Garmin Quest Pocket-Sized Car GPS Navigation System

 

 

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Having bought the Garmin Quest, I'm pleased to report it is one of the best products I've ever used. I hate driving in London, all the different areas, the one-way streets and not knowing my way, doesn't help either.

Now I have the Garmin Quest, I can navigate my way around the capital like a London Cabbie. If I get it wrong, the now familiar (for me) words... "Off Route, Recalculating" are spoken by the Quest. Within seconds, a newer route has been found, and I'm heading off to my destination without a concern that I've just missed a turning. Sometimes, in London, it better to just go with the flow than try and get from one side of the carriageway to the other in 10 feet during rush-hour traffic.

Long gone are the times when I'd get totally lost and worst still... stressed. Not any more - with the Quest beside me, all journeys are not stress free (though not always "off route" free).

If you're looking for a good SatNav, then this is it and for the price it is a bargain. The only thing to dampen the enthusiasm for this device, it doesn't accept post code entry. Come on Garmin get your act together.

Having owned a Garmin quest for well over a year now I have had the opportunity to test it quit thoroughly (ranging from Yorkshire down to the south coast). It has performed pretty much flawlessly.

Certainly one gets occasional "odd" or unclear instructions but once you get to its idiosyncrasies (like instructions to "bear right" on a motorway, where two motorways fork from one another, which usually means remain on the motorway rather than take the fork left onto the other motorway) its messages become quite clear. (One may hear "turn left" or "bear left" when approaching a sharp left corner in the road with a right turn coming off it, this simply means the software does not identify specific road markings and bases its instructions on the map and since the junction looks like a T-junction on the map the instruction becomes "turn left".)

Like all GPS systems the maps do become dated. Sometimes road markings have changed, or even who intersections changed (like a crossroads becoming roundabouts, so instead of saying "take the third exit" you hear "turn right"). These are all minor problems shared by all GPS systems and the simple application of intelligence to interpreting the instructions resolves them.

Satellite acquisition has always been reasonable (ranging from a few seconds on open fields to 40 seconds or more in built up areas). Again, in common with most GPS systems, the unit has problems in environments with no clear line of sight to the satellites. That said, I have never had any significant loss of navigational capability even when driving though areas with overhanging trees (there always seems to be just enough signal for the unit to track progress, even when I one day took an off-road track through a woods fully expecting the unit to lose the signal it did not and performed like a trooper).

Route calculation is fairly quick (certainly quick enough for any practical purposes) and the routes produced are reasonable. You may be able to identify more efficient routes, particularly if you know the area involved, by applying local knowledge of road conditions (like "oh, that road is peppered with lights, I wouldn't go that way", or "oh, that road gets busy about now, I wouldn't choose that route") but this is to be expected and most units will suffer the same issue (barring those that have a link to a traffic condition alert system I guess). Anyway, if you know the area you probably won't use a GPS to get around and if you don't know the area then getting to your destination is probably more important than getting there by the most efficient route possible.

Should you miss a turning the unit quickly recalculates a new route. Sometimes this will result in a "perform a legal U-turn", especially on long roads with few turnings . (What else would you expect?)

So far as the quality of the unit, this is excellent. It is small, robust (with the antenna folded away), and water resistant (can be submerged to 1m for 30 seconds, so no worries in the rain or if you drop the unit in a puddle while out walking).

The voice in-car is provided through an external speaker integrated into the power cable. The voice is clear and concise, and as previously noted the instructions given are generally very clear too.

The display is small (what do you expect on a pocket sized unit) but very clear and once you have set up your unit to your taste (and eyesight) it provides a very clear track of your movements and importantly it zooms into junctions as you approach them so you can see the details of what is coming up.

In-car the unit runs from the cigarette lighter so no problems with batteries running down during a car journey. Battery life out of the car has never presented a problem and a fully charged unit can be used for several hours without any worries (I have had no cause to use the unit continuously for more than a couple of hours out of the car, so I leave it to others to comment on longer battery life tests).

The controls are simple to use, and the interface is clear with most common functions readily available.

Lack of postcode entry is definitely a minus, but for the most part I do not miss it greatly. The address entry facility is fairly quick to use.

The only problem I had with this unit was using it in someone else's car. It turned out they had a heated front windscreen and this blocked the satellite signal to the unit. (A friend bought one of these units, on my recommendation, and uses an external antenna with it, this obviously resolves the heated windscreen problem.)

Having gotten lost a number of times in various cities, I decided to invest in a GPS navigation system that I could transfer between cars. The Quest is a decent size - about the same dimensions as a smartphone, and has a good sized screen too.
I was expecting a GPS device to be a panacea for my navigation woes, but it turned out not to be. Out of the box, the unit was next to useless - entire motorways were missing, which caused the device to constantly re-calculate my route whilst driving over the new part of the M60 (even though it's been open for four years). However, once I updated the map from the supplied CD, the mapping is much more up to date. Also, prior to updating, the device would offer directions such as "right on to the A664" - now it offers the street name instead, which is much more useful in a built up area. It's also been known to offer incorrect, if not dangerous, directions on odd ocassions. My favourite was the sage advice "Bear right" whilst travelling at 70mph on the M6. Overall though, it's fairly accurate providing that you locate it with an unobscured view of the sky. When placed on the right hand side of the driver, I found that the thick roof-support pillar on my car prevented accurate triangulation. Also, passing trucks and buses would cause it to lose your position completely.
If you buy this and it comes with an old version of the maps (mine did, for some reason), then Garmin will supply you with the latest (currently V7) free of charge. Overall , I'd recommend it, but if you have a PDA then you might consider purchasing a GPS kit for that instead.

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4.0 out of 5 stars Versatile
I am now on my second Quest, the first was nicked along with my motorcycle.
As a professional pilot I am very familiar with GPS systems and their application. Read more

Published on 3 Mar 2008 by Dave

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