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I pick alot of navigation devices, so I was inflamed about the 1690 as there was mighty hype with this unit. The nuvi 1690 is Garmin's original top of the line model. It features the modern Garmin nuLink service which includes things like traffic, weather, gas prices, movie times, etc. It's really great if you like that kind of stuff. It's basically a considerable better version of MSN Reveal if you've ever stale that service.
I have a nuvi 1490t and 765t as well, so I'm going to form comparisons of the units. First thing I must say is that this unit acquires a satelite signal Speedy. I'm talking less than 10 seconds fleet. I remember with my musty nuvi 350 I customary to have to sit in my car and wait a few minutes for the unit to derive a signal, not with this 1690. The same can be said with the 1490t as far as quick satelite acquisition. With the 1690 however, I can actually score a signal inside of my house without standing directly by the window, which is the first intention that can do that in my experiences. I would imagine it's obliging in a city with great buildings like NYC with this kind of signal strength though I haven't tested there. As far as navigation, it navigates as well as any other Garmin contrivance so no changes there. Directions are very right and re-route calculations if you miss a turn are posthaste. Text-to-speech is top-notch as well and is very lawful and determined with pronunciation of street names. Something Garmin has done with the newer software in all of their current units is increased the size of the text in the green bar when you're navigating. This is grand because the text in that green bar faded to be too exiguous to perform out sometimes while you were driving. The size and thickness of the font of the arrival time (which can be changed to another category) and run indicator have also been increased. The accelerate indicator font now turns red whenever you go above the hurry limit. I've noticed that the slight rush limit signs are also now on practically all roads and not objective highways. They are also extremely lawful and update as soon as I pass the valid bustle limit designate I kid you not. Another thing to trace with the 1690 is you now have an option to change the conceal layout. You can have it where the device mask itself is smaller and a list of four categories (three choosable, can't change accelerate indicator) are to the good of the approximately 3.5" sized plan cloak (ie. Arrival Time, Direction, Distance to Destination, etc.) You can now also flick your finger on the conceal like an iphone to navigate the menus instead of pressing the up/down arrow which is tidy. Some have complained about the responsiveness of the keyboard, however, I feel it's the same as all the previous nuvi models I've owned. When I press a key it gets immediately entered though there have been a couple rare times it has taken a second to register. Nothing serious though, it's very useable. Also, the way camouflage redraw rate during a route is like a flash, so the car on the hide moves along nice and level-headed like both the 765t and 1490t (and unlike the nuvi 350, 660, etc. which hops along instead of glides) .
The cover on the 1690 in terms of quality is exactly like the cloak on the 765t. This is a bit of a disappointment for me because the hide on the 1490t is far genuine to every other nuvi model. The 1490t's shroud is of course larger (5" instead of 4.3" like on the 1690) . The 1490t's conceal is a remarkable better veil because not only are colors more bright, but viewing angles are Considerable better. I was hoping the 1690 would have the same shroud, but in a 4.3" version. Not the case. I uploaded a couple of hide shots of a 1490t and 1690 side-by-side so you can perceive the comparison in hide size.
The speaker in the 1690 is the same as the one in the 1490t which is a gigantic plus because that speaker is LOUD. The 1690 and 1490t models have better speakers than any other previous nuvi model. If you have the volume turned up to 100% it's actually TOO loud. Highway driving with windows down would be the only probable scenario for 100%. So considerable credit to Garmin for including a grand speaker.
The nuLink services are sterling if you're into that kind of stuff. Traffic is one of the titanic features included. Garmin includes a 2-year subscription to the service which is $5 a month thereafter I maintain. Now WHY they smooth have the dinky popup ads demonstrate like in all their other "free lifetime traffic" models I have no concept. These ads for varoius companies that pay Garmin will pop up on your camouflage from time to time, like if your vehicle is stopped at a traffic light or you're searching for a POI. Quandary is there's really no scheme to permanently derive rid of the ads (which annoy me greatly, but some others don't seem to have an exclaim with them) . Weather is nice as you can idea up to a 7-day forecast in your modern station or another position you can manually determine. The White Pages feature is expansive as well as you can view up a person by first and last name and drive directly to their address on file. It uses the data connection of the unit to win the info, so it'll be up to date since it's accessing the Internet. Google Local Search is an beneficial nuLink feature. It basically makes your POI database 10 times larger and always up to date since it accesses the Internet for it's data. It's separate from the internal POI database, so you would resolve one or the other to search for POI. The Gas Prices search is proper as well as you can search whatever space you're in for the lowest gas prices. In my experiences it's been very proper (gets the data from customers' credit card receipts) and will present you under the ticket it displays the last time it was updated... ie. Today, Yesterday, 3 Days ago, etc. It usually says Today or Yesterday the times I've customary it.
Traffic on this unit is Stout. I say stout because all the other units with free traffic are atrocious because they're constantly feeding erroneous traffic data to the unit via the integrated FM receiver. With the 1690 it uses at&t's data network for nuLink, so traffic data is Distinguished more true and can be delivered to the unit powerful faster making it more up to the cramped. I did a real-time side by side comparison of the 1690's traffic data and the 1490t's free traffic. Judge they'd be identical because they both utilize Navteq traffic? Reflect again. I searched for all traffic incidents nearby my recent station. I'm not exhaggerating when I say the 1690 brought up double the amount of incidents that the 1490t brought up. Impartial to test it out I drove to the closest traffic incident nearby and obvious enough it was there. The 1490t didn't even respond it existed. Also, there were times where they'd both have the same traffic incident, but different data (ie. 3 min delay as opposed to 10 min delay) . I drove to a well-liked incident as well to peep which one was more suitable. Again, the 1690 was more right. I select it's because the 1490t calm had older data that hadn't yet been updated. That gives you an view of how considerable better traffic on the 1690 is compared to all other Garmin models. AT&T's EDGE data network seems to be everywhere as well, so chances are if your at&t cell phone has reception, so will the internal receiver of the 1690. I have MSN Stammer on my 765t which I have works salubrious... when it wants to work. Predicament is... it never works. It takes forever to download data and reception is bad in alot of places with MSN Grunt. Not at all the case with the 1690 and at&t's network. In addition to having expansive coverage, it downloads data mercurial which is stout. Once the scheme is powered on (and has cellular network reception), you'll have all the updated traffic info in no more than a few minutes. I really like the whole "connected" opinion when it comes to traffic.
