I first gave garmin a chance a long time ago to buy my first ever satellite navigation system, at the time there wasn't much to choose from on the high street, the other choice was Tomtom. I went for the garmin because it was a lot cheaper. It didn't take me long to realise how shit it was. The maps were completely outdated and it asked me numerous times to drive off a friggin bridge and though a field. Everything about it was SHIT, battery life crap, couldn't take a memory card. It also has a weird twist stick on the front that was just the worst thing in the world to use. You had to twist the stick until you got to the letter you required, bearing in mind writing an address would take you a long time, then the worst part of it was it nearly always said "unknown address, please enter correct address", it was the correct address you stupid bastard. After about 5 attempts and a half an hour later I would enter the village, when it didn't know the feckin village name I'd try the town, only sometimes it would know the town. How fucking stupid do garmin sound? And they were the good bits... Seriously the worst part of it was the update software. Because all of the maps were shit I wanted to take advantage of the first 3 months you have the option of updating your maps for free. OMG WITHA CAPITAL FUCK YOU TO GARMIN, the update process was the worst encounter with an update I've ever had to endure, except for updating the garmin 405 running watch which I'll get to in a bit. It was a case of registration which wasn't straight forward with having to add the model no and a code then sync it with the device which actually didn't happen after 2 hours of trying I gave up. I then threw the sat nav at someone for free, they have never spoke to me since and have had a nervous breakdown and lost his business and family... All because of garmin.
I then went sat nav free for nearly 2 whole years, but duty called and I was back in the market for a good one. There was lots to choose from at this stage but like a complete idiot I bought a new Garmin sat nav, can't remember the model no but it was a touch screen and the shop assistant said they have come a long way since the crap I bought. When I set it up yes there was better features and it was slightly easier to use but it still couldn't find a lot of address and its so annoying the way if you start typing in an address if the rest of the address doesn't show up the it won't be able to find the place, it's stupid you end up being brought to the nearest area it knows but that could be a different estate up the road from where you want to go. Also the sync options were shit too on the PC, again you need to be a software engineer for the CIA to understand it all. Overall it wasn't much better than the 1st one I got and it seems Garmins products are all laden with issues and connectivity problems.
Also important to note is that when I purchased the 2 above sat navs, Tomtoms sat navs had lifetime free map updates and they were meant to be much, much better at absolutely everything.
Finally like a crazy ass idiot and a glutton for punishment I bought another Garmin, a running watch the Garmin 405. This was another piece of shit that I bought because my brother recommended it. I'll quickly write the good points and the bad points
Good:
looks ok
Cheap enough
Accurate enough
Bad
Battery life shit
Takes ages to get GPS signal
Stupid outside of screen surround is touch screen and goes nuts in the wet, like rain etc
Touch screen is impossible to use while running, or even staying still
Setting up garmin connect is a nightmare
No Bluetooth in the watch
I will never, ever buy another Garmin product again, even if they changed their logo to have a little triangle on the top, what's that all about.
I went and treated myself with a new running watch, a Tomtom and it's BRILLIANT, if it wasn't for all my Garmin problems I'd find some issues with the Tomtom but for the moment I'm just enjoying syncing easily, getting ultra quick GPS connection and it looks and feels like a quality product. Garmin you need to look at what Tomtom are doing and just copy them, or else just close down, yeah I prefer the latter option.
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