HANDS DOWN THE WORSE GPS ON THE MARKET
345655
I paid wayyyy too much for this GPS.... It is slow when re-routing , VERY slow as it tries picking up a signal..... HANDS DOWN THE WORSE GPS ON THE MARKET. I should have returned it when I had a chance...... I miss my old Magellan GPS,much faster and reliable.
848514
I really wish I could give this EASYOWN GPS navigation device zero stars. I have never been so disappointed with a product. The user manual is 40 pages long and only ONE page is dedicated to the navigation function (the main function of a GPS navigation device, one would think). The rest of the manual is dedicated to the bluetooth, tv, video player, audio player, photo viewer, e-book reader, calculator, and game functions. The lack of instruction on using the GPS navigation function is particularly frustrating because this device is not at all user friendly. I consider myself fairly tech savvy, but this thing is a nightmare.

Regardless, I managed to test out the GPS function, no thanks to the user guide. The first destination I put in was about 10 minutes from my house. This device told me it would take over 2 hours to get there. I somehow pressed enough buttons to get to a screen where I could see an overview of the trip and it showed that my starting location was in a completely different state! I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to change the start location to where I actually was. I went through and deleted all of the old searches in the history (why there were old searches on a brand new device, I couldn't tell you), and after that it seemed like the GPS function just completely shut off. Every time I went to put in an address it would pop up with a message saying "waiting for GPS signal" which would not go away.

Frustrated with the GPS, I tried to explore other functions. My first goal was to try to set the date and time. It worked! Then 10 minutes later I look back and the time had jumped ahead 4 hours. I went and changed it again and it was ok. I look back a few minutes later and the time changed again! So I pressed the help button on the device and got a message saying "error loading file". So I gave up on that.

Out of curiosity, I then tried the games, which also had no explanation and were not worth figuring out (except snake! I do love snake, so I guess they can have one star for that). My last attempt at getting this thing to work was to plug it into my computer and try to update it. I was hoping there might be some sort of program which would let me update it, but there's nothing. I looked through the manual to see if there's a website I should go to in order to update it, and again nothing. All you can do when you plug it into your computer is look through the files that are stored on it. I have no idea how to update this thing.

Possibly the most frustrating thing about this experience is that there is no information anywhere in the packaging or in the user manual on how to contact customer support. I also tried googling both EasyOwn and Star Air Technology and there is no information about these companies. I'm not even convinced they really exist. However, I did find a nice note on the back of a little Q&A pamphlet (also completely useless) that thanks their customers for their support and welcomes feedback via mail. However, they fail to provide an address to which one might actually send such mail. I'm honestly surprised that Amazon would sell such a piece of garbage. The few 5 star reviews on this product must be fake. Needless to say, I will be returning this.

tl;dr - this thing is useless unless you just want to play snake. I would highly recommend you buy something else.
3378679
This is my third Garmin GPS product, and I am very disappointed.

While most of it behaves as expected, it would appear that Bluetooth functionality was not properly tested.

About one connection in four fails, and I have to re-connect.  Not what I want for a hands-free speakerphone.

If I attempt to do anything with the GPS shortly after the Bluetooth connection, the device will freeze, requiring a hard reboot in order to work.

Every time the Bluetooth connects, the GPS lowers the volume.

Call mic quality is very poor, and not very useful for conversations.

Don't buy this product; get one of the cheaper GPS units without Bluetooth instead.

---

Also, Garmin has done a very poor job of updating their maps.  4-5 year old road changes are not reflected in the latest maps, and their built-in business directory is full of errors.
1656697
Despite the other reviews on this site, I purchased this software with the understanding that Garmin had corrected the previously described map offset.  Guess what?  They did not.

On my GPS, my actual vs. indicated position on the map is off by at least 500 yards, making the maps completely useless for point-to-point navigation (which is the point of having a GPS and associated maps to begin with).  Garmin had indicated prior to purchase that the maps would work fine with my 60CSx, even though it is not listed as being compatible with such on their site.

Technical support has not even recognized that there is an issue, let alone offer resolution.

A completely worthless product for Navigation in China (currently living in Kunming).
636689
This unit I thought was supposed to be a step or two above my current 265WT, so I got it to go in my second vehicle.  It does not have lane assist, even though some reviews and specs claim it does.  It does not have speed limit indication, even though some reviews and specs claim it does.  The mapping update is quick and reliable, the firmware updating is useless.  The voicing used in this unit is cold, mechanical and unimpressive.  It speaks a command and sentencing as individual words run together rather than fluidly like the 265.  It mispronounces street names horrendously, as the 265 is most accurate in its pronunciating.  Firmware updating and flashing the chipset does nothing to help.  Garmin tech support cannot help with this issue either.

