Garmin DriveSmart 61 NA LMT-S with Lifetime Maps/Traffic, Live Parking, Bluetooth,WiFi, Smart Notifications, Voice Activation, Driver Alerts, TripAdvisor, Foursquare

fantastic! wonderful! Brilliantly designed! That is my impression of the Garmin 61 NA LMT-S! After using a Garmin Nuvi for several years I decided to upgrade. What an upgrade this unit is!!I While I don't actually travel interstate much anymore after being retired for 26 years, I and my wife do love to just meander around the countryside. With a good GPS unit there are few if any surprises and no unpleasant surprises at all. Just so you know, I spent most of my adult life driving from coast to coast in the USA and Canada. What a blessing a tool such as this would have been had such been available in my time on the road! It would have saved me the inconvenience of carrying two suitcases full of city maps and adding to my collection almost weekly! One can't help but note some of the reviews complaining about how hard it is to set up this unit. I beg to differ. While the menu is lengthy it's really simple if one will just take the time to read the instructions ... it's a breeze! If one is unfamiliar with note books, computers, smart phones, and so on then do please take the time to absorb the instructions. You can do it if you have any aptitude at all for this sort of thing! And you will find the time you spent with the instructions most rewarding. The large display make the street names easy to read even for my old eyes! The audio and visual notices [school zones, curves, speed limits, and so on are great tools! But they are there if you like them and easy to disable if you don't care for them. Customizing the display to one's personal likes is easy ... read the instructions. [I know fellows ... reading instructions can be so ego deflating ... but if you get off by your self and read 'em no one will ever know!] One accessory I would recommend would be a good friction type dash mount. Great addition! It allows the unit to quickly and easily be removed from sight while leaving no telltale marks on the inside of the windshield! Well worth the small additional expense. BTW ... I have absolutely no financial, familial, or emotional connections to Garmin at all. My only interest is my fascination with the excellence and functionality of this unit.

This GPS has everything - great screen, the latest Garmin guidance maps updatable free for life, free traffic for life with your phone app or a GTM 36 traffic receiver/power converter, Voice Command that actually works, warning when you come to a speed camera, and optional backup camera with the separate camera kit and power/receiver unit. Garmin has re-programmed the school, railroad crossing, and warning ribbons so they slide back after giving the warning, overcoming the objections of early adopters who complained that the warnings covered up street names. If you get the back up camera kit, have a professional garage install it. Costs about $200 for installation. The back up camera works very well. However, the backup camera's wireless GTM 30 receiver/power cord that replaces the standard power cord for the GPS unit in the car will not pick up traffic. And the receiver/power cord that does pick up traffic - the GTM 36 - won't pick up the wireless signal from the back up camera. So you have to use your phone to get the lifetime traffic feature if you also want a back up camera. If you buy this GPS, get the Charger City 9055 GPS Vent Mount to go with it and mount it on an air vent on your dash. It stays on more solidly than the windshield mount that comes with the Garmin DriveSmart 61 NA LMT-S. [The Garmin vent mount doesn't work on many cars - it has gripper arms that are too short for many vent blades.] Mounting the GPS on the air vent nearest the right side of the steering wheel puts it where you can see it, and it's much safer than sticking it on the windshield.

This is, I think, the 4th Garmin that I've owned. The last one I had still mostly works but the battery won't hold a charge any more, so I figured I might as well get a new one and see what new features they might have. I tried another brand -- I can't tell you what brand because there is no brand name or model number on the device or box or anywhere (hmm) -- and after about 2 months I said forget it, I'll get another Garmin. Now that I have something to compare it to, I see the advantages. (a) Garmin has a pretty easy to use user interface. It shows me what I want to know, like what the roads ahead are and when I have to turn and a couple of nice little extras like what the speed limit is -- and not a lot of junk that I don't care about. (b) You can see the screen in daylight. Since the last model I've had they've added a few nice little enhancements. The most useful might sound like a small thing: now instead of just saying "turn left on Fwacbar Road", they'll say "turn left at the traffic light" or "turn right at the stop sign" or "turn left when the road ends". I had a lot of times with older GPSs that I was not sure if I was supposed to turn here or at the next street, where I couldn't see a street sign and I just wasn't sure. This little feature is a huge plus. This unit has voice commands. I've found that very handy when on a long trip and I want to find a restaurant. With older GPSs, I would be fumbling with the touch screen while trying to drive, and it was surely dangerous. With this one, you just say "voice command ... categories ... restaurants", then it gives you a list and you pick one. A minus: Don't try to use the voice command for much more than picking from a list. I tried using voice command to give it a destination address, and it was hopeless. Like I'd say "123 Elm Street" and it would display "1012 Thelma Street", or something that you could sort of kind of see how it would get that from what you said. I tried saying addresses in my normal voice, saying them very slowly, carefully sounding out each syllable, no matter what, it didn't matter. Oh, a strange deficiency in the voice commands: There is, as far as I can see, no command for "close that pop up window that you just opened". You have to use the touch screen. I'd think this is the single most common thing I'd want to do with a voice command, but no such command is listed on the list they give, and I tried obvious words like "exit" and "close" and none of them worked. It will connect to your cell phone with blue tooth, which I have yet to find useful. Mostly when I'm trying to drive it keeps popping up windows for text messages that I've received, most of which I don't need to do anything about now. And as I note above, you can say to answer a call with a voice command, but not to ignore the call and close the window. This model is very good about picking up satellite signals. Sometimes it even picks up a signal when I'm indoors. Not like I need driving directions when I'm in my house, but if it can get a signal in the house, it's not likely to be blocked by trees or surrounding buildings.

