Everybody’s out of step except my boy Denny. That’s sure how it seems when the subject is GPS routing. I have once again purchased a Garmin product that disappoints me. It’s not that it doesn’t have some wonderful features or that it’s shoddily made. It’s because it doesn’t handle predefined routes the way I think it should. The out-of-step feeling comes from the fact that almost no one else sees any problem at all with the manner in which the unit plays back what it calls “Saved Trips” while I see some very big problems.

I wrote that opening paragraph over a year ago, shortly after I purchased the unit. I’ve been putting off finishing this article with intentions of gaining more experience with it and verifying or disproving some of my theories. Even after all this time, I’m still not sure if some of my theories are right or wrong, but I have gained experience and I do have a more informed opinion. Things aren’t quite as bad as I thought when I wrote that first paragraph, but they are a long way from good.

I’m thinking that for you to fully appreciate my viewpoint would require more background than I’m willing to write, and definitely more than you’re wanting to read. The most basic piece of background is that I want a GPS unit to feedback to me a route I’ve predefined. Garmin zūmos do that. Most GPS units do not. They provide a route of their choosing from where you are to where you want to be. Smartphone routing apps do this too. The 396 does this exceptionally well and even integrates with smartphones to provide traffic and weather information plus Foursquare and Tripadvisor ratings for restaurants and motels. 

A rather basic requirement for following a predefined route is the ability to turn off automatic recalculation when you happen off of the route. Without this, the GPS will recalculate the route every time you miss a turn or pull over for gas. The 396 supports this but with at least one flaw. If a point on the route is blocked by construction or something else, the unit seems to take that as justification for ignoring the fact that automatic recalculation is turned off and just recalculates things anyway. Yes, I understand that that allows you to continue your travels without backtracking but it sure interferes with following an old road up to the edge of a temporary closure.

Of course, the ability to download those predefined routes is also a requirement, and here the 396 really missteps. I realize that infinitely long trips cannot be supported so I readily accept limiting or splitting trips at some point. 29 via points does seem a little low but this is the “economy” model. Maybe the more expensive zūmo XT supports more but that isn’t the real issue anyway. The real issue is that the Garmin unit does exactly what it says and splits the route into two (or more?) completely separate trips. When the endpoint of the first segment is reached, that fact is announced and it is left for some human to select and activate the next segment. To show how this didn’t have to be, I’ll make my first comparison to the previous generation of zūmos.

I own a zūmo 220 which, like the 396, is the cheapest of its generation. As far as I know, the only differences between it and its larger siblings, such as the 660, are screen size and (possibly) memory capacity. The 220 has a point limit, of course, but it appears to be somewhere around 200, and it is handled quite differently. When the limit is encountered during route import, the user is told that directions to points beyond the limit could not be calculated. Then, as those points are approached (and earlier points fall away) directions become available. There is no need to fumble around with route selection in the middle of traffic or drive on without directions while the GPS accesses the new route. Forgetting or maybe just tossing something that I think they did right in the past is the sort of thing Garmin does repeatedly.

To illustrate my more basic complaint about the 396, I’m going to again reference the 220. When a route is selected on the 220, it asks whether you want to go to the route beginning or not. If the answer is yes, it provided directions to the start point then switches to the selected route without manual intervention. If the answer is no, the route is plotted and displayed. Intersecting it at any point causes the GPS to begin guiding you along the path. It’s the same operation all along the route. You can drive off of the route and even loop backward or skip ahead and the little colored line is waiting for you to intersect it at any point. You can even deactivate the route by having the GPS take you to a motel or some such then reactivate and rejoin it whenever you’re ready.

With the 396, you MUST select one of the route’s waypoints before starting and you MUST physically reach it or manually skip it which simply selects the next one. Of course, I really don’t want to manually pick a starting point, but even if I did my routes contain mostly automatically generated point names which provide little help in selecting one.

I guess that isn’t an issue when starting a route at the very beginning but it certainly is an issue when joining (or rejoining) a route in the middle. I did try to simulate the desired operation by selecting a point prior to the one I knew to be next, driving to intersect the plotted line, then skipping (red arrow) the selected point. I’m not 100% sure this actually works without altering the path to the next point, but even if it does, it’s a complication that did not exist in the prior model.

In September, I finally got serious about using the 396 on a trip with a route that I really wanted to follow. It was an all Ohio trip I split into separate north and southbound segments but I still encountered the 29 point limit on the southbound segment and it was on this trip that I discovered the calculation setting override related to blocked roads. I went through the motions of trying it on a recently ended twelve-state trip but I already knew it wasn’t going to work. The trip was already split into sixteen segments. The 396 split most of those in half and simply refused to load the longest of them. I sort of used it for the familiar first leg but quickly switched to my beaten but still breathing 220 for the rest of trip. I did keep the 396 powered on to record a track for geotagging and to find motels but it was the 220 whose directions I followed. Garmin, you blew it again.

