Garmin Guidance 3.0. Is it really better?

 

Garmin claim that the new models with Guidance 3.0 has better routing and better traffic avoidance. Anyone found it true? Is it worth upgrading?

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Honva wrote:

Garmin claim that the new models with Guidance 3.0 has better routing and better traffic avoidance. Anyone found it true? Is it worth upgrading?

Been wondering the same thing, My 2595lmt with 2.0 seems to work fine, is the 3.0 that much more advanced?

I have been using 350 until

I have been using 350 until a few month ago and it works perfectly. Now with a 3750, all I can say for sure is it takes twice as long to calculate route.

Newer is not always better.

Route Calculation Slow

wellcum wrote:

I have been using 350 until a few month ago and it works perfectly. Now with a 3750, all I can say for sure is it takes twice as long to calculate route.

Newer is not always better.

As a test, DISABLE trafficTrends and myTrends to see if that speeds up calculations.

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Nuvi 2460LMT 2 Units

Looking at Garmin's website...

...it appears that Guidance 3.0 adds only a few significant features. One is bird's eye junction view, which gives you an overhead view of major intersections before the photoreal junction view pops up. Another is Digital 3D Traffic, which provides updates every 30 seconds (as opposed to just 3D traffic on guidance 2.0). It also adds my trends, a feature already found on the 2011 nuvi series. I think these features are certainly not worth the extra $100 or so that Garmin is making them worth. Bird's eye junction view is simply eye candy when you think about it. I don't see how it would help anyone driving. The photoreal junction view gets the job done and them some already. Bird's eye is more of a feature that I would use just to say "look what my GPS can do," which is not worth the price Garmin is putting on it. And my trends would be a useless feature to me becuase I only turn on my nuvi when I want it to navigate me to a destination or I want to see the current traffic conditions. Having the nuvi guess where I'm trying to go would only cause problems in the long run for me. The only feature that I would even consider upgrading to 3.0 for is the digital 3D traffic becuase it supposedly updates up to 10 times more frequently than the traffic included on guidance 2.0. But I don't even really think that is worth $100+. But then again, as with most situations, this depends on your personal life style (how much you travel, how much you're willing to spend, ect). I don't travel out of my general region too often, so it's definitely not worth it for me.

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Garmin Nuvi 3490lmt, 765t with Lifetime maps and Clear Channel traffic

Guidance 3.0

I don't know about the 3D traffic, but the Traffic feature on every GPS I've ever owned has been totally useless.

I hope the 3D Traffic is an improvement, but I'm not willing to buy a new unit just to the the so called "new" features.

Me?

I'll stay with the tried and true.

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With God, all things are possible. ——State motto of the Great State of Ohio

s/w improvements

I was tempted to buy the 3790 refurbished at walmart.com for $160, but the 2012 line has so many software improvements.

The routing is supposed to calculate based the day/time of past trips, delays from red lights and traffic.

Then there is the capability for an Android smart phone to run free software to connect to the 3490/3590 via blue tooth which offers paid and unpaid service benefits.

Also the newer units use HD FM traffic - a hardware difference I think.

There's no reason Garmin can't make the software improvements available in the firmware of the older 3790 unit, but I suppose it is a marketing decision.

Some naughty people have figured out how to make their 3790 look like a 3490 to get the garmin 3490 firmware, but it looks a bit too complicated and risky to me.

I know my 750's life is limited with the maps getting larger. (I don't want to put the map on SD card) So, I sometimes think about upgrading to a newer better unit.

Howard

I believe V3.0 is better. I

I believe V3.0 is better. I have used 3D traffic in several states and it works great. It gives you construction warnings, traffic on expressways and major streets. It's not perfect but its Better than anything offered by Garmin prior to this.

The route calculation and re-calculation is instant(less than 3 seconds) with the latest firmware on my 3490.

You can always look for faults in all products but I believe it was worth the upgraded price to version 3.0

What's the point?

rame1012 wrote:

... Bird's eye junction view is simply eye candy when you think about it. I don't see how it would help anyone driving.