Garmin is hands down the best GPS in the market. My new car came with some hokey gps solution that if running on your phone it would run in the in car screen....but it doesn’t work well so I decided to give this one a try. A beautiful 7” screen, easy to use, WIFI downloads, and Bluetooth connectivity to your phone are all great. If you run the app from garmin you can get live traffic and some other related stuff but that means opening the app each time you use the gps. So I paid for the traffic power cord and could not be happier. I tried a few different mounts and found a good solution. This was worth the price and was cheaper than anywhere else. Mapping works great, route choices great, all good. Oh, don’t listen to those who says gps units are no longer viable....this does the job well and would not travel without it. Using my phone uses more battery life than a charger can keep it charged up and opening apps and all that is time consuming. I leave this garmin plugged in and it turns on and off with the engine being on and off, is always ready to be used, and I use it going everywhere for the traffic feature.

I travel for work. Phone GPS is ok, but sometimes you can't get data or even a signal. You can't afford to get lost anywhere. This GPS is excellent. Keeps me from getting lost in lots of places. Used it in the US, Canada, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, and Qatar. The Aussie Woman's voice is excellent. Told my wife I would leave her in a second if I could ever find her. The American woman's voice sounds like she mad at you. Sometimes it takes it a bit to find a signal. As a veteran sometimes I want to visit a local base that is close to my travel route. It's not good at keeping track of gates that are open versus those that are closed. Sometimes it wants to take you through a delivery gate. Not a good idea. I like that I can alternate my route around closed roads even when overseas. Like in Doha in January where there is a lot of construction going on. I hate that I had to buy a separate cable for traffic alerts. Don't be cheap Garmin, include the proper cable. Or at least say somewhere in your description that we are too cheap to include a cable so you have to buy your own. I don't like that not all cables will charge your Garmin when your in the house and not in the car. But sometimes the device will say "wrong cable" but charge it anyhow. One time I forgot my car power cord and used a car usb port and a usb cable to run it. Sometimes the screen changes to "please say a command" or something like that for no reason at all. As much as I like the voice. I like it when she talks in that lovely voice and I don't have to. Updates are easy. Garmin Support is excellent. Even with these small issues, I like it. Garmin is the best.

