Observations on using new Garmin 2460LMT vs. 'old' Garmin Quest (from about 5 years ago)

So I bit the bullet and 'upgraded' from my old Quest (small, rocker-type,
geekish GPS) to a new 2460 (large screen, touch) this past weekend and have
played with it for 3 days. If I come up with others, I'll reappend.

PROS:

The two biggies:
- Mapquest from my installed Quest DID work - it picked up the new maps that
I was able to download using the option to download to PC as was suggested
in this forum), routes and waypoints ARE sent down and stored to the unit
(big sigh of relief on this one) using Mapquest. So I can continue to map
out routes from home.
- ALL of my datapoints (time to dest, dist to next, dist to dest, ETA to
dest) can be seen and/or programmed on the main navigation screen (big sigh
of relief on this one, too).

Rest of the pros:
- Map is actually updated (Quest dropped support for maps about 3 years
ago); of course, having the entire country in the unit is nice. No longer
on trips
will I have to re-download just sections of the country to make them fit in
the limited RAM that the Quest had.
- With the 2D navigation view, there IS a north arrow displayed (despite
what I was led the believe); I never had the 3D view before, I tried it for
a few hours, and still like 2D better...so when I switched to 2D, lo and
behold, the North arrow appears!
- The little turn indicator on upper left of screen not only shows you
'distance to turn', but also what type of turn it will be (Quest only showed
you this when it showed the junction view close to the turn itself; not so
cool if you want to move over on an interstate well ahead of time); this is
very nice.
- I like turn by street name voice. The names actually are pretty good in
terms of relatively to proper pronunciation.
- Unit is much faster in terms of display updates, recalculations, etc. Of
course, 5 years of newer/faster microprocessor technology is to be expected.

CONS:

- Apparently I don't have a 'junction view' like the Quest did, but when one
approaches the turn, the unit automagically enlarges to the detail, so I can
live with this.
- Map detail much less than the Quest. For example, rivers and parks are
not named. The road that one is actually ONE does not appear in the screen.
- One can not sort alphabetically one's favorites. I note I am not the only
one who has voiced this concern. I can't imagine how they dropped the ball
on this one. (I know you can start to spell it, but the amount of keystrokes
is ridiculous and sometimes I don't remember the exact spelling of a
favorite I haven't used for a while.)
- When I ask it to use a route, I get a pop-up asking me to pick which
waypoint on the route I wish to 'go to'....duh! The last one! This is a
PITA.
- 'Recalculating' doesn't make a voice - one doesn't know one is off the
originally route unless one happens to see the unit recalculating if you get
off. I know some folks think this is a plus, but I would like to know I
missed a turn by the voice.

If anyone has any comments, especially if I missed something in the 'CONS',
I'd appreciate hearing about it.

--
-------------------------------------------------------------
Regards -

- Andrew

"Andrew" wrote


Several comments:
- Thanks for letting me know that 2D view provides a North arrow.
- You DO have Junction View. It just doesn't display at every intersection;
rather, it is infrequent. On a drive from NYC to Albany I believe it
displayed just once. Lane Assist, as you described, is really useful.
- Favorites, I believe, are sorted by distance. (One time I wasn't so
sure....) I don't have a problem with it because either way, "ya gotta
scroll."
- Recalculating definitely is announced by voice. I don't know why yours
doesn't -- so far.
- There is a menu item that displays "more" or "less" detail. I don't know
how much detail this unit is capable of displaying.

Howard

On Mon, 16 May 2011 18:28:53 -0400, "Howard Lester"


Mine doesn't either. I wondered if there was a 'verbose' setting
somewhere I needed to switch. This is the first GPS I've played
with, but I've heard so many jokes about what the GPS says when you

Jim

Look out for 'Drive' (Dr.) being pronounced as 'Doctor'. My Nuvi has a
small handful of those kinds of oddities, probably because the TTS
function is generic rather than strictly created for a GPS unit.
Still, it's a very cool feature.


Amount of detail should be adjustable, I would think.


I don't personally have a situation where I would want the favorites
alpha sorted. Sorting by distance instantly seemed intuitive to me, so
it may just be something you'll get used to.


I consider this a very welcome and useful feature, although in my case
the answer is most often 'the first one', (never 'the last one'). I
most often need to travel a route from its beginning, but sometimes
I'm just using part of a route, so I like having the capability to
enter a route partway into it rather than having to always navigate
back to the beginning.


I'll be surprised if you can't turn this on somewhere in the menu.

Thanks for the review.

Sunshine wrote:

Points from various posts (not just Sunshine's above)
1. Detail on maps lacking geographical info: I do have it on maximum detail.
I can live without the names of parks and lakes and such, it was just a nice
feature on the Quest.
2. Recalculating via voice: NO! The 2460LMT does NOT announce
'recalculating'; several reviewers have stated that ("Things it does better
than the 1490: No recalculating voice(no need to hack it out on
http://forums.gpsreview.net/viewtopic.php?t=21863; I knew this before I
bought it, and it bears out. One reviewer liked that it doesn't do this.
3. Favorites not having option to sort by name: If I wish to go to a
favorite, I don't want to guess how 'far' it is to scroll through the list
to find it. I use these favorites at different locations, so there's no
rhyme or reason for the order (Excerpt for distance from where I am at that
particular time). And if I miss it when I'm scrolling,. I wouldn't know it
because they're not in any logical order You're right, I'm going to have to
get used to this! But others also have complained about this. For example,
I used to group favorites together with a fake letter or two in front (like
SH-MALL, SH-PLAZA, for 'shopping' related, or 'FR-TOM', 'FR-PETE' for
friends), that way I could easily scroll to the portion of my list that I
knew I had a favorite in. No longer the case.
4. Routes with Mid-Points: I hear you about the mid points of a route...I'll
learn to live with this to. In the particular case I am dealing with, my
'waypoints' are really artificial to force it to go to a final route via a
track that is not what it calculates (i.e.: back streets); I really don't
care how far I am except for the final destination, but I see your point of
view as well.

I do think a lot of this is indeed what you're used to - if I had the 2460
THEN got the Quest, I'd probably bitch about this the 'other direction' of
changes.
--
-------------------------------------------------------------
Regards -

- Andrew