Garmin i3

[PaClampet]

Probably been done a dozen times but what the heck......

Looking for a cheap sat nav; no bells or whistles, that is easily swappable between our two cars.
Budget of £150 - £200. It seems all the reviews point to the Garmin i3 over certain other products by Navman etc.

However the i3 seems to be getting rarer; also more dated (As do all gadgets!!)
Is it still a good piece of kit or are the new navmans (also on offer) better? Is it also worth spending £50 - £60 more for the TomToms?
BTW it would only be used for weekends/leisure and occasional business.

Cheers

[Touching Cloth]

Love my Garmin as it is neat and gets the job done, no major advanced features but if you just want nav and ability to load Speed Camera's it is fine. Can get them really cheap as well, wouldn't pay more than about £130.

Not sure what will happen over the next year but the market is moving pretty fast, happy to have the least poss invested at the moment as this years £500 models will be seriously outdated and/or matched by £150 models next year.

Go get one.

[PaClampet]

Sounds good to me.

Off to Halfords then.....

Thanks for the info

[PaClampet]

Quick update:-

Purchased last one from Comet at £129.99. Halfords seem to be now phasing them out as new models arrive.

Now fired up and ready to go. Incidentally not affected in the slightest by the heated screen on my Mondeo: sat fix took all of sixty seconds.
Very pleased so far, particularly_
- the clarity of the screen for such a small unit
- Excellent voice prompts (although no Ozzy or Sean Connery)

Cheers

Edited by PaClampet on Tuesday 18th July 15:14

[Vesuvius 996]

I agree.

99 sheets from Staples.

Awesome little bit of kit. Cheap and very cheerful.

[Tripps]

Got two here and can't agree more, they are amazing bits of kit, and at the price I paid for them (£92 and £99) I won't feel bad when they have to be replaced.

They also had detailed maps almost all the way down to Le Mans, not bad for something advertised as UK maps only.

[Vesuvius 996]

Tripps said:

Got two here and can't agree more, they are amazing bits of kit, and at the price I paid for them (£92 and £99) I won't feel bad when they have to be replaced.

They also had detailed maps almost all the way down to Le Mans, not bad for something advertised as UK maps only.

It said UK only on my box too, but it has all of Northern France and some other bits too.

Simply amazing value for money. No bells or whistles, but cheap, effective and a pleasure to own.

[emicen]

What is this Staples place of which you speak? SatNav for sub £100 sounds ideal for the girlfriend! Hell, I might even buy one for myself.

[Vesuvius 996]

It's a national chain of paper/fax sellers, usually arround B&Q and stuff.

Google for em.

[Soft Top]

Garmin i3 is a great piece of kit and the one we have comes with European Major Road Maps. The Pocket GPS World scamera maps can also be downloaded onto it. It does have a problem with the athermic windscreen on my wifes GTi 180 though and won't work at all without an outside antenna. Perfect reception on my Z3 and a friends RX8.

The best price I could find is £128.98 at:

www.savastore.com/productinfo/product.aspx?catalog_name=Savastore&product_id=10289519&pid=44&rstrat=0

I hope this helps.

[si_j]

£99.99 in Comet for an i3

Tempted by the i2 though as that's the same thing but cheaper again, B&W screen though.

[PaClampet]

a sort of epilogue to my post....

Had the i3 (or Suzie as she's now known ) for about 2 weeks and frankly I'm well impressed. Works fine in my Mondeo despite the heated windscreen. So far she has only let me down once (took the Clampet clan down a dead end) butapart from that and the odd hiccup in route planning has not let me down once.
Also (and I think in this current crime ridden world this is important) it is very discreet; especially when using NiMh rechargeables(no wires). It sneaks under the A pillar where no-one can really see it without a second glance. Yes it is small but suprisingly clear and easy to read. My mate has a TomTom that completely takes over his screen with wires, clamps etc and, despite its numerous extra features, is not that much more accurate than the i3.