My Gear – Chapter 20 — Lenovo ThinkPad 13

About eleven months and a couple of My Gear chapters ago, I described my frustrating experience with a Garmin nüvi®. When the chapter ended, I had just discovered that Garmin did still produce a line of GPS units that handled routing the way I wanted which the nüvi® line most definitely did not. I explained, to a small degree, what I meant and I’ll give an even briefer explanation here. The more capable routing of Garmin’s zūmo® line accurately follows a predefined path to a destination. The simpler nüvi® style routing provides guidance to a destination along whatever path it thinks best. Once I understood the difference, I sold (at considerable loss) the nüvi® 2460LMT and bought a zūmo®. In January of 2012, the bottom of the line zūmo® 220 cost not quite $140 more than the top of the line nüvi® 2460LMT had in April of 2011 ($447 vs. $308).

As I’ve said before, “just get me there” routing is perfectly fine for most people and most uses. It is what the majority of stand-alone GPS units provide and I believe it is what most or all units built into vehicles do although I have no experience with them. The software is simpler for a number of reasons but perhaps the most apparent is that only two points need to be dealt with at any instant rather than an entire route. Reduced complexity makes the software easier to develop or cheaper to buy which makes this the right choice for most manufacturers.

But what about Garmin? Since they are supporting the more complex multi-point routing in one line of processors, why not us it in all their products? That’s a purely rhetorical question since there are any number of reasons for maintaining two different lines of software and everyone reading this has probably already thought of half a dozen. One of the most plausible is hardware cost and, though I have no way of knowing, I’m thinking there’s a pretty good chance that the hardware required to run the more complex software is more expensive and it doesn’t take much of a cost difference in high volume components to justify some additional work.

Hardware is certainly the reason that zūmo®s cost more than nüvi®s. zūmo®s are intended for use on motorcycles and, while there may or may not be increased cost associated with more powerful processors to run the software, there is certainly increased cost associated with ruggedized components and waterproof construction. Then there is the additional hardware not shipped with automotive units. Clamps for handlebar mounting and cables for hardwiring power are packaged with every zūmo®.

So zūmo®s are more expensive, zūmo®s are what’s required to do multi-point routing, and the 220 is the least expensive of the line. Is it any good? Yes it is.

The screen is considerably smaller than the nüvi® it replaced and the unit is thicker and less pocketable. But it does exactly what I want in terms of routing. It accepts pre-planned routes from the free Garmin Basecamp program and it tracks them as they were intended to be tracked. While I really don’t feel like heaping praise on a product for doing its job in a manner that I consider proper, since this seems to be the only line of GPS receivers which do that, maybe praise is deserved.

The 220 has not been entirely trouble free. Many Garmin units come bundled with “lifetime maps”. The 220 is not one of them but I added this option when I bought mine. On about the third or fourth update, I received a message telling me that there was not enough memory in the unit to hold the latest maps. That problem was fairly easily solved by installing a microSD memory card and installing the maps on it. It wasn’t long, however, before another problem appeared.

Part way through the power up sequence, the unit would, on occasion, shut itself off and it took repeated restarts to get it up and running. At least initially, the problem seemed to occur when restarting after a normal power off but there have been occasions when the thing just shuts down after being on and running for quite some time. Because of when it first appeared and the fact that it often, but not always, happens during the “loading maps” stage, I’ve attributed the problem to bad behavior following an error reading from the microSD card. Like a hole in the roof that’s only a problem when it’s too wet to fix it, I rarely even think of the problem when I’m at home with time to research it. Maybe writing this will prompt me to do something.

I’ve spent a goodly amount of space justifying the higher prices of Garmin’s zūmo®s and it may seem like I’m resigned to paying more for “proper” routing. I am. to a certain degree, but I still feel like I’m being gouged when I’m forced to pay for handlebar mounts and the like just to get a routing function that meets my needs. It’s a fact that I know of no one in the old road crowds I’ve mingled with who uses a GPS the way I do. In fact, they’re more likely to deride the whole concept of GPS in favor of paper maps. I don’t doubt that Luddite tendencies account for a certain amount of this but I’m also confident that having someone in the passenger seat to hold and read those maps and guide books affect much of their thinking and rightly so.

If the market for proper multi-point routing in four wheeled vehicles truly is infinitesimal, then Garmin is right to ignore it. However, I find it hard to believe that I’m the only person in the country who would welcome a zūmo® that was a hundred bucks cheaper because it omitted handlebar clamps and direct wire power cabling or maybe two or three hundred bucks cheaper because its housing was not water proof.

Of course, in order to appreciate better routing at a better price, they would need to know what better routing is and Garmin’s not going to tell them. I have found nothing on Garmin’s website or in their literature that explains the difference between zūmo® routing and other routing and not much that even acknowledges it. My impression is that very few Garmin employees, and none in marketing or sales, know the difference. It falls on vendors like River Pilot Tours and MAD Maps to at least hint at a difference by pointing out that some of their products are only compatible with specific GPS models.