The border around the unit is about the same width as the 1490t, despite being a smaller unit. It's also thicker than the 1490t. I grunt that's because they had to fit the cellular radio module with sim card inside the unit. The shaded border is a piano sad enact and a fingerprint magnet. The rear of the unit has a rubberized enact. The cradle mount is gracious because it's powered... meaning you straggle the power directly into the cradle and simply insert/remove the draw. The 1490t doesn't have this kind of dock... it requires you to walk the cable directly into the unit for power.
Overall, I'm very tickled with the 1690. I unbiased hope they produce a 5" version soon because I worship the conceal size of my 1490t so grand. If I had to settle, however, it'd be the 1690 because of the Garmin nuLink service which is without a doubt a huge and useful feature. Perhaps everyone won't have the same colossal experience that I've had thus far with this unit, but it's worth the risk in my thought.
The Garmin product line is customary enough at this point that this GPS has most of the features you need and works. But:
First there is quality control. My first unit went abet because it would continuously tumble wireless data communications. The first and second unit have veil flicker. Turns out (per Garmin on 10/28) '[screen flicker] is piece of an drawl we've seen with some of the earlier devices that were manufactured. This has been fixed in the devices that have left us since then. The only diagram to fix that is to procure that in for an RMA.' So the second unit is going attend too; we'll scrutinize what the third unit brings... (Update: Unit #3 had a pixel stuck on green - we'll inspect what unit #4 will bring....) In addition, there are bugs that should have been caught with rudimentary testing (the wireless signal strength meter shows 5 bars whatever the signal strength; diagram reboots when routing around traffic) or proofreading (documentation confuses GPS and wireless signal) . Oh and the 1690 hasn't even been entered as a line item in the wait on database.
Second there are customer benefit policies. If you've received two units that are defective; both because of manufacturing/QC issues, Garmin expects *YOU* to pay for the return, and then 'The turn around time should be between 10-14 days from the time we receive the map.' Advance on! Ever heard of "sorry, we screwed up, the select is on us"? Or failing that, how about reach replacement?
Third there is Garmin's product benefit. It former to be the best in the GPS world. It has turned into a diabolical shambles of people that barely understand the product walking you through level 1 scripts (reboot, reinstall, reset) ... and when they're done with that they initiate again at the beginning.
This is a particular impart with this map because, as a connected method, you will suffer from bugs and performance problems, some of them real-time, introduced by Garmin, Google, Navteq (traffic services), Navteqs (maps) and the AT&T wireless network. Let me give you an example. There is construction two miles from where I am. It shows up on the traffic place operated by Navteq. It doesn't note up on the unit. This could be a scrape with the network, a pickle with the Navteq traffic service, a scrape with the firmware (what is it supposed to show? ), perhaps a blueprint jam, a contractual scrape (is traffic data throttled to conserve bandwidth? ), or interactions between all of the above. Having tried unsuccessfully to choose a similar mutter with Garmin on the 775 (when my GPS failed to expose that the entire city of Pittsurgh was closed down due to the G20 gathering) I know there isn't a snowball's chance in hell of getting this resolved. It does seem that there is a small more traffic information on this blueprint than on the FM services, but that isn't saying worthy.
Fourth, the battery is not user replaceable. The claim of "4 hours battery life" on this page turns to "up to 3 hours" in the manual, and under normal employ will speedily turn to "30 minutes maximum". This is a pickle because it makes the unit's pedestrian mode useless.
Finally, if you opt out of receiving advertisements, traffic services won't work any more. As you will be paying for those in two year's time (assuming the battery hasn't died by then), that's unreasonable. And unless you give Garmin wholesale rights to your area data, none of the area based stuff will work. This is about as unreasonable as Facebook claiming ownership rights to anything posted on their region.
Having said all that, I do regain the 1690 a shapely frosty gadget. The implementation has some rough edges but that will likely improve over time. If you want something that unprejudiced works, you're better off waiting for a few months; as a non-essential early adopter's toy it would be sizable - if Garmin got its act together.
This is fair a typical Garmin unit, I like Garmin better than most of the other companies primarily for how they handle points of interest. I was disappointed the Google option is a separate search not integrated into the notable search but the Google search was useful and I could have seen using this as the default POI search tool, if I was going to withhold the unit. Tom Tom did this same which I don't secure, it would have made more sense to combine the integrated items with the Google search, but I an not a programmer and don't know the challenges with accomplishing this.
The reason I really do not like this item and I am returning it, is because of the pop ups for advertisements. This item was over $400 which is a premium to pay for a GPS, I don't mind paying for a yearly service agreement and becuase this is only a two year subscription that comes with the unit I am paying for it. I objective don't ask to bag pop ups for local businesses, not only is it unaceptable but it is a distraction and it is dangerous. For example: I chose the option to exhibit the closest hospitals, now you would win if I am looking for a hospital it would be an urgent whine. I got a microscopic blue pop up banner Target - Check out this week's deal on-the-go. This same pop up showed up on a few other occasions while I had the regular navigation design up as well. This is the reason I am giving it such a obscene rating and returning it.
