I don’t get it! This GPS (and for that matter all Garmin GPSes) fail miserably on the very basic thing a GPS is supposed to do and all these reviewers go ga-ga over them! Why?

Don’t believe me or like what I am saying?

Ok tell me this:
You have told the Garmin to navigate to somewhere. It has plotted a route and you are on your way. How do you know which way you have to turn next, right or left?
You look at the screen….nothing! Yeah it says turn in xx miles. But which way?

Sure you can click the top of the screen to get full details but why omit this essential arrow? The screen has plenty of space!

Another scenario which exposes a fatal flaw – Voice prompts are way too late!

You are barreling down a crowded 6 lane highway at 70MPH and a split is coming up. You wanna know which side of the road you should stay on so that you take the correct turn. You look at the screen…of course nothing! (see above) Then you calm yourself by thinking, “ok this thing is going to tell me”….you wait. The turn is 2 miles away…………silence………now the turn is 1.5 miles away…….everyone around you is changing lanes and trying to get into the correct lane……but you?…..listening to silence………you start sweating……..1 mile!……..nothing…… silence!!….you are really frustrated now……..0.7 miles before the damn GPS FINALLY says “left turn in 0.7 miles”. Ooops ! But you are in the right lane. The split is coming up fast. You have seconds to go to the correct lane, but there are 8 lanes on the highway now. You have to go across 3 or 4 lanes in seconds. Man! You are toast! This can easily get you in an accident, I know because I almost got into an accident the other day.

Here is a similar situation:
You are in a 40mph 4 lane suburban road ….your turn is coming up. This thing will tell you like, 0.5 miles before the turn! And then right at the turn! That night I almost skidded off the road when this thing told me at the last moment that the turn is here.

Of course people will say this is user error but I’m not a novice. I am a power user of GPS. I have been using them for 5-6 years now. Most other GPSes tell you the next turn right on the screen with a simple arrow. Good ones start alerting you 2 miles before the turn comes. Then once at 1 mile, then again at 500 yards and then once again at the turn. But this one…only once before the turn and that too ……way too late!

Yeah some reviewers call this good feature “Too chatty”, yeah right!

I talked to Garmin about this flaw and basically the answer I got was the same answer others get…..they don’t care. Needless to say My Garmin 660 is going back to the store.

One last thing….it is missing an indication of the N direction on the screen. That is useful and is included by most other GPSes.