If you're in the market for a GPS System then I"d highly recommend this one. At $174.00 refurbished product I thought it expensive but after checking out the new ones at $300 it seemed like a steal as long as it worked. Work it did I've had no problems with this refurbished product. Before settling on Garmin I borrowed different brands from my friends; Tom Tom, Magellan, and 2 other brands but I found fault with all of them. While the Tom Tom was IMO the best of what I borrowed it just wasn't what I was looking for it seemed pretty slow and map updates were really slow plus it lacked a lot of features of this Drive Smart and the price of this refurbished GPS was only a few dollars more. What I Like about this GPS: Blue Tooth- It was super simple to pair my android phone the first time, now I get into the car and ensure my phones blue tooth is on and it connects within 15 seconds. Once connected you now have a lot of options available to you. I can call anyone in my phone book, call any commercial phone number from commercial listing that I've found in one of several APPS downloaded to the GPS. I've been told by those I call that the reception from my calls is crystal clear. This is something I can't say for those that call me using their cars blue tooth or other GPS like Tom Tom. Blue tooth provides weather and traffic info as well as other options. Voice Control: I won't say it works flawlessly but it is very capable. What I've found is if you call for it and get the volume control your phones blue tooth isn't on or isn't connected for some other reason. When your windows are open and wind is blowing through the car or the outside is noisy voice control frequently gets the commands wrong or doesn't work at all. People babbling in the car will cause the same problem. These are what I've found that cause problems with the voice command. However once those things are corrected it seems to work 100% of the time. One other thing is that you must follow the voice commands "command structure" get out of sequence and you'll get junk you'r not looking for. If calling from your phone book you will need to tell it to call the name you have listed in your phone book, if you have to people named the same use their last names also, if you use a nick name you must call up that nick. Things you can use voice control for: Phone calls, change route, stop route, add stop to route, find hotels, call those hotels, and the restaurants you find, weather, and traffic, the list isn't all inclusive it's only off the top of my head. Voice Command truly makes this GPS almost hand free. Wi-Fi: The GPS hooked up with my house wi-fi network almost instantly the first try. I used WPS but you can use your password to hook it up either way it simple and intuitive to hook up. I use it to update the maps and such and the neat part is I can do it sitting in my driveway I wasn't even aware that my wireless was that powerful outside the house. Touch Screen: It's not like my old Nuvi which sometimes no matter haw it was adjusted I had to hat the screen hard and for several seconds. This touch screen works flawlessly and is a joy to use if I have to. In the last 3 months I've used it I've never had a problem with the directions taking me to the wrong location, something I can't say about my old Garmin NUVI even with updated maps, especially the last two months I used it. There is only one thing that bugs me and it's something Garmin probably could correct in an update. If I want to hang up after a phone call I have to physically do it. If the other person hangs up first then you don't have to do anything everything resets. There is much more to this GPS that I haven't mentioned but to let you know they are useful and make this GPS the best I've tested or used. I highly recommend this product even if you don't think you need it you'd be surprised how you will use it if you travel at all into different locations/cities. We use ours all the time when we travel to cities we're not really familiar with.

Just took this unit on a 4500 mile trip from Florida to Las Vegas and it was a pleasure to use! When I received it, I followed the instructions exactly. Charged it for about an hour to fully charge the battery using the car cord, not usb from the computer! Then connected it to my computer and it automatically found a software upgrade and map upgrade. The voice command function is excellent with one exception. If there is any background noise like air conditioning, road noise, radio, etc it's hard of hearing and you have to yell at it. This is a minor inconvenience! The functions worked very well and saving a waypoint is super easy. About 95% of the time it understood what I said. If I took a wrong turn it automaticall recalculated without telling me to make u-turns. The screen size is perfect and it is super easy to use. You really don't need the manual but it's smart to read it as this unit has lots of functions. Best GPS I've ever owned. Much better than my Magellin Roadmate that died.

This is about the DriveSmart 61 with the larger screen. I like the unit. The screen size is great and I can read it easily without having reading glasses on which is a must for driving. And, I can see it in the bright sun. I took it on a familiar trip around the IL, WI, MI area, 1300miles in all, and it did the routing well and took the roads that I expected it to take. The speed limits in MI were way off and several times it reported a school zone where there were none. I reported these to the 3rd party Garmin uses for maps. This could be a drawback since Garmin doesn't have anything to do with the maps the issues may never get fixed. I needed to fly from the Peoria International Airport and the unit took me to the wrong location at the airport! This is making me think of returning the unit. One thing that a GPS should do is get you to the airport - the part for the passengers. I didn't have time to see where it wanted to take me. Luckily I was familiar with the area and could just finish driving to the correct place. I also reported to the 3rd party map maker. The other big issue for me is that the smaller roads did not show up on the map when I was far away from the cities in MI. In fact the map was completely blank unless I found exactly the right zoom level for the roads to show. (I played with the settings for detail but nothing helped) The GPS could still create a route on the roads and showed the names of the roads, just no image of the road. A real show stopper if trying to find a place on the map by memory instead of searching for a name. I reported this separately to Garmin. I updated the software over wifi along with the maps which worked just fine. I went through all the settings and set the unit the way I liked. I also tried the Garmin App. The one thing that would be helpful with the app is a way to see that the GPS and the app are communicating - it is hard to know if the GPS is taking information from the phone or not. I didn't use the handsfree phone stuff since the rental car had that built in. I really got this for driving in places with no cell service and on smaller roads - forest service, and backcountry so its abilities when disconnected from the world are important to me. I would also like to have the backup camera but I need it to work as a map first. Its great attributes are big display that works in the sunshine with my sunglasses on and it carries its maps on-board to work without cell service. With some fine tuning of the software and maps it could be 5 stars in my book.