Garmin Nuvi 1490T, April 30, 2010

Garmin Nuvi 1490 Traffic Satellite Navigation System with European Maps Lovely big screen makes it easy to view while driving. Works well in the positions I have tried it in the car. The power cable is thicker than I expected which makes it difficult to dress it neatly. Navigation instructions are clear and the lane guidance is really helpful which was my main reason for choosing this particular model. I paid extra for next day delivery and as always Amazon were spot on with their delivery.

      Fantastic until it died, April 28, 2010

It's hard to give a star rating to this Sat Nav. Garmin have a much, much better user interface than Tom Tom - they don't even bother to include a manual because you don't need one. Junction Assist is fabulous on motorways. The 5" screen is really enormous - much bigger than the 4.3" inch of the Nuvi 1390, and enormous compared to earlier sat navs. It's a boon to anyone whose eyesight is a little poor. If these were the only considerations, the Garmin would get 5 stars and Tom Tom would be out of business. However, as others have noted, the Nuvi models suffer from reliability issues. Sure enough, our Sat Nav - purchased in December 2009 - died with only a little warning in April 2010 after light use. Garmin - understandably but frustratingly - have been cagey about these problems and it's too early to say whether they've been fixed. So if you use your sat nav only occasionally and don't mind perhaps having to return it, buy a Garmin. Make sure you get the 1490T which includes free map updates. Otherwise, you might try a Motorola Motonav TN765, which has a 5.1" screen and more features than the Garmin

      A Very Useful Tool!, April 28, 2010

Having owned two Garmin StreetPilot's in the past I have been using a Road Angle for just over 2 years, mostly happily unless I had to contact the Road Angle technical department. The repeated negative response from that department encouraged me to walk away and I headed back to the make I had before. I purchased the unit and used the map update facility straight away (allow a couple of hours for this update) and have been impressed with nuvi 1490. The maps are clear with easy to follow directions and the audio has good pronunciation. The touch screen responds well and the menus are easy to follow. I have been using the unit for 10 weeks now and my only criticism would be that on two occasions in the countryside looking for farmhouses, the unit has failed to recognise existing lanes and instructed me to drive across a field telling me to go offroad! On the first occasion, the farm owner told me that many satnav's gave that instruction to get to his farmhouse, so not a fault with Garmin alone. On several other occasions I have been in a position where I have been able to compare it side by side with other makes of satnav's (sad) and on all occasions this nuvi has been more accurate. This includes town and country roads, Motorways and private roads when navigating by postcode.

      It's OK, but not the best, April 28, 2010

I bought this SatNav to replace a Sony unit, and was disappointed from the outset. The mapping display might be 'standard Garmin', but showed little change from the one that my wife's 5 year old Nuvi has; it looks dated. The junction display feature is good, and accurate, but it pops up and vanishes so quickly that you can easily miss it. I chose this unit for the free traffic information, and that is a benefit when it works. It took me a time to realise that the FM receiver module that is built in to the power lead needs to be either wrapped around the unit or perched on the top of the dashboard to work at all. However, even when carefully placed, the reception is a bit erratic. The instructions are especially poor and it took some time to understand what the various icons mean, and the Sony certainly trumps the Garmin in terms of the on screen information during a journey. Finally, the unit occasionally resets itself for no apparent reason. It has done this from new, and normally just reboots and is working again within 5 minutes. However, last week it must have had a more serious issue because it took me about 30 minutes of button pressing to make it come back to life. Not a disaster of a product, but not one that I would recommend to people that I liked.