question for the Nuvi owners

Several nuvi models (ie. 760/780) will save routes as well.

Don,

Not all Nuvis can handle routes downloaded from Mapsource or any other source. They all handle at least a single waypoint. If routes are important, then you will have to look on the Garmin page and see which units support routes.

This is a question I would ask the wife, just how important is it to her to have a route she could follow? It would depend on how much traveling she does and making multiple stops on those travels.

All the Nuvis can handle getting a place from Google or Mapquest although I haven't tried this out.

I also think that all GPSs will route the same way all the time so a "route" will be the same from one place to another.

The lower Nuvis have only one via point option which works for me but may not if someone does a lot of different stops.

Not true, I have found that it depends on where you start from when going to the same point. The Nuvi may pick a different route to get there. It makes no sense, the only thing I have found to be true is that it will always get you there.

I think this has to do with the proximity to the type of route that you choose. A block or 2 difference could be the difference between routes.

The Nuvi is my second GPS and it routes me one way for going to work and another to get home. The other GPS is a Mio and it gave the same route coming and going. But they do that consistantly. When I am closer to another route the Nuvi will take me a different way than the Mio which I guess has to do with the routing software. I also think if they need to recalculate they will deviate from the original route if they find another route.

Either way like you said - both GPSs get me to where I want to go which is the reason why I bought a GPS in the first place.

Hi Don,

I'm a long time 2610 user also (love it) and we now have a couple Nuvi 750's as well. I used a lot of saved routes in the 2610 for my wife because she likes some back roads and hates some of the highways. So I typically build routes in Mapsource and download them into the Nuvi. Anyway, to my knowledge, you need at least a 750 or higher end Nuvi to handle routes with multiple vias. In any case, they work differently in the Nuvi than a 2610. Let's take the 750 for example....

You can create and save multiple via routes directly from the Nuvi screen and the interface is pretty intuitively done.

You can also create and save multiple destination routes and manually order the destinations or optimize them like in a 2610.

You can create routes in mapsource and load them into the Nuvi but the Nuvi process works differently than the 2610. I'll try to explain....

In a 2610, when you load routes they are immediately there for selection(up to 20 routes).

The Nuvi 750 spec says you can only save 10 saved routes. Well, that's a little misleading. The way they implemented it you actually have more options. I've gotten up to about 25 so far and I suspect you can do many more. I do it all from mapsource. When you load maps into a Nuvi 7x0, they actually go into a GPX file somewhere and are not immediately available to you at the Nuvi. Now at the Nuvi, you then select and "import" routes from that downloaded file. Thos imported files then become available as your saved route choices in the Nuvi.

Now comes the surprise. It appears you can have as many routes in that mapsource file as you like and in theory, the Nuvi will let you import "10" (as the spec says 10 saved routes). In fact, it will let you import "12". I believe this is an artifact of implementation because they display 4 saved route names per screen and they give you 3 screens.

So it appears that you can actually have as many saved routes as you like from mapsource on the Nuvi but you can have only 12 readily available at any one time. If you want a different mix of 12 you can individually select and delete some saved routes and import others. They all remain in the original file that came from mapsource.

You CAN NOT save a route that the Nuvi creates for you with a simple "where to" and "go" sequence so it can be used over again. Presumabley, it ought to be able to re-create that same route from the same start and end points. So, you can only save hand crafted routes.

The Nuvi IS simpler to use than the 2610 only because there are very few user options but they are pretty well designed and the GUI is reasonable

You mentioned the pedestrian feature. I "thought" most Nuvis had that but I'm not sure how valuable it might be. As far as I can tell, the only thing it does is let you travel the wrong way on one way streets and with any luck it'll keep you from having to walk on a freeway. LOL.

The one thing I really miss in the Nuvi is the ability to add individual streets or areas to the custom avoid list. It just isn't there.

Compared to the 2610 I initially hated the 750 when I go it but it's growing on me and is perfectly adequate. The 32 character waypoint names an the ability to create custom POI's are big pluses over the 2610. Portability is also nice. You can go out for a walk, listen to MP3's and let the nuvi record all your walking stats. Not having the flip up antenna makes it easy, put it in your pocket an go.

My wife is pretty proficient with the 2610 but she really prefers the 750 a lot more from an ease-of-use point of view.

whew! sorry to be so wordy... Hope this helps.

Frank

Thanks frank, a very educational post for someone like myself that isn't familiar with the Nuvi line. As I said before I thought the 2610 was one of the best GPSrs Garmin ever made until I bought the 2820.

I have stayed away from the Nuvi line up until now because of a statement one of Garmin's tech reps made. She made the remark that the Nuvi line was a dumbed down version of the Street Pilot and thought people didn't want to put out the effort to learn how to use a GPS like the 2610, they complained it was too complicated. For me personally I'll keep using my 2820 until it dies.

Don