Bottom line, the 1300 is a waste of money.  Go for the 255 or 265.  Reliability of those units is much superior.
1947572
I am so frustrated about having this program I felt I needed to write a review to warn potential buyers.
I've used 3 softwares: Garmins' MapSource USA, AAA/Delorme's Map & Go 4.0 (1998). This is by far the WORST program.
Looks good with nice package and appealing interface, but works poorly.
1. It's very slow - takes a long time to load and refresh. For each zoom in/out action, it takes about 2 to 3 seconds to refresh. I use a P4 top of line laptop by the way and have the whole program installed on my harddisk.
2. The TripMaker has lots of fancy functions like expense tracking, daily schedule etc. It's all too cumbersome to use and impractical.
3. GPS function does not provide voice commands (ie PC tell you which direction to go).
I intended to replace my 1998 version of Delorme's Map&Go from AAA with this program. But the former is still much more superior than this!
3612694
this gps is awful nothing more than a bunch of lines on a screen don't waste your money
4349985
This is the only Garmin model with Europe and North America (including Canada) that comes with Lifetime Map and Traffic updates. My last Garmin is a few years old and the battery doesn't hold a charge anymore, and also it didn't include map updates so was starting to get obsolete.

The user interface/menu system continues to be poorly designed, requiring unnecessary and multiple selections for frequently used operations, and this has become even worse with the new model: THREE taps (used to be two) to see the map overview of your route and 2 more to get back to the live map). Even simple things like entering GPS coordinates has been poorly designed. It forces you to type the ENTIRE coordinate now even though the first 5 or 6 digits are the same for short-distance routes. There are also other annoyances like after you enter an address it searches three neighbouring states to give you all possible matches when you really want the one in the city that you're in. So you have to wait 5 seconds unneessarily while it does that search. Simple operations like setting your Home location are hidden away in highly unintuitive places. And there are dozens of other examples. It seems that the people who design the user interface never use the product in real life. They should just copy the far superior and more natural Tom-Tom user interface.

The voice reading algorithm is poorer that in the 5-year-old previous model! For example, with English as the spoken language, if you are travelling in Montreal where lots of streets have names like St-Denis, St-Hubert, etc., it will speak them as "Street-Denis" instead of "Saint-Denis," because it decides that St is always the abbreviation for "Street." This is 10-year-old voice-synthesis technology!!

A few items in the user interface have actually improved, such as automatically switching to night mode when you're in a tunnel, even during daytime, and switching back when you're out of the tunnel. And the pet peeve of having to hit "Back" 8 times to get to the main menu has been somewhat addressed with a long-press on the Back button taking you to the home screen (but from where--sigh--you still have to press the Map button once more to get to the live map view you really wanted). When you add a new Via Point to an existing routing, it lets you reorder the sequence of stops so that the new point can be an en route stop, or an add-on after the first destination.

Notwithstanding the user interface issues, I do buy Garmin over Tom-Tom anyway for the simple reason that it supports downloaded open-source maps for the areas that are not already included. And the hardware is pretty good, locks to the GPS signal rapidly (much faster than my old model in new locations). Customer support is good--got a person who knew what she was talking about within a few short minutes of calling.

I don't care for the much-heralded "Real View" of exits. You have to be pretty clueless not to be able to figure it out from the other directions, and sometimes it can be confusing by showing you the exit "real view" prematurely, sometimes making you exit too soon at a similar-looking earlier exit! Also, the reflective glass makes visibility of the screen harder than the matte glass in my earlier model, though the capacitive touchscreen (llike modern smartphones) is a welcome improvement over the old pressure-sensitive one that required hard presses.

So between the wide map coverage, lifetime map updates, support for downloaded gmapsupp.img files from OpenStreetMap and similar sources via the micros SD card slot, I still give this 4 stars. The -1 star reflects my disappointment that 5 years later, they still haven't figured out a user interface that is intuitive and doesn't seem to come in your way.
918801
Nothing but frustration.  Works fine for a few hours and then constantly locks up (pressing any button has no effect). I wait for more than 10 minutes and it still does not do anything.  Ended up having to reboot by removing the batteries... except removing the batteries causes you to loose the current trail data.  This would happen daily.  Work fine in the morning and then a mess by the afternoon.

Very poor instruction manual (basically no info and website was useless as well) I'm an engineering but I still like to have some reference manual explaining functions that I don't understand.

VantagePoint software was not very good either.

Battery life is horrible.  I don't have any other to compare with but leaving it on to record a trail I don't get more than 10hrs of time with a set of alkaline AAs (with back light off of course).

Will be returning this until a few more versions of firmware go by or more likely I will buy a Garmin instead.  National Geographic TOPO maps sounded cool but if you can't get the stupid thing to work what is the point?

