Garmin iQue 3000 Review

Customer Reviews

Average rating:

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If u want a Palm, save ur money get a Palm...ditto gps

My girlfriend went shopping for a gps and got this.

I really didn't think it was going to do the job and now that it's arrived and I've seen it in action I'm convinced she should have saved her money.

First off, the gps capabilities of this device are weak to say the least. I recently got an upgraded cell phone (LG VX8300-Verizon) that has GPS capabilities using a program called VZNavigator. As we set up my girlfriends iQue, I noticed it was struggling to find gps satellites and get a fix. On a whim I flipped open my cell phone and within 20 seconds my phone had a lock and knew exactly where it was. After 10 minutes the Ique still could only see one satellite. Not good considering the antenna on this unit flips out and my phone's gps antenna is built in. It's obvious to the gps receiver/antenna of my phone far surppassed the technology in this unit.

This is pretty sad as I'm actually a garmin fan and have two handheld units myself (etrex and etrex legend) and love using them for hiking and geocaching. Generally I'm a Garmin fan, but not this time.

Want more proof? Read the user manual on Garmins website (I'm not supposed to put links here, but it's easy to find)

Try to look for the gps capabilities in the manual. Interestingly you'll notice no mention of any of the mapping functions, navigation, search capabilities etc etc. The manual is basically just a Palm manual with a couple mentions of the flip out gps antenna.

OK, but it does to gps right? Of course. Once you finally get a fix you can indeed pull up a "Where am I" map. But the s/w authors figure they know better what zoom level to display the map. How annoying! I want to zoom out a bit so I can find a nearby highway and some landmarks, but I have yet to figure out how to zoom. Blech. I finally figured it out, in Tools-Browse Map, but it definitely took me a while to find this and once there I was struck by how little I could do. If I scroll on a map and find something interesting, a park, a highway whatever, there should be a simple way to point and tell this unit to navigate you there...nope. There's an inviting blank area on the screen for more buttons like this, but nope, all you can so is zoom in/out pan with the pen measure distance (yawn) and "get info" whatever that is.

OK, so let's do a search and navigate somewhere. I search for a nearby bakery. Pretty quickly I was able to pull up a list. Select it and tell the Ique to navigate me to it. This unit does have a speaker and will "talk" you through it, but the speaker is so soft you can barely hear it. I'm pretty sure this also can't import geocache points either, it's s/w is oriented towards street navigation duty.

To be honest. My phone navigates much better than this does, the interface is amazingly well done and even though I have to pay $10/month for it, I figure I've got 3 years of phone bills before she pays for this. My phone gives an almost identical list of bakerys, for instance, but all I have to do is select from the list and push [send] and I can call the bakery up and see if they're still open (the phone number pops up with the listing). My phone does voice navigation unprompted LOUDER so I can hear it in the car and in gerneral seems about three versions more advanced and polished than the software on this unit. Best of all my phone was only $49 because I was due for an upgrade anyway.

The Ique does do the Palm stuff well (in it's quirky Palm manner), but it you want a Palm you can get a Palm much cheaper than this.

Overall, I'd say that if this unit came out 5 years ago, it would be really cool. But these days, a Palm isn't as revolutionary and there are MUCH better gps navigators out there. By todays standards, this is a mediocre gps and a mediocre organizer in one package. I know my girlfriend is going to be happy with it, but she's not very objective, after all, she just plunked down $400 for this thing and not likely to admit she chose poorly. I'm not going to rain on her parade, if she likes it then fine, but if anyone out there is considering it, take heed, you can do much better these days.

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nice unit with a couple of reservations...

i am a small town sheriff. i purchased this item to help me keep track of calls, events and addresses. the pda portion of this unit works really well. the interface is pretty easy to understand and the desk top software is good. the gps portion is a little complicated, but once you get onto it, it's pretty neat. i would downgrade the unit in the following areas:

1) low battery life; i have to charge it every night. the gps REALLY sucks down the battery

2) the gps REALLY struggles to find sattelites. garmin says i need to buy an external antenna. i kinda think it should come with one...

3) the directions are not too complete, and a little too hard to understand. i feel like i really am not taking advantage of all the features because i don't really understand the manual. also, garmin's customer support should be available 24/7 instead of 9-5 m-f.

4) mp3 player ONLY plays mp3 format. would be nice if it came with headphones so this feature could be used...

5) i don't know if this is the unit's fault or just a general fault of the gps system, but the unit has tried to route me off into a pasture a couple of times. also, in lincoln (a fairly large city) it got me to my sister's block, but not to her front door. in the rural area where i work the gps doesn't seem to recognize much, but that could be because we aren't sufficiently mapped yet.

6) i've had a couple of glitches where the screen failed to initialize and it reverted to it's default settings and had to be reset.

7) they included the wrong a/c charger and i had to have garmin send me the correct one.

other than these minor things, i've been pretty happy with the unit.

Get the Garmin iQue 3000 from Amazon.com.