Garmin Streetpilot C550 2.1-Inch Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator
by Garmin
|
List Price: Our Price: $299.00 You Save: $100.99 (25%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $44.90 (click here) Category: GPS or Navigation System See more product details |
|---|
Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Garmin Streetpilot C550 2.1-Inch Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator
Customer Review: Excellent GPS - Traffic Service is great, too
Summary: 5 Stars
I wanted to share our experience with the Garmin Street Pilot c550 GPS.
5 Stars - Love it & Highly Recommend
I bought this GPS last week and tried it around town. Great directions, for the most part (missed one street one time, but not a big deal). The unit actually tells you the street names, which really helps!
When you turn on the GPS it must find the satellite to find your current position. This takes about 20 seconds at my house, but less than 5 seconds at other locations. You can preprogram set destinations (home, work, etc). and also just type in the location you are going to next. It shows you a map, and then tells you step by step which way to turn, on what streets, and how far it is to that turn. For instance: In 1.8 miles turn right on Main Street. And when you are arriving at your location it says "arriving at 123 Main Street, on the left. It is useful to know what side of the street you are looking for.
If you miss a turn, or decide to ignore a route, it will recalculate based on where you are & get you back on track, or find a different route. I forced it to find me a different route a couple times, and it chose correctly.
By far my favorite part of this GPS is the traffic feature. Its an add-on, but comes with 3 free months when you purchase the unit. It monitors the traffic conditions/accidents/road closures, etc and routes you around them. Today we were driving home on the 101 freeway. Our home is right off the 101 freeway, so we were a little surprised when the GPS told us to get on the 170 north. Traffic was going well, and I thought it was very strange to have us go off in another direction. I decided to see where it was taking us, and did take th 170. Meanwhile, we tuned to the news channel on the radio and sure enough there was a traffic accident a couple miles further down the freeway with 2 lanes closed. The GPS unit routed us around the accident and then back on the 101. I was really impressed :) I dont know how much the traffic subscription is, but I think its a must-get.
This specific GPS unit also plays mp3s, pictures, has the Points of Interest built in (MANY of the restaurants on the list are out of business, however - I went through the list in our hometown and quite a few were no longer valid). But thats ok, I didnt get the GPS to help me find restaurants!
It also supports bluetooth phones. My phone is not a bluetooth model, so I cant tell you much about that.
So if you are in the market for a GPS, look closely at the Garmin Street Pilot c550.
Customer Review: Great GPS at a great price
Summary: 5 Stars
Having tried the Garmin Nuvi in the past, I wanted to find a similar GPS system without the cost - I found that in the Streetpilot C550. When compared to all other products it definitely provides all the best features at the lowest cost.
I spent a lot of time researching each model and realized the C550 had many advantages. The Streetpilot offers the following features that lesser models either offered none or few of;
1. Bluetooth (allows handsfree cell phone use while driving)
2. Mp3 player (you can take songs from your ipod and play them on the Garmin although the sound quality does suffer during playback)
3. Traffic receiver is included! (This is huge since with other Garmins, you have to buy it seperately at a cost of over $100 - plus they give you 3 months free).
4. Touchscreen - you can type in streets and addresses rather than scroll, which is very helpful.
5. Speaks street names - which is suprisingly helpful if you're in an unfamiliar area and have a lot of streets all coming together at once. This device will tell you to turn on "Elm street" rather than turn in 30 feet, which can be confusing if there is three different roads coming up in 30 feet.
The traffic receiver also includes a cigarette adapter charger, so don't think that you need to buy one seperately from the device which I almost did since they recommended it.
My only complaint about the Garmin, although trivial, it lacks common sense sometimes. When you calculate the fastest route, it really means the fastest route. It will tell you to take truck bypass routes or go down side streets (rather than along the main road) just to save yourself 2 or 3 seconds off your trip.
One surprising advantage to this device is how up-to-date the maps are. My neighborhood is less than 1 year old and it had all the streets. That was a surprise since every other GPS device I've used did not and also Yahoo and Mapquest don't even have my neighborhood online yet.
Lastly, the yellow pages feature makes this device worth the price alone besides all the other options. You can type in the name of where you want to go and it seems to have everything! Banks, restaurants (even obscure hole-in-the-wall places are listed), gas stations, airports, hotels, etc. and it includes their phone number which if you have your cell phone connected you can dial!
I highly recommend the Streetpilot C550!
Customer Review: Worth its weight ...
Summary: 5 Stars
I had a Magellen for about 2.5 years, but when it stopped navigating properly, the folks at Magellan said I'd have to drop $275 to fix the processor. Considering I paid $1100 for it, I thought that was a lousy option. So I bought the c550 and am very happy with it. It is very accurate-even more so than my father's in-car unit he has in his Nissan Morano. My father and I recently went on a 180 mile trip (twice in a week) into rural Maryland, once while using my c550 and once in his vehicle. The c550 was able to get us to our destination as well as to some destinatins during side-trips without a hitch. The Nissan's unit, however, had difficulty not only getting us to our destination, but also in re-calculating routes when we changed course.
