GPS Brand - RV-Dreams Community Forum

French Bikers · RV-Dreams Family Member

GPS Brand

Alie and Jims Carrilite · RV-Dreams Family Member

The Garmin is what we like. Looking to upgrade to the 760 soon.
Everybody has their favorites though. I do like being able to enter our height to help with routing around low bridges.

Bill and Linda · RV-Dreams Family Member

We tried the Rand McNally and returned it. The screen on the RV specific unit was so dim it was almost useless. They sell a shade and that should tell you something.

FWIW I went to the Garmin nuvi 2555LM after my Lorance finally gave up which was excellent but no longer made. I’ve have been generally pleased with this specific Garmin. The traffic is not all that reliable because they send the data via commercial FM radio stations and in a lot of places they have no station contracted for the service. Other than that, it’s worked well. (We use cell phones for traffic anyway.)

I’ve used GPS for a long long time and I’m pretty picky as I like to use these as true navigators. The Garmin comes as close as any I can find.

BTW, you can put in longitude and latitude for a location and this is very important when the address isn't really the correct location. With 55 feet of RV I want to turn at the exact spot, not go hunting for that turn after the third tree on the left if you follow me.

Naturally YMMV

Bill

-- Edited by Bill and Linda on Sunday 5th of January 2014 04:16:15 PM

The Bear II · RV-Dreams Family Member

I read an article recently by a consumer product specialist. He listed the items he felt would be going away in the next few years. One of the items mentioned was portable GPS units. His reasoning, folks are using apps in the smartphones for GPS and navigation.

Sure enough I find that I use the navigation apps on my iPhone more than I use the built in navigation system in my car. I also use the Cycling app on my phone to determine the lat/long coordinates and track waypoints and speed.

Some other items he mentioned are:

DVD/Blueray players- folks are streaming movies/TV shows over the internet
Landlines- Cell phones instead of hardwired or cordless telephones
Digital Cameras- the cameras in the smartphones are replacing the need for a separate camera. I saw evidence of this at a childrens Christmas play a couple of weeks ago, I didn't see a single parent with a camera, they were all using their smartphones or tablets to take pictures/video of their kids.

Alie and Jims Carrilite · RV-Dreams Family Member

The issue with using the smartphone apps is that you have to be in cellular service and have a data plan that can handle the load. We carried our jetpack in the truck and let our phone run off of that data plan but it still took alot of bites.

bjoyce · RV-Dreams Family Member

There are paid GPS apps for smartphones that come with the maps, like Co-pilot. You want to be on an unlimited wifi or data plan to load them up since the maps take up GBs. (There is a way to preload a route on the free Google Maps on Android, but it is very easy to find yourself with no cell data service without expecting it.) RVers do go to areas where they lose cell phone service, so the built-in smartphone GPS apps become unreliable since they can't load the maps as they go. For example most routes from I-5 to and from US101 from California to Washington go through no-cell areas. My cousin ended up going 20 miles out of the way trying to use his iPhone to navigate to our campsite, he lost cell service and missed a turn.

We use Garmin. We used to use Magellan, but like Garmin better. Friends have either loved or hated the Rand McNally units. If you have an iPad with a GPS, Rand McNally has an app for about $100 that duplicates the stand alone GPS software but many like it better on an iPad.

Talensnana · RV-Dreams Family Member

We use a rand McNally 7710 ( or 7720). I love it. I plan our trip on goodsams and download it to the gps. We have used it for the last few trips and love it.

0nTheRoad · RV-Dreams Community Member

We have the Garmin 760 DEZL, we purchased it about a year ago, before they came out with the 760 RV.

I did quite a bit of research on the Garmin, the Rand McNally and the Magellin and found the Garmin to be the best liked/reviewed choice at the time.

We are very happy with this unit. The DEZL is a Trucker GPS and also has an RV and an Auto mode. when I'm towing our 5'er I use the Truck mode as it gives you more options/detail than the RV mode, when we don't have the rig I use the Auto mode. I have the Truck mode set to avoid toll roads, unpaved roads and of course the unit automatically sets the route to avoid height & weight issues. From what I've heard the big difference between the 760's, the DEZL and the RV, is the campground database in the RV but the DEZL in better equipped for routing to avoid areas you wouldn't want to be in a big rig, e.g. height, weight, flammables, etc.

