Garmin DriveSmart 66

Disappointed in navigation – Bought a garmin drivesmart 66 to replace my Tomtom 620 that stopped working. Best inclusion was two phone connectivity and a wireless back up camera option. I had Garmin products previously so had some faith in the product quality. After 2 months use, I am totally disappointed. Th product itself is very well made and functions reasonably intuitively. However there are major issues with navigation. The maps are incorrect. Many time I drive along roads where the speed limit has changed (signage) - not recent changes either! and the go's displays an incorrect speed. I tried to report the change, but garmin uses a third party for maps (WHO, NOT GOOGLE!!) and they want a form filled out which will be beyond the care of most users, including me! Second, when entering an address, the device will not take you there but will only allow a place nearly. Eg. I want to go to 15 soso road, but the gps has 2 or 55 solo road. Doh! WTH? It's a pity Tomtom has departed the physical gps device market and left it all to Garmin. Tomtom navigation is far superior, with customer feedback though the device linked to MyDrive, so maps were continually updated. And I go to where I wanted to go to!!! DISAPPOINTED.

Garmin DriveSmart with a DriveStupid Unit – What a waste of money. Garmin have seen fit to make the unit's interface look like a child's toy. They have changed the display format renaming the usual buttons and relocating them with garish colours. Trying to load new routes and waypoints, some load and others don't. Wasting time with BaseCamp, Mapsource was a much more user friendly and efficient program for creating and loading routes and waypoints. They have continued with the foul green waypoint symbols from the previous model so it looks as though we will never again see the more colourful ones used in the nuvi models. They have also persisted with the 30 waypoint limit which forces longer routes to be split in half. The unit freezes while loading data and is very slow processing directions. It has taken over an hour to load 40 routes each with a maximum length of 200km and 20 waypoints. It has been unable to load a number of them even though the worked quite happily in my DriveSmart 51. Garmin still haven't been able to rectify the problem with their maps. Often a route will hit an invisible block in a road where the route will be rerouted back the way it came even though there is no actual physical blockage on the road, with Google Street View and routing confirming its navigability. Garmin have done the same as the mobile phone manufacturers have done, tried to turn a silk purse into a sow's ear and boy have they done a good job. The display format looks cheap and nasty, They still continue to put the power input plug at the back with a right angled plug. Would be better situated putting it in the bottom edge of the unit. I would not buy any more of the DriveSmart format units until such time as Garmin rectify all of the glaring inadequacies of this model line. I used a Nuvi760 for years and only changed models because of the cost of updating maps.

If you have a car with existing Bluetooth handsfree do not buy this product – If you are considering purchase and you have existing handsfree in your car forget this product. This product has handsfree support that you cannot permanently turn off. Your phone will randomly select your existing car hands free or this product. You can disable "phone connection" in the Garmin settings but this will always revert to enable state after a power cycle. ie every time you power up the vehicle. You can change the selected handsfree device on your phone but if doing so when driving this action is illegal. If you turn off all Bluetooth connection from this product to your phone then no issue but then you lose live traffic updates and smart notifications from your phone to this device as these come from the Garmin app running on your phone via Bluetooth. In short - not a recommended product for any car with existing handsfree Bluetooth. ie the bulk of all modern cars. On the good side - Bluetooth issues aside, the kit purchased came with a battery powered reversing camera. This works very well and considerably reduces the installation time of a reversing camera.

Display visibility is also excellent - one of the primary reasons I purchased a Garmin product.