Garmin Streetpilot C550 2.1-Inch Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator
by Garmin
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Garmin Streetpilot C550 2.1-Inch Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator
Customer Review: Will Never Again Drive Without My Garmin
Summary: 5 Stars
In my home we've turned the phrase "green eggs and ham" into a verb, much like "google" has become indicative of a definitive action. To "green eggs and ham" something is to change your mind on some item or concept you had previously disdained. It started back in the early 80's when my Daddy finally permitted my Mom to purchase a microwave. For years, he'd held off, swearing that if his own saintly mother (the matriarch of seven kids) had done without one, we could too. Once she wore him down, Daddy was the first to admit, "Green eggs and ham - I love it! Why did we wait so long to purchase it? How have we done without it for so long?!"
This year, I've "green eggs and hammed" a techno gadget - the GPS unit. Who needs it when we've got something as nifty as Mapquest to get us from point A to point B? My mother-in-law foisted one upon my husband for his birthday last year and I scolded her vociferously. Her gift to Greg was the Garmin C550 Streetpilot GPS Receiver and I was upset with her for spending the money on something I was positive my husband wouldn't use. After all, he's one of those guys who absolutely refuses to ask for directions. I was sure it would sit unused in his car.
Wrong - a major "green eggs and ham" moment! We tried it out on a family trip a week later and became instant Streetpilot addicts. When my own birthday rolled around two months later, guess what my mother-in-law purchased for me? Yes, now we have "his and hers" models in our vehicles.
What's the good of this particular tech gadget? You'd be amazed! Here are some of my favorite features:
* Speed and accuracy. As soon as its been turned on, the Streetpilot determines your location and queries you about your desired purpose. Within minutes of entering your destination address, you receive a map and detailed instructions which are verbally given to you turn by turn. The GPS also computes your estimated arrival time - I've found it's accuracy on that item almost uncanny. The unit has options to update your route and travel time, accounting for delays in traffic hotspots.
* Ease of use. The Streetpilot has an easy touchscreen interface and gives verbal directions to walk you through the directions. It even anticipates which lane you need to be in for upcoming directions. Unlike mapquest pages which may require a solo driver to look at a paper copy of the directions, a voice (or rather, your choice of many voice styles) tells you exactly where you need to go without you taking your eyes off the road. Our voice of choice, Lee the Australian, has never led me astray and is even smart enough to recalculate when I make a wrong turn or miss an exit.
* Bluetooth. In many states, hands-free cell phone usage is now the law. The Streetpilot immediately converts my cell phone to hands free and has a clear signal for a speaker phone conversation that can be heard throughout the whole car.
* Doubles as an MP3 player. My Streetpilot holds some of my favorite tunes and podcasts, making my road trip even more enjoyable.
* Goes with the flow. Now, when we leave on a family road trip, we rarely scout out the directions beforehand. With the address, it's easy to drive straight to our desired destination. But we can also stop and smell the roses along the way, using the Streetpilot to direct us to upcoming points of interest, services, lodging, or even an emergency Starbucks stop.
I will never again go back to driving without my Garmin C550 Streetpilot GPS Receiver - getting to our family fun has now become easy and reliable.
Customer Review: EXCELLENT UNIT-A FEW **VERY** MINOR ISSUES
Summary: 5 Stars
Bought this unit a couple of days ago. I've had a chance to explore all the features, and overall, this is an EXCELLENT unit.
Here is what I like:
* From the time I opened the box to the time I started using it was less than 5 minutes. Very simple and intuitive interface.
* Incredibly sensitive satellite receiver. The unit even worked indoors in my kitchen when I first turned it on. How can that be, since I thought you had to have a clear view of the sky? I don't know, but it did. No issues in the car either. No dropped signals, and virtually instantaneous satellite acquisition.
* Directions for the most part were very accurate (see below for minor exception),
* You get plenty of advance warning for turns.
* When you deviate from the directions that the GPS gives you, it recalculates a new route almost instantaneously.
* Spoken street names.
* Anti glare screen (you can still see it in bright sunlight).
* Bluetooth phone link works perfectly with my Razor phone (see below for minor issue). Sound on both ends is crystal clear. I could even access my address book on the unit itself.
* Windshield mount is very easy to get on and off, and it held the unit very securely.