Purchased 12/2007 tried to update firmware and software but already had current versions.

Firmware, Date - 1, 24, 0,
2741528
"Joystick" button broke after owning for less than a year.  After several attempts to get Magellan to repair it even at my cost, they have still refused to repair this item. The lack of durability of an item this expensive is ridiculous.  I did not even put it through heavy use.  In addition the GPS accuracy was extremely poor and satellite acquisition time is abysmal.  I most certainly will not ever be ordering a magellan GPS ever again.  I'll have to stick to another GPS manufacturer that I have never had a problem with after over 10 years of regular use. It was much cheaper, more accurate, and acquired satellites faster. but I unfortunately lost that GPS in the woods when it fell out of my pocket, and tried to replace with this product.
384660
Better than Garmin but You would think this company could does a usable user interface. Their syncing software is lousy too. Migrating from an older TomTom is simply a disaster.
2309721
This is a horrible GPS!  I have a furniture store and we have a few GPS's for our trucks (all garmin) and this is the worst by far.

My biggest complaint is the volume.  Sometimes you don't want the GPS lady screaming in your ear and you want to turn the volume down quickly and conveniently.  We use this all the time in the city.  The driver may know the general route but just needs the GPS for the last stint to find the exact address.  It's also useful if you need to take a phone call, talk to your passenger, etc, etc.  With our other GPS's you just turn down a little volume wheel on the side of the unit (takes about 2 seconds), then back up when you need it.  With this POS you have to punch a couple of different menus on the actaul screen to finally get to a volume setting, where you then have to have a steady hand to precisely adjust a digital volume bar, just to turn it down.  Then when you need it back up, repeat!  It's very laborious and very dangerous to do while driving.  A total idiot designed this thing.

The other thing that pisses me off is that even at maximum volume, this thing is not very loud.  Some of our trucks are diesel and you literally can not hear this GPS "at all".  Literally.  It will only operate in a quiet car...which is fine for 90% of people but...why not just make it like all of the other GPS's they've made where you can just turn it up louder if you need to??

Other than those glaring weaknesses, it is not "good" at anything in particular either...overall a pretty crappy product.
3456988
I bought a GO2535TM and right from the start it was having problems downloading map updates and had NONE of the services promised by the website and the adds. When I called tech support they told me they were working on those features and should be available some time in the future. Well, this was almost a year ago and the only thing that was fixed is the traffic cameras. I had sent the 1st one back because of the downloading problems they could not fix over the phone. I had to pay to send this $350 device back for RMA which I was also not happy about. The 2nd GO2535TM arrived at my doorstep in a brand new box all sealed from the factory. After a few minutes with tech support I was driving back to the post office with yet another RMA for a DOA device. I am now on the 3rd one they sent me and still has only the traffic cams updated, takes forever to find the satellite signal (no GPS Quickfix on this device as promised) and if you are in a city with buildings, you're likely to miss your turn because the screen says you haven't passed it yet. I wish I had bought a GARMIN or Magellin. If you go with tomtom, good luck!
4966468
I only have experience with 3 GPS devices but this one had the worst user interface and by far the longest time to figure out where it is from the time it is turned on. It can take over 10 minutes! This is clearly useless when you're lost.

The interface is very, very basic. The MioMap C230 is 100x better than this device for the same price.
3296587
I should have order a GARMIN; because this is garbage
1307348
Stay away from this GPS (and Magellan products as a whole) for the following reasons:

1) The GUI is confusing; the screen where you type in the address of where you want to go is extremely hard to find.  Amazingly, its not one of the actual buttons on the unit.

2) This company was notified of problems registering serial numbers (for firmware updates and map updates) over a year ago and the same problem persists.  From what I have read, other people have had a nightmare of a time with their support resolving the issue; I didn't bother.

3) Update maps are almost $70, which is almost the cost of the entire bulky, oversized unit now.
3579304
I bought this device because I had a previous one that worked great. This one however is horrible. When I first turn it on, it takes about 5 minutes to find a signal. When I'm driving, it doesn't seem to keep up with me (I'm not driving Autobahn speeds either). If I make the mistake of driving through a tunnel, I lose the signal for about 2 to 3 minutes after I exit the tunnel and sometimes, I have to reprogram my destination. Just the other day, I programmed it on the top of a garage then by the time I got to the bottom I lost the signal. I had to pull over outside the garage and wait almost 5 minutes to get the signal back. Then after driving around in circles, I realized that the GPS had somehow jumped forward to my final destination and gave me the wrong street names, etc. I again had to pull over and reprogram it. I don't know how many times I have almost rolled down my window and tossed it out. The frustration is not worth it.