Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

As I write this, I've had and used my DriveSmart 70 for about three days, including one long trip. I'll update this review if anything changes substantially. In some ways this is a very nice GPS. The screen is large, clear and easy to read (though also somewhat glare-prone), the speaker is loud and clear, and the basic mapping/navigating functions are excellent. The voice-command feature also works about as well as can be expected-- the basic underlying tech is still immature, so allowances must be made. But.... Garmin got _so_ much else wrong! Indeed, I hardly know where to begin... First, there's the computer-link cable. It's a mini-USB, not the by-now-standard micro USB. And, for a $350 product, it's ridiculously short. I had to rearrange my entire desktop during setup due to this short cable-- something I've had to do twice already because my computer failed to recognize the first GPS I received. (I'm not counting this failure against Garmin in this review, except in that it made the short cable problem twice as annoying. Defective products can happen to anyone.) And I'll have to do so again for every update, despite the fact that (like pretty much everyone else these days) I have half a drawerful of nice, long micro-USB cables just sitting around waiting to be needed. Indeed, many of them came free with much-cheaper products, and yet somehow are far longer than the one that came with my top-of-the-line luxury-item GPS. Get with the times, Garmin! Speaking of cables... My vehicle, as is quite common, has only one 12-volt receptacle. I keep a USB converter-thingie in it to recharge my phone, and planned to power my GPS with a USB cord plugged into a spare slot there. But, apparently, Garmin has seen fit to utilize the 12-volt plug wire as an antenna for its traffic services, so that's impossible and I'm forced to spend more money on yet another adapter, which will also further clutter my vehicle. If an external wire is required for an antenna, I'm fine with that-- I understand that there's such a thing as the laws of physics. But... Why not use an additional wire, at least optionally, to keep the USB power-option open? Worst of all is the fact that apparently you cannot use the features in the much-vaunted "Smart Link" app unless the app is currently up and running actively on your phone with the screen lit up. (In my case this is an Apple 6+.) While I find it difficult to ever establish a link at all, when I do manage one the phone goes to sleep after a few seconds and the Garmin immediately informs me that the link has been broken (though phone calls still route through the GPS just fine). Since I have another program that I need to run while driving, that pretty much renders everything connected to the Drive Smart feature-- which is what I mostly bought the GPS for in the first place-- useless in practical terms. Too bad I didn't figure this out until _after_ I bought the $20 weather and $5 traffic subscriptions! (I'll also add here that the weather subscription, which so far I've only been able to view on my phone, not on the GPS's screen, looks nigh unto useless anyway. All it does is color highways to indicate poor weather conditions, with a legend so tiny and hard to read that I can't tell which color indicates what hazard. Nor can you "expand" the legend to make it easier to read. If the app ever actually does send a weather alert to the GPS's screen or even ever displays anything useful at all there, which of course is where I need and expect it, at this point I'll actually be surprised. I've grown very cynical very quickly about Garmin.) The documentation is about useless, as well. This device comes with only an ultra-basic startup guide; I had to hunt and poke about the Internet for most of an hour to locate an online owner's manual, and even then I found it only via following a well-hidden side-link. Sadly, it offered no advice whatsoever about intermittent/difficult bluetooth connections with Drive Smart or how this problem might be rectified. When I chased down the "Support" page I found out that phone support is only available during standard business hours. When I tried to use e-mail support, I was asked for the product's serial number-- which I found no instructions anywhere telling me how to find. Finally I pulled it off the phone's bluetooth link screen, and now (since this is a Friday evening) I'll have to wait up to five or six days for a reply. By the way, it's revealing of how poor the documentation is that I'm not entirely certain I've yet managed to actually access the "advanced" weather or traffic features that I've for-sure paid for. At no point have I seen a single clear explanation of the service. What I'm currently seeing on my screens doesn't match up at all with what's promised on Amazon, but the actual product documentation is entirely mute on the matter. I originally bought this GPS because a) I thought a large-screen standalone device would be easier and safer to use behind the wheel, and even more b) for the advanced smartphone-linked features. While this device covers the basics well-- it's a decent 7" basic GPS with an okay voice command system-- it also has many built-in annoyances (like the cable issues), buggy, ill-supported software and costly add-on features that (so far as I can determine to date) offer little value. Indeed, I'd send the thing back except for that fact that, as mentioned above, my first unit didn't work and I'd feel guilty returning them both. I'm actually not all that difficult to please-- I give 4 and 5 star reviews to electronic products all the time, including less-than-perfect ones. But I also give lower ratings to those that deserve it, and I must say that despite some excellent individual traits, as a package this unit has so far been a major disappointment. For those who need it, here's a link to the owner's manual. [...] Edited June 9, 2016--- After Garmin sent me a pretty useless reply to my e-mail query for help, I finally got on the phone with them today. I spoke to two male techs, both of whom were highly competent and did their absolute best to make me happy-- I want to make sure that any Garmin folks who might read the rest of this are absolutely clear that in my opinion these guys did an excellent job and are probably among your company's finest people-assets. They were _wonderful_ and gave me their all. However... They also failed to solve my problem, becasue once again the culprit is poor design. It turns out that the Drivesmart series of GPS's (and possibly other Garmins as well-- I'm not completely 100% clear on the matter) cannot access both the antenna-fed datastream and the one originating in the smartphone at the same time, so the device simply defaults to the signal that arrives first and remains locked there until it's powered down. The only way to access the paid stream, in other words, is to turn the GPS on using internal battery power-- no antenna-cable attached, thus blocking the free data-- and then hooking up the power cable only after the phone linkage takes effect This is because otherwise the free-version traffic data always arrives first. As for the weather, you can only view the Doppler-type overlay a) when actually driving a programmed route (not just cruising along with the GPS on) and b) when there's also simultaneously an active weather alert. _Both_ preconditions must be met. The rest of the time, it does absolutely nothing. You cannot use it just to check the radar on a nice, large screen whenever you might wish to; you must be in the act of actively navigating to a programmed destination. Garmin's promotional materials are at best unclear regarding this, and at worst borderline deceptive. Lastly, for now at least-- My bluetooth connection problems were apparently due to the fact that the app must be restarted every single time a bluetooth connection is broken and remade to the Garmin. (It can, however, be running in the background-- I incorrectly stated otherwise above, confused by all the other issues I was simultaneous dealing with.) If you stop somewhere en route to your destination, leave bluetooth range with your phone, and then start driving again you must completely shut down and restart your phone's Smart Link app each and every time or else the data-link will fail. (So far I've not yet had to do this when using just the phone-part of the link. Only the date-side has failed to reconnect for me.) Two stars I said, and two stars I'm sticking with. In fact, I feel now that they're better-earned than ever. Update 30 June 2016-- I continue to have so many problems with the Smartlink failing to connect to the GPS that I intend to delete the app entirely later this evening. It's a much bigger pain in the behind than it's worth. Not only is it a huge power drain on my phone-- especially if I forget to turn it off after leaving the car-- I'm also sick and tired of being required to hit the "okay" button every time the connection fails. Which, naturally, is timed so that I either have to sit and wait half a minute or so for the message to come up or else reach halfway across my car just as I've begin to drive. At this point I can no longer persuade the phone to connect at all, except for phone calls. That part continues to work well.