I've also downloaded many POI's from POI Factory (all free) which I've downloaded to the Garmin so I can look for campgrounds, truck stops, WalMart's, Costco's... pretty much anything you want to be able to find quickly.

Hope this helps.

TRAILERKING · RV-Dreams Family Member

I have a Magellin it works but not that compatible with a huge RV. It has the Lifetime Updates. It directed me through some very tight places through St Lois one time. I had no problem but the wife said she had her eyes closed most of the time, she was so scared. Think should get something more related for "Big Rigs"

folivier · RV-Dreams Family Member

I have a 7" Magellan that I never liked much. Thought about the Garmin Dezl but ended up buying CoPilot Live for my Nexus 7" tablet. Like the program much better than the Magellan. It does have an RV mode.
One thing I really like is I can turn the tablet in portrait mode rather than landscape (horizontal). That gives you a longer view of the road ahead than the typical gps. I'm using this mount which is really nice and won't fall off: www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BR3Q9TK/ref=oh_details_o04_s00_i00

Neil and Connie · RV-Dreams Family Member

If you buy the dedicated GPS app…Garmin has one for instance…for your iPhone (or Android phone) then having cellular signal is not necessary. The app has all the maps in it already.

That said…even though we have iPhone 5s's we have a Garmin Truck GPS…it lets you put in length, height, and weight and routes you around low bridges and such. I don't religiously check our route ahead of time and always read the clearance numbers as we approach overpasses or weights for bridges…but on at least one occasion the iPhone GPS app which my wife had running in the car routed her under a 12 feet clearance bridge which would have been too low. The Garmin Truck GPS (a 460) routed us correctly around that low overpass. Our deal is that we each have the GPS running…but the truck GPS wins any arguments.

French Bikers · RV-Dreams Family Member

Neil and Connie wrote:
If you buy the dedicated GPS app…Garmin has one for instance…for your iPhone (or Android phone) then having cellular signal is not necessary. The app has all the maps in it already.
That said…even though we have iPhone 5s's we have a Garmin Truck GPS…it lets you put in length, height, and weight and routes you around low bridges and such. I don't religiously check our route ahead of time and always read the clearance numbers as we approach overpasses or weights for bridges…but on at least one occasion the iPhone GPS app which my wife had running in the car routed her under a 12 feet clearance bridge which would have been too low. The Garmin Truck GPS (a 460) routed us correctly around that low overpass. Our deal is that we each have the GPS running…but the truck GPS wins any arguments.

Tanks for your reply, for your info there is a website that could keep you up to date with low clearance bridge http://www.lowclearances.com/ there is an annual fee $14.97 or life time for $44.97.

folivier · RV-Dreams Family Member

CoPilot Live does allow you to put in your RV height.

MarkS · RV-Dreams Family Member

Rand McNally has an IPad app for the RV GPS. The maps load onto your device. It comes with weather, lifetime maps, an electronic version of their atlas, fuel management, and some other stuff. It costs $100 at the App Store.

I like the idea because the big IPad screen would be like GPS IMAX on the bridge of your Directional and Motivational Control Unit (D&MCU) or tow vehicle. The only thing I don't like is that it doesn't appear to show vehicle speed and elevation on the display. I use my GPS as a speedometer because it is far more accurate than that needle thing on the dashboard. I like to know my elevation because I am a toy guy at heart. As if the HDT didn't give that away. Guys will justify that big truck as the safest way to pull their heavy RV but, I will testify that it is a source of supplemental testosterone. At any rate, even though I am alert for low clearance, I still like the idea of having that device to alert me ahead of time. The one thing I don't like about the smaller units is that they are more difficult to see detail on. However, there is a lot to be said in favor of stand alone units.

Neil and Connie · RV-Dreams Family Member

French Bikers wrote:
Tanks for your reply, for your info there is a website that could keep you up to date with low clearance bridge http://www.lowclearances.com/ there is an annual fee $14.97 or life time for $44.97.

Thanks; I've got them bookmarked already but we've never really had an issue with clearance in our travels (almost 2 years now). The only low bridge we ever found was the one I mentioned…it was out west somewhere this past summer and was a railroad overpass in some medium sized town. The truck GPS routed us just fine and only really differed from the iPhone GPS app for about a mile and a half as it wanted to use a different main road North out of town.