Here are the minor issues:
* Maps seem pretty up to date, but you still have to use common sense. There is a road that opened up near my house about 5 months ago, and the GPS didn't recognize it. It kept wanting to take me a different route, but since I knew the road was there, I took it. The good news is that it recalculated a new route almost immediately once I left that road. Along those same lines, I was visiting someone in a gated community, and I knew that you had to go in the front gate and not the back. The GPS kept trying to direct me to the back gate because it was closer. This is a common sense issue, not a technical issue.
* On very rare occasion it gives you an odd or unusual turn. Near my house, it wants to route me through a small subdivision to get me home (very small-only about 20 homes), when I can get there by staying on the main street and making one turn. Not sure why it does that (perhaps it may be a few feet shorter and the GPS thinks it's a shortcut).
* Remember to check or uncheck the box to avoid highways and toll roads depending on what you want to do. The very first time I used it, it sent me on a toll road for 1 exit, then had get me off and resume on surface streets. I could have gotten where I was going without going on the toll road. I don't fault the system because technically it took me the shortest route, but it's just something to keep in mind.
* When you are talking on the speaker phone, it mutes the voice giving you the directions. If you're talking and driving, that is a bit of an issue. You can still see the directions on the screen, but you lose the voice prompts. I read some review where the person said that you have the ability to change this feature, but I haven't figured out how to do it yet.
* Pricey, but you get what you pay for. The cost differential with the C340 (about $150) is well worth it in my opinion.
Customer Review: Great GPS with only few problems
Summary: 5 Stars
After buying and using the C550, I found the review at rated4stars ([...]) to be very good.
Pros: Very good directions. Easy to use menu. Grabs satellites quickly. Mounts well on windshield.
Weaknesses: Traffic service so far is a bust. GPS gave mistaken directions.
(Edited June 04th by jb) Overall this is an amazing unit. However, I did have to spend quite a bit of time downloading and installing the map update ... but at least it was "free." The screen is great even in bright light, the directions about where to turn on what street etc are given several times along the way so there are no surprises. Directions are helpful.. E.g., "Turn left on Maple Street in 500 feet" followed by "Turn left on Maple Street", etc. or "1316 Everit Rd is 200 feet on right." Of course the map shows the directions and also the distance to the next turn, etc.
Unit did misloacate several major stores and two different malls by about .5 miles or more in the Albany/Schenectady area and suggest an incorrect turn. I traced this problem to Navtek. The same mapping errors exist on google maps and mapquest. Tele Atlas (TomTom) is even worse regarding the same stores/malls. So errors in maps may be a widespread problem. Otherwise the c550 has known where things are very accurately. So far I would not pay anything extra for the FM traffic service (3 mo free). On a 10 mile trip it told me a road was closed in 113 miles. Good grief. Unit is very steady on windshield mount. Unit gives you option of having it turn off with ignition/accessory key or stay on with own battery power. It finds satellites very quickly in my experience. I often don't even notice any lag; it seems ready to go as quickly as I am.
One odd thing is that for sharp turns in the road, the unit says you are making a turn on to the same road. However, once you know the unit does this, I don't find this a problem. In fact, it is a warning that there is a sharp turn ahead, which could be quite helpful at night on back roads.
One way to make sure the unit takes you on the desired route is to put in waypoints, but this unit is limited to adding only 1 waypoint or stop. It is possible to create lots of short trips that add up to one long one with many intermediate "stops", but that is less convenient than entering waypoints before starting a trip.
So far, customer service via email has been slow, and sometimes inaccurate. This unit appears to be the same as the c580, except the 580 has the MSN FM service instead of ClearChannel.
My Palm Treo 680 syncs with Bluetooth quite nicely, after a couple of tries. After that the pairing occurred automatically. I had to "push" the contact list to the c550, as Garmin explains on their site (only once.. it remembers how to get the list). To send a revised or edited contact list you have to unpair the two units and then re-pair them and then "push" the new contact list to the phone.
If I could, I would rate this unit at 4 1/2 stars, but overall it is very, very good.
Customer Review: Love it
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm not an early adopter, and could have gone through life just fine without one of these, but... my away-at-college, freshman daughter called last week wanting to visit a friend in another city over fall break. She's never driven cross-country alone, and never been to the city she wants to drive to next week, and she's only been driving for two years... "hmmm, sounds like a good excuse to try out one of those Garmin things," I thought. A friend put me on to Garmin's stock last November, I've almost tripled my money in that investment, so I thought it was worth looking into... if the stock's doing that well, there must be something to the product, right?