I already disable JV on my unit because I find it a distracting annoyance. A "Bird's eye junction view" sounds completely silly.

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Drivesmart 66, Nuvi 2595LMT (Died), Nuvi 1490T (Died), Nuvi 260 (Died), GPSMAP 195

Agree

gadget_man wrote:

I believe V3.0 is better. I have used 3D traffic in several states and it works great. It gives you construction warnings, traffic on expressways and major streets. It's not perfect but its Better than anything offered by Garmin prior to this.

The route calculation and re-calculation is instant(less than 3 seconds) with the latest firmware on my 3490.

You can always look for faults in all products but I believe it was worth the upgraded price to version 3.0

The other day I got a warning approaching a school zone.

37xx series don't have Guidance 3.0

wellcum wrote:

I have been using 350 until a few month ago and it works perfectly. Now with a 3750, all I can say for sure is it takes twice as long to calculate route.

Newer is not always better.

I think the 3750 and all the 37xx series don't have Guidance 3.0. Only new 2012 models 34xx has version 3.0

Garmin says

What is the difference between Guidance 2.0 and Guidance 3.0?

02/03/2012

Some Garmin devices may indicate a specific Guidance version on their packaging. The nuvi 2405 and 2505 series use Guidance 2.0 while the nuvi 3400 and 3500 series uses Guidance 3.0.

Guidance 2.0 includes the following features:

◦Improved searches along a current route
◦Updated Point of Interest (POI) categories
◦Custom "Where To?" menu
◦InstaSearch (a search bar with predictive results)
◦Faster route calculation
◦Voice Command with one-shot address entry and one-shot POI search1
◦Browse POIs on the map
◦Banner notifications
◦Map tools
◦Custom dashboards
◦Faster map drawing
◦Traffic trends
◦Exit Services
◦Map Reporter
Guidance 3.0 includes all of the above features as well as the following:

◦Birdseye Junction View
◦Speed limit error reporting
◦myTrends
◦3D terrain
◦3D buildings
◦InstaRoute
1Voice Command is not available on all models.

Garmin

jgermann wrote:

What is the difference between Guidance 2.0 and Guidance 3.0?

02/03/2012

Some Garmin devices may indicate a specific Guidance version on their packaging. The nuvi 2405 and 2505 series use Guidance 2.0 while the nuvi 3400 and 3500 series uses Guidance 3.0.

Guidance 2.0 includes the following features:

◦Improved searches along a current route
◦Updated Point of Interest (POI) categories
◦Custom "Where To?" menu
◦InstaSearch (a search bar with predictive results)
◦Faster route calculation
◦Voice Command with one-shot address entry and one-shot POI search1
◦Browse POIs on the map
◦Banner notifications
◦Map tools
◦Custom dashboards
◦Faster map drawing
◦Traffic trends
◦Exit Services
◦Map Reporter
Guidance 3.0 includes all of the above features as well as the following:

◦Birdseye Junction View
◦Speed limit error reporting
◦myTrends
◦3D terrain
◦3D buildings
◦InstaRoute
1Voice Command is not available on all models.

myTrends, 3D terrain and 3D buildings are not 3.0 feature. They are model specific features not related to Guidance version. They are there since the 3790 which is still on Guidance 2.0. The Guidance version differ in how it calculates routes and how it use traffic data. Since Garmin claims that the Guidance has the best traffic avoidance in all their Guidance versions, what I am interested to know is how much better it is compare to previous versions.

I updated from a 1490T

I updated from a 1490T to a 3590LMT and I am not sure what guidance version I had before so I will just give some observations. I have found the connection to the satellites to be very fast - it has satellite connections before the warning about using while driving pops up. The navigation calculations are also faster and the traffic avoidance is fast and very accurate. I also like the absence of the annoying "recalculating" message and voice - the unit stays quiet and just quickly creates the route correction. I have noticed much better traffic reporting, especially when it come to construction. There have been several times that it received multiple updates within a very short time - under 30 seconds. I recently added the app to my Android phone, but I don't have enough experience and use to see much difference yet.

