The Garmin 1450t is the first gps I've ever owned that I leave up all the time just to see it work. This is the third serious business purchase I've made in three months to offset the purposeful ditching of all-in-one phone devices that do everything merely okay.
This device, with the no questions asked warranty, cost about $200 and came with a screen protector and a fancy anti-friction pad that is really good. By itself it's cheaper and comes with an awesome windshield mount that works like nothing else (I just use this most of the time because I like the gps to the left of my head right next to the window, real close).
It is almost perfect. The tracking is fast, and the maps are accurate down to where you are in the parking lot. When you pull out of a parking lot and briefly increase speed on the road, the map will do a sort of elastic zoom out to find the best distance for how fast you're going, and it readjusts itself once in a while really smoothly like it is really a camera man.
Unlike other units (and especially phones with gps), this one keeps up with quick turns pretty much exactly as fast as you're moving. This speed translates to a smooth framerate, which is one of the reasons I like to just keep it on even when I don't need it. It's fun watching something be so competent.
One thing that really impressed me was the lane assist features for the freeways. While you're a couple miles away from the turn off, an outline of all of the possible turns is sitting in the top corner, with the correct ones highlighted. When you get close, a full portrait of what the signs look on a illustrated picture of what you see pops up and takes up the full screen with big arrows showing the correct lanes. It's easy for me to see why the map updates are such large downloads if they have this correct for every city in the U.S. It looks very cool to anyone who is in the passenger seat, how it just recreates visually exactly what is up ahead for about 7 seconds.
Maybe I'm behind the curve, but I was impressed by it's intimate knowledge of the speed limit for defy little street I am on. Even when the streets are arbitrarily 5 mph faster in real life despite being just like the surroundig streets in every way - the damn Garmin had the data. And of course next to the speed limit it shows how fast I'm going, with the numbers turning red when I'm speeding. All of this is done very quickly and IMO it would take a trained eye to see any lag between reality and the screen.
I really would like to see a gps with a game-like frame rate one day. This one has the best frame rate out of any gps I've ever owned, although I'm sure there are better ones out there for a lot more money.
...:.:
Nothing like around about trivialities as my personal life crumbles.
.......
Battery life on this thing is just awesome. I had charged it through the USB port overnight while it updated maps and software, and without plugging it in to the lighter socket in the car it has a one week battery life of average daily use on default settings.
This would make it the third thing I am very pleased with lately. First came the Nokia C3-01, a basic candy bar phone with an old school numerical keypad. Stainless steel, super thin, and 4 days of battery life proven with real use. Then came the 4th generation iPod touch, the most satisfying PDA/music player/Internet machine/Skype device I could ask for.
So tired I was of this trend, that of smartphones taking on more and more tasks while becoming increasingly ham fisted at all of them despite cramming good hardware into all of them. What will be the excuse when everything is dual core in 2011? Over-ambitious software design again? Since when had a lack of communication between hardware and software been an advantage? If everyone is going to end up imitating Apple for every new generation of throw-away Android phones, they might want to also copy the lack of choppiness in basic functions like swiping between desktops and pinching and zooming.
This device, with the no questions asked warranty, cost about $200 and came with a screen protector and a fancy anti-friction pad that is really good. By itself it's cheaper and comes with an awesome windshield mount that works like nothing else (I just use this most of the time because I like the gps to the left of my head right next to the window, real close).
It is almost perfect. The tracking is fast, and the maps are accurate down to where you are in the parking lot. When you pull out of a parking lot and briefly increase speed on the road, the map will do a sort of elastic zoom out to find the best distance for how fast you're going, and it readjusts itself once in a while really smoothly like it is really a camera man.
Unlike other units (and especially phones with gps), this one keeps up with quick turns pretty much exactly as fast as you're moving. This speed translates to a smooth framerate, which is one of the reasons I like to just keep it on even when I don't need it. It's fun watching something be so competent.
One thing that really impressed me was the lane assist features for the freeways. While you're a couple miles away from the turn off, an outline of all of the possible turns is sitting in the top corner, with the correct ones highlighted. When you get close, a full portrait of what the signs look on a illustrated picture of what you see pops up and takes up the full screen with big arrows showing the correct lanes. It's easy for me to see why the map updates are such large downloads if they have this correct for every city in the U.S. It looks very cool to anyone who is in the passenger seat, how it just recreates visually exactly what is up ahead for about 7 seconds.
Maybe I'm behind the curve, but I was impressed by it's intimate knowledge of the speed limit for defy little street I am on. Even when the streets are arbitrarily 5 mph faster in real life despite being just like the surroundig streets in every way - the damn Garmin had the data. And of course next to the speed limit it shows how fast I'm going, with the numbers turning red when I'm speeding. All of this is done very quickly and IMO it would take a trained eye to see any lag between reality and the screen.
I really would like to see a gps with a game-like frame rate one day. This one has the best frame rate out of any gps I've ever owned, although I'm sure there are better ones out there for a lot more money.
...:.:
Nothing like around about trivialities as my personal life crumbles.
.......
Battery life on this thing is just awesome. I had charged it through the USB port overnight while it updated maps and software, and without plugging it in to the lighter socket in the car it has a one week battery life of average daily use on default settings.
This would make it the third thing I am very pleased with lately. First came the Nokia C3-01, a basic candy bar phone with an old school numerical keypad. Stainless steel, super thin, and 4 days of battery life proven with real use. Then came the 4th generation iPod touch, the most satisfying PDA/music player/Internet machine/Skype device I could ask for.
So tired I was of this trend, that of smartphones taking on more and more tasks while becoming increasingly ham fisted at all of them despite cramming good hardware into all of them. What will be the excuse when everything is dual core in 2011? Over-ambitious software design again? Since when had a lack of communication between hardware and software been an advantage? If everyone is going to end up imitating Apple for every new generation of throw-away Android phones, they might want to also copy the lack of choppiness in basic functions like swiping between desktops and pinching and zooming.