I'm completely sold on these things, and although I was confused before purchase, simply because of the huge number of devices offered by Garmin, I think I made the right choice. As far as I can tell, this model is the least expensive one that comes with Bluetooth capability. I find that very handy. Not only can you talk on your cell phone through the c550 as if it were a speaker-phone, make & receive calls as well as text messages, it will also load your cell phone's phone book... you can scroll down the list of names & numbers in your cell phone right on the Garmin's touch-screen... much easier to do when driving than having to look down at your phone. Even better, this device can connect to as many as 5 different bluetooth devices (one at a time). Every member of my immediate family now has their cell-phone tied to the Garmin... you can switch what's "Bluetoothed" to the Garmin via a few strokes on the touch-screen... very easy to do.
My only gripes are these: the info is a little dated... for example, some restaurants shown in the c550 don't exist any more, in some cases for a year or more... maybe they should try to update that list as often as they update the street maps. That doesn't bother me a great deal, but some. The only real gripe I have is that the speakers don't work as well as I wish they did. In a really, really quiet car, they're fine. You don't have to turn the Garmin's volume up all the way and you can hear as well as understand the directions. In a car that has the least bit of road noise, like mine, I have to turn up the volume all the way, so that the speech comes out a little distorted, and it makes me think I may blow the speakers by keeping it turned up to max. volume all the time. The speakers are on the sides of the device, toward the back... I assume they were too big to put on the front of the box, but where they are now aims them at the sides of the car... if they can't be in front, would they be better in the back if they were aimed at the windshield? Maybe more sound would bounce off the windshield back to me better? I'll leave that to Garmin's designers... it's something that would improve the device in my opinion.
All-in-all, very happy. This is one cool, useful gadget. Love the Bluetooth capability, don't really need the mp3 player. This is a very, very easy device to use too.
Customer Review: Awesome GPS with Bluetooth and MP3 player!!
Summary: 5 Stars
I love it! This GPS is AWESOME! I don't know which feature I like the most. It is either the text to speech (TTS) feature that reads the directions (and text messages) for you (with the female Austrailian accent - there are plenty of others), the Bluetooth feature for hands-free phone usage, the fact that you can load MP3 files directly on the 2GB internal Flash storage (about 650MB free from the factory) and also use SD Cards (I bought an 8GB Micro SD HC card, which works great!), or that fact that I can use all of the features at the same time. Yep, it's definitely the fact that I can use them all at the same time. I can set my destination, by entering an address, search by name (if it is a commercial location), or select a location that was saved as a favorite. While driving I can play mp3 files, and the voice prompts will interrupt the music when necessary. If the I get a phone call, the Bluetooth feature takes over and I have the option to ignore the call or answer it and talk hands-free while driving. It even shows who's calling, if you number is stored in your phonebook on the phone (I have a Razr v3). While talking the display shows your current location the the next set of change in direction you should make. Once the call is done, the music and voice prompts resume. When I arrive at my destination it says, depending upon the destination) "Arriving at Home on the right" or "Arriving at Work on the left" or "Arriving at Mom's House on the left" or "Arriving at Detroit Metro Airport Berry Terminal". You can name a location whatever you want and it will read the name speak it back to you when you get there. Finding places the Airports, Hotels, places to eat works great, even in Canada.
The detour feature works great, as well. When there was some traffice congestion on the freeway, I took the closest exit the used the detour feature to get me around it. The GPS took me along road the were along side of the freeway to the next point of entry. So, I kept hitting detour button until I got to a point where the traffic was moving, six miles away. I got to see some nice scenery, while bypassing the sitting traffic. It was great!
Speaking of Bluetooth pairing, which was easy, the GPS unit automatically connects when the phone is in range and not connect to another Bluetooth device. In my case, I was using a Bluetooth earpiece with walking to my car. Upone starting the car, the GPS powered up when it realized it was getting power to the plug. I turned off the Bluetooth earpiece and the GPS Bluetooth connected to the phone. All the while, I never stopped talking. Did I mention that your incoming text messages are read using the select text to speech voice? Cool!
I got this as a birthday present from my wife and parents. After two days, my wife decided that she wanted one of her own.