To sum up I'd wholeheartedly recommend one: for the price there's nought to touch it. The only problem is they're dissappearing fast. Halfords in Sheffield had none left and were getting no more in and I bought the last one in Comet. Ebay or the web is probably the besy bet now.
Cheers
Richard

[Touching Cloth]

Have you worked out how to load additional POI's, i.e Speed Cameras, very useful?

[PaClampet]

Sorted a few from the pocketgps site though one or two of the local POI's seem a bit wayward.
Mind you, having Suzy tell when your approaching a Church of the Golden Arches...... : :

Will get round to the speed cameras asap.
Only other prob; Suzy doesn't like Macs

Edited by PaClampet on Saturday 29th July 17:21

[Andy Oh]

Totally agree with the comments here on the Garmin i3, great piece of kit for very little money.

Can anyone recommend where to get european maps from???? Any help would be appreciated.

Cheers,

Andy

[Vesuvius 996]

Andy Oh said:

Totally agree with the comments here on the Garmin i3, great piece of kit for very little money.

Can anyone recommend where to get european maps from???? Any help would be appreciated.

Cheers,

Andy

You buy them on a Micro SD chip for £90 each country IIRC. Call tghem on 0808 2380000

[Tripps]

Andy Oh said:

Totally agree with the comments here on the Garmin i3, great piece of kit for very little money.

I'd say other countries are the only major failing of the i3, as they are expensive to purchase. My plan is to buy one of the European units at some point, then keep the i3 for the cars that stay in this country.

However, we found when going down to Le Mans that it has some very detailed maps of France, taking us over C roads at times and I'm told it has all the major roads of Europe, so you may find this is enough for you.

[Touching Cloth]

Tripps said:

Andy Oh said:

Totally agree with the comments here on the Garmin i3, great piece of kit for very little money.

I'd say other countries are the only major failing of the i3, as they are expensive to purchase. My plan is to buy one of the European units at some point, then keep the i3 for the cars that stay in this country.

However, we found when going down to Le Mans that it has some very detailed maps of France, taking us over C roads at times and I'm told it has all the major roads of Europe, so you may find this is enough for you.

Agreed, had excellent detail until close to Le Mans, indeed by zooming right out you can see what is covered properly and where it switches to major road network. Would appear that most of the Northern Coastline is, as well as Brittany in its entirety which is very handy as going over there in September

Tripps, I believe if you get one of the more expensive Garmin units that comes with Europe you just get a CD and load over the bits you need as and when - I am sure I read somewhere that once you have this disc, you can actually connect up the i3 and it will recognise the unit and accept the european map, dependant of course on spare space on the disc. Might be wrong but worth a crack.

[Touching Cloth]

Quinny said:

But on my last map update from Garmin, it's managed to down load a really annoying feature.
It now Chimes before any instruction

Think you need to retrograde to the earlier POI loader, see this thread (with a link to where you can get old loader)

www.pocketgpsworld.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=43749

[Tripps]

Touching Cloth said:

Tripps, I believe if you get one of the more expensive Garmin units that comes with Europe you just get a CD and load over the bits you need as and when - I am sure I read somewhere that once you have this disc, you can actually connect up the i3 and it will recognise the unit and accept the european map, dependant of course on spare space on the disc. Might be wrong but worth a crack.

That was certainly the case with my old B&W GPS V unit, that used the City Select maps and you would choose sectors of a country (approx county sized in the UK) to upload to the device, as it was limited to 19MB.

However the i3 uses City Navigator NT data which is heavily compressed, so I can't use my old map data alas. Having a look around it looks like we'd need the City Navigator NT cards which retail at $182 per country (or group of smaller countries).

However, the compatability table on the Garmin site states that we can use City Navigator Europe v8 which has the whole of Eastern Europe on it, it's expensive at $349, but that's the price of just two countries when purchased on microSD card, so could well be worth it, especially if you intend to stick with Garmin kit.

However, it does state that it's for US domestic sale only, I'll have a look around and see if I can find it anywhere in the UK.

2GB TransFlash/MicroSD cards can be had for £50 now and 1GB for £25, so you should be able to get all of Europe onto the box at once, since they come with 256MB and include a chunk of France and the main roads of Europe...