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Live every day like it's your last. Some day you'll be right - Benny Hill

Ok, I'll bite

jgermann wrote:

Guidance 3.0 includes all of the above features as well as the following:

◦Speed limit error reporting

what is speed limit error reporting??????

--
Never argue with a pig. It makes you look foolish and it anoys the hell out of the pig!

It's still the same traffic provider with limited coverage right

At the end of the day whether it is 1.0, 2.0, or 3.0 I truly believe a lot of this traffic hype is just that - hype because it is still the same Navteq traffic provider which has extremely limited coverage limited to only major metropolitan areas. Compared with a variety of other traffic providers out there like Inrix, Google Maps traffic, etc. coverage is weak at best in my opinion. Also, the traffic trends feature is very overrated and doesn't even work properly on my 2460LMT - they said turn it off because it crushes the processor and often grinds it to a hault when calculating routes on various back roads. (I've had 3 or 4 of these so it's not my GPS.)

Additionally, from my experience, the major shortcoming of Garmin/Navteq traffic is that it does not have surface street "back roads" coverage so it tells you to get off the interstate exit when it's busy and go on a back road which during rush hour could be an enormous mistake as back roads are often even worse and it's best to sit there in the bumper to bumper traffic than try and go back roads which are "clear" according to Garmin because it does not have that coverage in the system. Why they can't develop a better system for trends just like the free Waze GPS for phones and tablets does is beyond me. Waze gathers traffic information from other cell phones with the app open and determines traffic flow from that quickly and updates the maps in real time. Garmin says they gather information from our GPS systems so why can't they make it so that it "learns" patterns and flow of rush hour traffic and better yet even updates the traffic coverage in real time?

On some models, you can add

On some models, you can add or edit the speed limit by clicking on the speed limit or + icon in the bottom right hand corner of the screen. My 2460LMT does this and I LOVE IT!! AWESOME FEATURE. Error reporting is when a POI is incorrect. You can click on it and then from the menu on the Garmin choose error i.e., gas station closed down for business which removes it from subsequent searches and I *think* it reports that back to Garmin when you plug in your PC again. I think the speed limit edits are also reported to Garmin when you connect to your PC.

That's something I miss

I used to have a TomTom but got rid of it because I found the maps were not as accurate as what I get with Garmin. However, I do miss the error correcting.

thanks

ptownoddy wrote:

On some models, you can add or edit the speed limit by clicking on the speed limit or + icon in the bottom right hand corner of the screen. My 2460LMT does this and I LOVE IT!! AWESOME FEATURE. Error reporting is when a POI is incorrect. You can click on it and then from the menu on the Garmin choose error i.e., gas station closed down for business which removes it from subsequent searches and I *think* it reports that back to Garmin when you plug in your PC again. I think the speed limit edits are also reported to Garmin when you connect to your PC.

Thank you for the explanation.

--
Never argue with a pig. It makes you look foolish and it anoys the hell out of the pig!

When I get a warning

about traffic back-up a head from my gps 2595LMT, I just sit there until traffic is clear. Normally, it doesn't take long before you are cleard of the area.

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3790LMT; 2595LMT; 3590LMT, 60LMTHD

> but the Traffic feature on

> but the Traffic feature on every GPS I've ever owned has been totally useless.

Agreed totally. After years of having Navigon and Tomtom (including their flagship model with "HD Traffic") and now Garmin, I can recall one or two instances where what the unit reported correlated with the real life. The other 99% were not.

2595 with Guidance 2.0

I can't speak for Guidance 3.0 as my 2595LMT has Guidance 2.0, however I can compare it to my old 255WT and the search function, finding and locking onto the satellites and the route calculations are MUCH faster on the 2595.

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"Primum Non Nocere" 2595LMT Clear Channel and Navteq Traffic