the GPS to start working. It took about 10 minutes. Could weather have an effect on satellite reception? However, I moved my hand a bit, lost one of the three signals, and it stopped working again... That night I tried it out in the car, and noticed if I held it up to the glass (a tricky thing to do while driving) I could get a signal, but it was very intermittent and wouldn't last very long. I was starting to get disappointed.

Flash forward to a week later, when my antenna arrived (I got it off Garmin's website, since I didn't see it advertised here). It came with a suction cup attachment to put it on a window. Tried it in my office again attached to the window, and got three black satellite bars, and it started working. Okay, I thought, so far so good. The kicker came when I went out to the car and attached the suction cups to the windshield... Woah! I got no less than 6 black satellite bars in less than 30 seconds! Plus, whenever I would move the unit around, since the antenna was fixed, it never bothered satellite receiption. Now, THIS is what I had been hoping for. Now, I'm just waiting for my cat kit to arrive so I don't have to hold the thing. The antenna apparatus was an additional $100, but WELL worth it. In other words, if you don't get good reception right out of the box, think about getting one and it should work wonders for you.

But enough about reception, here's a few other points that I liked. The voice is very helpful, although it doesn't actually read street names. Instead, you get prompts like "In four hundred feet turn left" or "In one point three miles exit right". Those are fine, and when it talks it shows an expanded little graphic window showing the street name in large letters and an illustration of the exact turn. You have to take your eyes off the road to see it, so a dashboard mount would really be the ticket. However, if you know the street, listening to the voice prompts is fine. It's plenty loud, but not with any radio on. Since the car kit comes with speakers and a cigarette lighter adapter, I think it'll be just the ticket. Not that the batteries ran down or anything (I used it for a good three hours and the battery went to half full), but not to have to worry about it would be nice.

The internal memory can hold detailed maps for about two major cities and six-seven sparser area squares. (Major cities divide the ordinary detail map squares into four squares themselves). I recently bought a 256MB SD expansion card, which should allow me to put in almost the entire west coast US.

It comes with the North America (read: USA) detailed maps, but to purchase any European detail map sets is upwards of $300, so be warned if you also plan to use it internationally, there's a bit more cost involved.

Anyway, a GREAT unit, I think, even though all in all I spent upwards of $600 including shipping for all the parts. Even still, Amazon had the best price by far ($100 less than anywhere else). Still don't know how they managed that!
Garmin iQue 3600 PDA/GPS Handheld System with Americas Detailed Street Mapping (Electronics) at amazon.com

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