🧭 Garmin nüvi 42: Reliable 4.3-Inch Portable Vehicle GPS (US) (Discontinued) Review

I bought this to replace my 6 year old TomTom XL that didn't have lifetime maps and I was tired of paying for maps . Well where do I start. Firstly I have a bad signal in my car, it took about 5 minutes to connect, my tom tom usually picks up a signal in less than a minute. bad menu, was difficult to navigate, few options. The colors of the map were terrible, all grey. The device turned off during a dive after being fully charged on the first use. He said I was going about 1.5 mph when I…

Used it on a 6 hour trip to Wisconsin Dells. It's an improvement over the old Magellan GPS it replaced. I love the split screen mode which shows a picture of your exit sign. A white arrow indicates which lane you need to be in. The speed limit indicator was accurate. Whenever I passed a new speed limit sign, my GPS would change the displayed speed limit after two seconds. This is extremely useful for avoiding speeding tickets in unfamiliar areas. No GPS is perfect, and neither is this one. He…

It seemed to work much better on the product before the map update, now it doesn't find certain addresses in Newport Beach, California that it once knew. I suspect intentional sabotage to render the device obsolete and having to replace it after a few map updates, hence the free map updates in the first place. Sort of like "free" tire changes, when you buy a new set of tires, and when you let them change tires for the first time, they "find" a nail in one of the sidewalls. One thing I can't…

I was absolutely against using GPS until a friend loaned it to me for a trip. And what a life saver it turned out to be! It got me out of Miami and saved my life! So I decided to buy the same model, same size. I have USA and Canada as I am planning to visit friends in Canada and this is a good opportunity to travel to the northern part of the continent. My friend's model was older, 40LM, and had a slightly different design since he bought it 2 years ago. I am satisfied with the design and 44…

If you're not upgrading your cards, this device could be for you. But part of buying a device with lifetime maps is updating the maps. I downloaded Garmin Express to my Windows 7 system, made sure it was the latest version and then connected my Nuvi. When he finished updating the Garmin Express, I unplugged my device, put it in the car, and turned it on. Imagine my surprise when he said detailed maps were missing. This has now happened with two different Garmin Nuvi 44LM devices. The first…

After Garmin finally died a few months ago (2014) after graduating high school in 2002 and never booted again. I personally have a terrible sense of direction (for a man) and would probably get lost in my area if it wasn't for the GPS system. :) About 10 minutes after my previous one toasted, I went to Revain to find a replacement. The first thing I understood was the multitude of options and models. I then spent about 20 minutes on the Garmin website looking at what each model offered # of…

- UPDATE (August 2015) - I bought it in April 2013 and today (August 2015) it officially ceased to exist. To be honest this is the biggest POS I have ever used. It was bad from the start. As mentioned in my previous review, it doesn't even charge from day one. I had to keep turning it on. Not only that, I had to turn it on AFTER I started the car because if I started the car after plugging it in, charging wouldn't work. I had an earlier Garmin GPS (cheaper base model) and didn't have this…