Garmin StreetPilot 2620 - 3.7 in. Car GPS Receiver

I will not waste too much time talking about the features because if you are reading this I assume you know a little about GPS's for the automobile. Instead I will focus on a couple of issues.

I already own a Garmin Street Pilot III but my wife gave this to me for my birthday anyway (probably because she wants the street pilot III for herself). Let me just say that this GPS works as well as the Street Pilot, which I have been always very happy with. So… basically I am pretty happy with this GPS because I need it quite often when I am traveling. I am also happy I now have Alaskan and (especially) Hawaiian maps. My Street Pilot just had basic base maps and that was not very good.

Now… let me just comment on some of the "issues" I have found so far.

The remote control and the touch screen are both easy to use but the angle of the remote to the GPS can be a little finicky. This can be annoying when driving and you want to hit "yes" when the GPS prompts you to recalculate a route.

There are a number of categories and subcategories to search for when driving. If I want to go shopping I can search near my location for a shopping mall, department store, or maybe a convenience store. This sub categorization is great but I have found it often incomplete. For example, I was driving towards my home on an interstate and wanted to pick up some bagels. There is a category "food and drink" with a sub category of "donuts/bagels". Well after making my selection it searched a 2 mile radius, then 10, then 25, then 50, then 100, then 250 mile radius and could not find one bagel or donut shop. That… is odd because within a 250 mile radius of my present position was both the cities of New York and Philadelphia. I am sure… there has to be a bagel shop SOMEWHERE in those two cities. I also happen to be near one I knew at the time. It did show up under just a "food and drink" category search so I know it is in the GPS.

I have also been using the GPS to plan for a trip to Kauai and I have this really good guide book that picks out restaurants and places to go. Well… only about half the restaurants showed up and they were mostly the ones on the South side of Kauai, not any of the "so-called" good ones in the North. However this happening with Hawaii is understandable if you read Garmin's web site on the Navigator v5.0 (the map version the 2620 has). They claim the Alaska and Hawaii maps are based on unverified Government data… I suppose I can live with that… but no bagels in NYC? Don't think so….

These are just some of "examples" of the sub categorization problems this GPS has. I have found that it could not find stores I know are there and if I broaden the search enough, it will "normally" find them. So… RULE OF THUMB: if the GPS can't find what you want, broaden the search by not using sub categories.

Besides some other strange episodes of the map it generally works well. Had no problems with the mapping in most of the Mid-Atlantic states (will let you all know how Hawaii goes with an update).

I have noticed that some of the addressing to be off more than the Street Pilot III. For example when I put my address into the GPS, it thinks I am 3 houses from where I really am. The Street Pilot oddly enough was dead on correct. The same thing with my children's school, it is in the GPS's map but it is off by maybe a little less than 1/8th of a mile. Both times my GPS had very good accuracy, was WAAS enabled, AND it was using WAAS at that time… just in case it could have been atmospheric error or it only had a 2D location.

Another qualm I have is the GPS doesn't take batteries. The old Street Pilot I have does and if it lost power it would run off batteries just fine. Heck I could even load my Garmin Topo maps onto the Street Pilot and take it into the woods (which I did do in Yosemite last year because I forgot my really old trustworthy Garmin 12Map). The new one however… has no batteries whatsoever. If you lose power… better call OnStar or something…

The voice for the GPS is the same as the street pilot but the sound is more "electronic". I think the speaker they use is not as well made as the Street Pilot III thus it doesn't sound as good. However... I have found I can offset this by changing the voice to "British English" instead of "American English". The voice will pronounce things like the word "Route" as "Root" whereas the American English voice just says "Route" (er... phonetically like "rowt"). As odd as this sounds... the British English voice makes the speaker not sound so bad.

Last but not least… the maps are all stored on a 2.2 Gb Compact flash card (it is a mini drive). This is a big improvement over the 128Mb memory card of the Street Pilot III. I wonder if this is not a double edged sword however because it is better than the old memory data cards which were proprietary but… I am not sure how comfortable I feel leaving it in my truck while I am at the beach or in some meeting somewhere. Either it is going to get real hot or possible too cold. The old Street Pilot put up with old man winter and summer REALLY well. I mean…it took a royal beating and somehow survived it all.

Ok… besides all of this negative stuff I am actually really happy with this GPS. It is like the Street Pilot III (which I have had for a long time) but the UI is better and the new features are great. It does have some mapping bugs but… how could it possible not given it has all that information on it? I am concerned however that Garmin has produced a larger number of firmware updates for it. I just downloaded a version last week and got an email from them this week saying there is another one that fixes some bugs. That normally worries me but at the same time I have used Garmin products for a long time and the company has put out some really good products. Not to put down Magellan but I had one Magellan GPS, and it accidentally fell from a book shelf 3 feet up and cracked the LCD. So far the Garmins I have had had been just BRUTALIZED by comparison and so… I have stuck with them so far.


UPDATE: I have two updates regarding this GPS. First I tested this GPS on the islands of Kauai and Oahu. On Oahu it pretty much was on the money with where attractions were located. On Kauai it was less accurate regarding the major roads and attractions. For example highway 56 makes a complete left turn at a stop light and the GPS does not realize this in the least and tells you to continue driving straight. This seems to happen often on the major roads but ironically... the GPS knew the dirt roads almost perfectly... and there are many dirt roads on Kauai.

The second issue is in regards to the state I live in, New Jersey. New Jersey has many "jug handles" for making left turns. Well the GPS seems very oblivious to this. For example if I am heading on route 1 south towards the Brunswick Carolier Lanes in New Brunswick it simply tells me to "turn left" but in reality I must take an exit ramp, take the second over pass and drive over route 1, and then make a left at the light and drive down a road and make a right into the lanes. That is a much more complicated task than just "turn left"... if I turned left I would end up in the barrier wall in the middle of the highway. There are numerous occasions where the GPS thinks just turning left over a median will suffice. This would not be so bad except my old Street Pilot III does make the same mistakes.