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Hi,
Fry's Electronics has a sell for the Garwin Street Pilot C330 GPS.
It appears to be $389 at outpost.com now
I got mine in the store for only $369 + tax.
I just thought I should recomend it as it is one of the very bust uses of $369 I have ever spent.
Why it is great:
1. It is nice and small. It does not obstruct your driving view. It is nice and bright in the daytime and dark at night. It automatically adjusts brightness. Furthermore, in nighttime mode, it is writing on black, where in the day, it is black on other colors. The contrast changes to make it unobtrusive yet clear.
2. It is so easy to use, you don't need the instructions. Just mount the suction cup, plug it the 12v DC power port, and fire it up. With in 2 minutes it will boot up and find the satellites, it wants your langauge, timezone, and some other basic info at this point. Within 1 more minute, you are ready to use it.
3. The driving directions are as good as they get with GPS devices. The only thing the C330 doesn't do is say "Turn Right at Main Ave". It mearly says, "Turn Right in .2 miles..." On the screen in bold letters, it tells you what road you are on and when close to the destination intersection it changes to the road name. For instance, "East on Winterhaven Rd." Then when close to an Intersection, "Turn Right on Roadname"
4. It calculates instructions that are pretty good very quickly. It takes no more than about 10 seconds to plan a trip across the USA. If you take a detour, get lost, take another street, within about 2 seconds, it recalculates automatically.
5. The voice is clear and easy to understand. It is loud and easily heard, yet not annoying. Unless you crank the volume of your system way up, you will hear it.
6. The maps are in 3D on a 2D screen. I know this doesn't make much sence until you use it. Basically, it means it basically looks like the unit is on the road. The road is not like a flat map. It looks much better and is less confusing.
7. It has very big arrows that point in the direction to turn. I.e. not only does it say to turn Right, it will have a very clear arrow pointing Right.
8. Tracks Trip Statistics such as max speed, average total speed, time moving, average moving speed, time taken, current speed, and estimated time of arrival.
9. My favorite feature of the unit is that it displays street names as you drive by them. They appear very clearly on the screen and it is very easy to know which street name is for which street. I.e. if someone says you have to drive past street 1, street 2, and street 3 to get to their street which is street 4, you will see all of those streets listed as you get near them.
This is my favorite feature becuase sometimes I am looking for a hard to find street. Sometimes street signs are really hard to see as they can be in bushes, tilted wrong, missing, dirty, too far in on the street to be clearly visible to the road... Obviously, big intersections, free way ramps, and the like are cleary marked, but the small residential streets are not well marked at all quite often. It is only large volume intersections that are almost always clearly marked.
Especially at night, the streetname feature is great. I am able to see quite good at night, but still driving in an unfamiliar town trying to find a street you have never been on before, can be especially challenging if you are driving about 50 MPH looking for a tiny sign, in the dark. I have had signs you have to really work to read showup .2 miles before I get to them. It makes it very easy to navagate at night.
The best thing is it doesn't take your eyes off the road anymore than checking your mirros does.
I am glad I bought this thing and recomend others do too. It is easily worth more than its price considering it has just about every gas station, hotel, restaraunt, and streetname from the US. If I had a choice of not having it or paying $900 to get it, I would still buy it. I am glad it is under $400 now.
4. The display is s
Fry's Electronics has a sell for the Garwin Street Pilot C330 GPS.
It appears to be $389 at outpost.com now
I got mine in the store for only $369 + tax.
I just thought I should recomend it as it is one of the very bust uses of $369 I have ever spent.
Why it is great:
1. It is nice and small. It does not obstruct your driving view. It is nice and bright in the daytime and dark at night. It automatically adjusts brightness. Furthermore, in nighttime mode, it is writing on black, where in the day, it is black on other colors. The contrast changes to make it unobtrusive yet clear.
2. It is so easy to use, you don't need the instructions. Just mount the suction cup, plug it the 12v DC power port, and fire it up. With in 2 minutes it will boot up and find the satellites, it wants your langauge, timezone, and some other basic info at this point. Within 1 more minute, you are ready to use it.
3. The driving directions are as good as they get with GPS devices. The only thing the C330 doesn't do is say "Turn Right at Main Ave". It mearly says, "Turn Right in .2 miles..." On the screen in bold letters, it tells you what road you are on and when close to the destination intersection it changes to the road name. For instance, "East on Winterhaven Rd." Then when close to an Intersection, "Turn Right on Roadname"
4. It calculates instructions that are pretty good very quickly. It takes no more than about 10 seconds to plan a trip across the USA. If you take a detour, get lost, take another street, within about 2 seconds, it recalculates automatically.
5. The voice is clear and easy to understand. It is loud and easily heard, yet not annoying. Unless you crank the volume of your system way up, you will hear it.
6. The maps are in 3D on a 2D screen. I know this doesn't make much sence until you use it. Basically, it means it basically looks like the unit is on the road. The road is not like a flat map. It looks much better and is less confusing.
7. It has very big arrows that point in the direction to turn. I.e. not only does it say to turn Right, it will have a very clear arrow pointing Right.
8. Tracks Trip Statistics such as max speed, average total speed, time moving, average moving speed, time taken, current speed, and estimated time of arrival.
9. My favorite feature of the unit is that it displays street names as you drive by them. They appear very clearly on the screen and it is very easy to know which street name is for which street. I.e. if someone says you have to drive past street 1, street 2, and street 3 to get to their street which is street 4, you will see all of those streets listed as you get near them.
This is my favorite feature becuase sometimes I am looking for a hard to find street. Sometimes street signs are really hard to see as they can be in bushes, tilted wrong, missing, dirty, too far in on the street to be clearly visible to the road... Obviously, big intersections, free way ramps, and the like are cleary marked, but the small residential streets are not well marked at all quite often. It is only large volume intersections that are almost always clearly marked.
Especially at night, the streetname feature is great. I am able to see quite good at night, but still driving in an unfamiliar town trying to find a street you have never been on before, can be especially challenging if you are driving about 50 MPH looking for a tiny sign, in the dark. I have had signs you have to really work to read showup .2 miles before I get to them. It makes it very easy to navagate at night.
The best thing is it doesn't take your eyes off the road anymore than checking your mirros does.
I am glad I bought this thing and recomend others do too. It is easily worth more than its price considering it has just about every gas station, hotel, restaraunt, and streetname from the US. If I had a choice of not having it or paying $900 to get it, I would still buy it. I am glad it is under $400 now.
4. The display is s