Another nice feature is the points-of-interests that are preloaded. My Magellan had this, but the interface on the Garmin is much nicer and informative. And, with the built-in Bluetooth, you can make a call right from the Garmin. For instance, on a recent trip to Pittsburgh, my wife and I were looking for an Indian restaurant. I checked in the Garmin under cuisines and located several, all with distance displayed. I chose one then had the Garmin call to see if they were open as we were arriving into town late. They were and it worked out perfectly. We were also able to locate hotel accomodations as we were there unprepared. It saved for a lot of 411 info calls and anxiety for trying to find a place to stay in while in an unfamiliar area.
The traffic feature is nice, but limited to big highways. While driving to Pittsburgh, it was fairly accurate in locating slow traffic. It was correct in one accident that we came upon as well as slow traffic due to construction. The unit comes with a free 6 month trial for the traffic feature, but will cost $60 a year thereafter. I'm not convinced this is a need as of yet.
The bluetooth feature is very nice. It displays the caller's info. It will also link to your phone's address book allowing you to search from the Garmin for a contact. The calls come through clear on both ends. This feature is worth the difference in price IMHO.
As you can see, I am very pleased with my Garmin to say the least. At the time, I thought the Magellan was the bomb, but I now know that I was definitely missing out.
Customer Review: An Improvement Over the c330
Summary: 5 Stars
A year ago I paid $850 for a Garmin c330 and returned it because the display was not sunlight readable.
For the same price I was thrilled with the c550, which includes a sunlight readable display, talking street names, built-in real-time traffic information (first 3 months free, $60 for next 15 months), Bluetooth hands-free cell phone assistance, and MP3 player.
The touch screen is very easy to use, probably the easiest of any PND (personal navigation system) on the market.
It also includes one via (mid-trip destination) so that a sophisticated user can force the routing to take a known detour.
The real-time traffic updates work, at least in Chicago. In one case I was actually warned soon enough to take an alternate route. The c550 quickly recalculated a new route. Usually there's not much I can do about entering a traffic jam, but at least the c550 shows me how long the traffic jam is.
The talking street names are easy to understand and help keep my eyes on the road.
The Bluetooth worked with my cell phone even though it wasn't on Garmin's approved list (Motorola E815).
The speakers do not give the same audio fidelity as a car radio with built-in Bluetooth. They are adequate for navigation, OK for cell phone use, and unacceptable for MP3 music. There is no problem understanding the person on the other end of the cell phone conversation. The person I was talking to told me that my audio quality was excellent. They couldn't tell I was talking through the microphone on the c550 which was an arm's length away. My phone was in my pants pocket with the cover closed. Bluetooth will also dial numbers for me, either from my phone book which is automatically loaded into the c550, or from the phone number listed in a point of interest such as a restaurant.
To Garmin's credit the c550 includes a headphone jack that could be plugged into an external speaker. Talking on a cell phone with an improved speaker is like talking to the person next to you. Its more natural. But in a rental car on a business trip it would be too cumbersome to schlep around an external speaker.
I see the c550 as an excellent PND for car rental companies. But for personal use, the Garmin Nuvi is still my favorite because its smaller and has more features.
Customer Review: Dandy
Summary: 5 Stars
I did a lot of research before buying this. I didn't want to be a sheep getting Garmin just because it's popular. However, after exhaustive looking around at other brands, reading review after review, I chose the C550 because it was the least expensive GPS of quality that has bluetooth, which allows you to make hands-free calls through the unit if you wirelessly connect to a bluetooth enabled cell phone. You can then call all of the points of interest in its vast system as well as all of your own contacts that are in your cell phone listings.
I also realized that I rented a car last year and also rented a GPS unit, and it was an earlier model of the same general type, probably a 330. Anyway, my experience with that was so favorable, that I knew I'd like this one also. You see, that rental was in Santa Fe, and if you know the streets of Santa Fe, you know that it would be hard to find a more challenging place to drive around. Tons of one way streets, small, short, out of the way streets, etc. The Garmin I had then never failed to find anything I put in, and made our trip SOOOOO much easier than it would have been without it.
Anyway, I bought the C550 and operation was as easy as I recalled. I just plugged it into the car and it was ready to go. It "found" my bluetooth enabled RAZR phone in a few seconds and within seconds, I was talking to people on the phone through the unit, and they said they could hear me, and I could hear them loud and clear.
Now I can't wait to find all of the shorter routes I know I will find to places of interest. I was also glad that the unit came with an adhesive disk to mount the unit on the dash. My recollection about the suction cup on the window deal is that it can fall off. (However, if you have a GPS and only use windsheild mount, the trick is to wet the suction cup a bit before sticking it on, and then it will stay like a charm. I, however, use the dashboard mount, and the angle is perfect for me, and of course adjustable to however you wish to tilt it.)
It also plays MP3s, so you can load your ipod songs to an SD disk and play them, though I admit I haven't tried this yet.
Love it. Couldn't really ask for more.