ALERT: At the time of writing, Spot It Out, who both River Pilot Tours and Mad Maps had partnered with to deliver their GPS based products, has ceased operation. River Pilot Tours has taken over delivery of their products although purchase of the turn-by-turn product is not directly offered through the website. Zūmo® style routing is required and the company is asking customers to contact it by email or telephone to make sure they have hardware capable of running the product before purchasing it. It is not yet known how or if MAD Maps’ turn-by-turn products can be obtained.

My Gear – Chapter 16 — Nikon D5100

This product took me to within one U-turn of abandoning Garmin completely. It replaced a Garmin Quest which was, in my opinion and for my purposes, nearly perfect. I talk about that here. I could plot routes on my computer then transfer them to the Quest where they were used to guide me along the route just as desired. I would still be using a Quest today if Garmin hadn’t stopped providing map updates around 2005. It wasn’t the roads as much as the POI (Points of Interest). A rerouted expressway or a new exit probably won’t affect any of my routes which tend to follow old roads that haven’t moved in years. But I was using the Quest to find places to eat and sleep and, as time went on, more and more of the mom ‘n’ pop establishments in its data base closed down while the Quest continued to believe them very much alive.

The wild goose chases were aggravating and not being able to depend on there being a functioning motel where the GPS reported one was even more troublesome. With a west coast trip planned for 2011, I decided early in the year to update my guidance system. I did not feel tied to Garmin but some internet searching and forum combing indicated it was still probably my best choice.

Since being able to accept and play back a pre-plotted route is critical for me, I did my best to assure that I got a unit capable of that. It turned out that my best wasn’t good enough though it was awhile before I realized that. Through internet searches, GPS forum exchanges, and email conversations with vendors and Garmin employees I came to believe the 2460LMT would do the job. This unit was at or near the top of Garmin’s line of “automotive” products and, before too long, at or near the top of the “Most Irritating Things I’ve Ever Owned” list.

I ordered directly from Garmin and soon the 2460 was in my hands. After a little playing I tried downloading one of my pre-planned routes. The unit “froze”. Cycling power brought it back and I tried again. In time I realized that the freeze would eventually end on its own and tried various sequences of power, connect, and download but none produced a route on the nüvi. Through a series of emails and phone calls I reached someone at Garmin who seemed to really care. She tried her best. She ran experiments and asked questions and passed information back and forth with untouchable engineering personnel. Her best wasn’t quite good enough either. I did manage to get a tiny test route to appear but my real routes seemed to disappear. In what I took as a lame brushoff but which turned out to be a sorry truth, the engineering folks passed along that “some routes take a really long time.” I’ll skip the rest of the gorey details and let it be known that I did eventually get all of my routes loaded but it was always hours and sometimes days before a route was processed and usable on the nüvi.

Not surprisingly, my opinion of Garmin products was pretty low at this point but it got lower. The unit seemed to work fairly well as I traveled around the area and I even used it to successfully follow a couple of short test routes. I acquired the unit at the beginning of May. In early June I set out for a Lincoln Highway Association conference near Lake Tahoe. The nüvi contained routes intended to guide me along some of the Lincoln Highway’s historic alignments. That the nüvi had flaws became apparent rather quickly but it took awhile to understand them.

The two most onerous nüvi shortcomings are the inability to turn off automatic recalculation and its treatment of each segment as an independent route. A route is a start and end point and some number of intermediate waypoints. At least that’s the way the Quest and I and most routing software sees them. nüvis, however, see routes as nothing more than a list of start and end point pairs. When one point is reached, the nüvi then calculates a path to the next. Since it is always ready to recalculate a route, it does this, not from the point just reached, but from the current position. Here is the sort of real world problem this creates:

Your pre-plotted route contains a right turn just beyond a waypoint. The nüvi guides you to the waypoint and begins calculating a path to the next one. This is hardly instantaneous and you’ve passed that planned turn before it is done. The nüvi is automatically recalculating from your current position so it simply tells you to turn right on some other road then guides you to that next point along a completely different route than the one intended.

If all you want to do is reach the nearest Starbucks as quickly as possible, this behavior is just fine. It is far from fine if you want to reach that Starbucks along a particular road — like the Lincoln Highway or Historic Route 66.

The nüvi 2460LMT is not a bad product. It and all the other members of the nüvi line do what they are intended to do quite well. They are, in fact, the right device for the vast majority of GPS users. The problem is the way Garmin classifies its products. There is a line of products that does routing properly; The way the Quest does and the way I want. But it (zūmo^®) is marketed as a motorcycle line and it took someone outside of Garmin to set me straight. I replaced the nüvi® 2460LMT in less than a year. When I tell of that replacement in a future My Gear installment, I may also tell you what I really think of those silly names.

My Gear – Chapter 14 — Lenovo T400