How many POI is TOO MANY POI?

but what the unit has to do with them. Are you zoomed in close, have alerts set for all and expect the unit to not only draw the map as you drive but sound alerts and draw icons?

Unit comes with 6 million or so. Do not think that adding another couple of hundred thousand would inpact the unit at all.

Give us more info on what you have done. Each run of POILoader gives a count of the total POIs loaded.

what about the alerts?

You are right, adding more you should not see a significant slowdown

If you get rid of all the extra voices on your garmin you should have plenty of room. I would tend to think it has more to do with maps and the degree of detail the garmin is requested to show. A poi file(s) not in use shouldn't be using the resources of the processor.

hmmm, good question.....

The source file I used for the searchable Canada Postal Codes POI is a CSV file over 35MB in size.

If you have them on the SD card it should not slow things down. If on the unit, maybe you've used to much space.

I suspect that it might operate similar to a computer and its hard drive. When a hard drive runs out of space it will thrash around, work harder, slow down, etc. It is probably similar with the GPS and running out of space.

I've installed around 736,00+ custom POIs on my nuvi 1490T. I'm sure that the size of the SD card is the real limit to how many I can put in there, apart from the limitationn of having only 32 categories with 32 POI files per category.

I have 900,000 on my internal memory and don't have a problem.

However, there is a limitation on bmp icons. POI Loader loads only about 25% of the icons. The rest default to grey dots. The same thing happens when poi.gpi file is loaded on SD card. It appears to be a limitation of POI Loader.

I have something like 510,000 or so I added..... I got them all from here, most have .bmp icons... I of course used poiloader to load them onto internal memory. I installed restaurants, gas stations, post offices, speed zones, and stuff like that.. If I zoom out - it's ok, but the unit is set to autozoom, and when I'm close to my destination the map drawing slows WAY down.

I guess I should remove the .bmp icons then?????

I have a lot of POI's and all is working in a timely manor.

For my 1450 I have loaded the essentials (local area travel) on the Garmin plus files I would use going anywhere in the US. I then use two 4 gig mico SD cards for the travel out of state. One for the east and the other for the west with Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri on both. This way I just plug in the card I need as I travel and do not waste space.
One of my cards I bought came with a USB and a SDHC card adapters and the other just a plain Micro card.
My essentials are:
Family and friends, Toyota dealers, Time zones, Choice Hotels, Diners Drive-ins & Dives, NPR Stations, Truck stops USA
Some of these could be divided but it is not worth the time to separate every time I upgrade them.

I have the following POI files on my GPS:

Rest Areas Canada*
Rest Areas US
Red Light Cameras
Speed Cameras
Historic Ships of the US and Canada*
Canada Postal Codes Searchable*

*I am the creator and maintainer for these files, so naturally they have to be on my GPS.

In total I have less than 15,000 entries, including the postal codes file, which isn't intended to be routable anyway. The answer to the question of how many POI is too many will vary depending upon the person to whom the question is asked. Because to me, 900,000 added POIs is too much, but for jthawkin it's just right or not enough.

Now, in terms of hardware, the limit is in how much space you have available, whether on the GPS itself or through SD/MicroSD cards. The GPS will be able to keep up, even if it doesn't display all the personalized icons.

---------------------------------------------------

Side Note: jthawkin, you might want to see about dropping the @comcast.net from your username. You're opening yourself up to spam by having your email be your username.