Garmin StreetPilot i5 Review

My wife got my a Garmin StreetPilot i5 GPS for Christmas because I have been on the road some much latley. The i5 is one of the cheaper Garmins but Kelly did her homework and figured I would like it. Well, I do! It may not have some of the bells and whistles that the more expensive versions have (bluetooth, real time traffic, browseable maps, ect.) but it is a neat little package.

When I first opened the package I was concerned about how small the thing is but once I set it up in the car I realized it was just fine. Especially since I needed something small that I can pack from trips and move from car to car easilly. It tracks well, the user interface is really easy to use and the directions are perfect. I hardwired the power cord into the MINI so that I can easilly mount the gps and don't have to worry about a cord going all over the place. I did buy a 2nd power cord to take on trips.

Only two complaints:
1. I wish that when you where naviagating to a point (and not just driving around) that it would switch your arrival time back and forth with your actual speed. I like knowing my speed and find that if I have a good idea where I am going that I turn the directions off until I get to a point where I need them. Seems like this would be a nice user pref feature that you could change.

2. Battery life. If you aren't running this thing off of external power it devours batteries. On a recent trip to Virginia, the ciggarette lighter in the car I rented (Ford Focus, yea!) didn't work with the power adapter. Used to run into this problem back in the days of having car kits for CD players (You remember them, power adapter to the cigarette lighter and the cassette adapter!). So I had to buy a bunch of AA batteries. Specs on the model say that battery life is 6 hours. It may be but when battery life gets low (after maybe 3 hours) then the audio is turned off. This means you have to keep looking at the map becuase the unit stops giving you voice commands. So in 3 days I went through 8-10 AA batteries to keep the thing powered on with Audio, very dissappointing. I do plan on buying some rechargeable batteries and a USB power supply so that I can recharge the batteries at night in a hotel room if I run into this again.

All in all this is a great gps if you are looking for a cheap sat nav to get you around in a strange place.