Garmin StreetPilot 2730

oooh there's that nasty little blurb
Garmin part number: 010-00408-04

Suggested Retail Price:
$1292.29 U.S.D. (for domestic US market only)


for the domestic US market only
not an option for us north of the border.

 

Yup, I have the 2620 and it mentioned domestic US market but I bought it from GPS Central, Calgary and receive all the latest software,map and voice updates via e-mail, hook up the unit to my computer and it gets fed the new stuff. All the new features weren't available a year ago and except for satellite radio I don't think I could use the other goodies.

 

Or $909 if you look around a little.

My Garmin Quest set me back $350, but I admit that the 2730 seems to do everything but tickle you behind the ear. One thing about the Quest, though, it does get me from A to B, or I guess to be accurate, with WAAS enabled it gets me from A to within 9 feet of B. (-8

 

I was going to start a thread, but this seems like a good place to post this instead...

When I bought my Prius I lived in Fargo, where you can just about see from any one place to another. Not a city designed to sell GPS systems in. So I had no interest in spending the extra $2K. Now I live in Spokane and have gotten lost several times, often because of three-way forks, turns that come up sooner than expected, or unmarked streets. So I'm wondering if I ought to get an aftermarket GPS. (Probably not the one with XM radio and weather built in; and I am EXTREMELY skeptical about XM's ability to get accident information out fast enough to help, for a small city like Spokane.)

But I'm skeptical. I visited someone who told me not to follow the city map to her house because the streets indicated didn't exist. How good, really, is the map data in these things?

I have a hand-held GPS (for hiking, and maybe some day for geocaching) but its data is not always spot-on. Example: according to the GPS, I kayaked across dry land, when it sure seemed to me like I was paddling over water. Example: Standing on top of one minor peak, it told me I was on a hillside, and no peaks around (i.e., not merely an error of a few tens of feet, as indicated on the device, but a failure to show that particular peak on the map data.).

So, how good are these things really? (I'm a bit wary of the "Royal Nonesuch Effect": people who've paid too much for something, touting it up to conceal their embarassment at having been taken.) (And it's most needed in those out-of-the-way corners of the city where printed maps are likely to be wrong, and presumably printed maps and GPS maps get their information from the same places.)

 

My question is, how good are they really? One-way streets, forks with more than 2 roads leading out, busy streets where you have to get into a particular lane well ahead of the turn-off, etc.

Wouldn't help much to tell me 100 feet from the turn that I have to be 3 lanes over. I guess that's what the display map is for. But again, how well do they really work in real-life driving in the sort of places where a regular map is not clear enough?

 

You earlier posts prompted me to research gps systems. Everything you say about the 2730 is true and I was waiting for it. The price of XM radio intensified my search. I ultimately went for the Garmin Streetpilot 2720 and two portable XM receivers packages complete with car and home kits for about the price of the 2730.

 

This Garmin GPS doesn't work with the Mac as far as loading any data does it. My Garmin GPS111+ doesn't.

 

Just an email from Garmin.
The 2730 will be available Dec 5.
$890 is the lowest price I found for preorder http://www.tvnav.com/2730.htm.
I order the 2720 for $749 and Tao XM2go portable for $149 at Amazon instead.

 

I just bought the Garmin 2720. I used it for the first time today and I am very happy with it. It's easy to use, and comes ready to use from the box. As near as I can tell, the DVD is superfluous.

From my house, it wanted to send me a route I don't like (too much traffic) so I went my usual way, and it immediately recalculated. I really only needed directions once I was downtown, and for that it was great. Getting out of downtown is where I often get lost. I took a wrong turn (even with the GPS) but again, it immediately recalculated. It did not try to make me backtrack, as I had feared it might, it just calculated a new shortest route, and got me back to the main thoroughfare heading home. This was not a trivial matter because in downtown Spokane, once you take a wrong turn it's liable to be a mile or two before there's another street that goes through to where you want to be. Several times I've had to look for a place to park, so I could study my map. Today I just kept driving and followed the Garmin's directions.

Best $865 I've spent in a long time (Amazon charged me state tax, which I do not object to, and I paid for next-day shipping). Slow shipping from a no-tax dealer would have been about a hundred bucks less.

 

I like the Garmin iQue that I have except they do not support Mac products. It works as well as the Prius Nav only different. On the whole there is give and take between the two. I still take the iQue with me when I travel.