Customer Reviews:
Spectacular August 7, 2008 6 out of 8 found this review helpful
After having Garmin's for many years and finally getting completely fed up with their multi-hoop jumping map updates and brain damaged customer support I dropped my Nuvi 660 on ebay and replaced it with the Dash. Dash has made consistent software improvements and responds to user feature requests, the device is twice as good now as the day I bought it.
It is just absolutely excellent.
Makes Los Angeles Almost Bearable. Could Be Better But by Far the Best! August 6, 2008 7 out of 9 found this review helpful
I've Been using the Dash in Los Angeles for about a month. Love it!
It's already saved me a ton of time and gas. There's a monthly fee of $10 for the internet service (which you totally need to make the Dash do it's thing) but I figure that I've already made that $ back when time and gas are considered. The Dash showed me a few new ways to work and each of them cut my normal commute from about 45min to about 35min. To me that's a huge deal. Especially considering that those 10 mins are mins that I would be stuck in traffic. Not just 10 mins of a nice drive in the countryside.
I don't consider myself a technology geek and I'm really not that interested in all the GPS whistles and bells. I bought the Dash for the traffic stuff. And it's by far the best traffic I've seen on any GPS device. That being said a few of the features are really great. The movie search feature works flawlessly and comes in handy. It shows you all the movies and times and it's really easy to navigate. Also the Dash allows you to send your addresses to your car from the internet. This also works very easily and saves a lot of hassle. And finally the yahoo search engine works great too.
Yes, the Dash can be a little slow. Also the Dash figures out the routes first and THEN computes the traffic for each route. This can be slightly annoying and requires you to make some of your own decisions along your route. But still...what are we comparing it to? There's nothing else like the Dash on the market. And besides some of the problems Dash will probably fix. They've recently sent out some fixes that address a lot of the problems I read about in the other reviews. Cool. Really, despite the drawbacks it's still the best GPS out there. There's no comparison because it's the only one of its kind!
Highly Recommended!
After using it for a few months, I didn't like the device. August 5, 2008 3 out of 4 found this review helpful
After using this device for a few months, I feel that the only thing I like about this device is the "Yahoo: local". It helps me find tel# of restaurants or businesses I want to contact.
I am very frustrated that there is no detour function. Frequently, I got stuck on small roads due to accidents or road block, and this device route me to nowhere. I wish I still have my TOMTOM where I can avoid certain roads and find detour immediately.
Alternative routes are useless because you can't see the name of the roads and the details of each route before choosing.
I am still stuck on traffic jams on highway and it didn't route me off the route.
GPS is not vital for me now because I don't travel much. Just for work and school. I just hope that they will update these feature in the future.
Has a mind of it's own August 4, 2008 4 out of 9 found this review helpful
The unit I got is a v 2.1.0.6. I have gone through a number of Copilot/TomTom/Garmin Nuvi devices and compared to these, the product is still not ready. I was really hoping that the live traffic features will offset all the gripes about the device, but stumbled over a few things that in my case are unacceptable for daily users.
My biggest complaint about this unit is that the Traffic service has a mind of it's own. It desides when to connect/disconnect sparadically (I am in NYC area), so coverage should not be an issue. I was also never able to connec the unit to my WIFI network. You can enter all the settings, but there is no CONNECT button per se. I guess the unit should be smart to know when to use which network, byut I found myself in NOT CONNECTED state for hours while at home or driving. HArd booting the device (2-3 minutes) seemed to get it to connect..sometimes. Since the POI database on the device is subpar to all other GPS devices on the market, this is a huge issue for me. BTW, Yahoo Local search is wonderfull.. when it works.
Besides the ususal gripes about the unit size, I noticed a that I was hitting the the top menu button accidentaly quite alot while driving. Now, the problem this presents is that once you hit it, it stops redrawing the map, and takes a good 3-7 seconds to get back to where you were. Now, while driving this means missing your turn.
Also, I apreciate the frequent voice warnings for turns, but they can get overly annoying, while taking a turn around ramp at I95 the Dash told me to "KEEP on I95 ramp" 6 times !! Now that is annoying in my book.. The Text to speech is also not completely evolved in street name prononciation when compared to Garmin Nuvi.
Lots and lots of things still need to be worked out before Dash subscription charges will make sense to me.
Great interactive device August 4, 2008 2 out of 5 found this review helpful
I love the Dash - It provides everything I need from a navigation device with the added benefit of traffic and internet searches. As more people use the Dash, the traffic will become even more accurate. I live in DC and so far it is working well. I also like the feature of managing your account online at my.dash.net.
A few drawbacks are that it is larger than most model GPS units and I find it a tad hard to view if the sun is really bright.
|