I've had Alpine Navigation for years, Just cant beat it..... Not the cheapest, But the best in my opinion     I have these in my vans

Loads of good features, built in Traffic Master, Accident re-routing, Speed Cameras, Overspeed warning & full journey tracking

 

 

 

Ive got an Alpine unit in the car and Im not having the same positive response as you.

 

In fact mines *****, GPS keeps dropping off, bluetooth the same,and can only see a handfull of files on a memory stick. As a SN its unusable, hence still having the Tomtom in the boot.

Many other owners reporting the same issues.

Change your USB drive

I had lots of issues with my new sat nav unit, upon testing with Alpine, the cause was nasty cheap Chinese copy flash drives

I use 2x Sandisk in my head unit for MP3 and Navi tracking, never misses a beat

Classic symptoms are GPS unobtainable or lost

Edited August 11, 201411 yr by PSE

Have picked up garmin and first impressions are good. Screen is crystal clear and traffic connects quickly.

The power cable is very thick and non standard so will need to purchase an additional one for other car

Here comes first question cubit ... Can you import your own car icon as have always had pic of works car as icon and it seems odd without it !

Its an Alpine head unit I have in my van. Like I said ok unit. But, the maps are never the latest, only updated once a year....and at a cost of £100 a time.

Them update costs mount up, making the Garmins a cheaper option. The traffic and accident updates, whilst helpful aren't anywhere near as good as the garmins realtime either.

Garmin always been one if the best

Of

Change your USB drive

I had lots of issues with my new sat nav unit, upon testing with Alpine, the cause was nasty cheap Chinese copy flash drives

I use 2x Sandisk in my head unit for MP3 and Navi tracking, never misses a beat

Classic symptoms are GPS unobtainable or lost

 

Mine has the removeable nav module, I think the issue is down to overheating. It seems to be a bit more reliable with the screen open a bit.

 

The USBs all work on PCs and in a Sony ICE unit I had but tbh I can live with it not able to read them 100%

Have picked up garmin and first impressions are good. Screen is crystal clear and traffic connects quickly.

The power cable is very thick and non standard so will need to purchase an additional one for other car

Here comes first question cubit ... Can you import your own car icon as have always had pic of works car as icon and it seems odd without it !

Honest answer?

No idea, never tried. Blue triangle does me just fine.

Might be worth having a snoop here though.

http://www.pocketgpsworld.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=index

Edited August 11, 201411 yr by Cubit

Useless !! Hehe. Looking on web it ain't easily done. As you said it had 7 updates waiting for it and all done. Now for an evening of being a geek and trying to customise it to my needs.

Am a subscriber to there. Have downloaded their camera database as worked well with the Tom tom. Yet to test it on garmin. Can't see a way of adding audio to camera poi. Will see what device does tomorrow when I drive past one.

The camera alerts that come with the garmin seem pretty spot on.

Must admit, I thought the sat nav built into my Lumia was an afterthought but its bang on, and have never bothered to fit the 'pro' Blaupunkt I have to the van.

As others updates are once a year and silly money for the blau.

Edited August 11, 201411 yr by datadiffusion

Garmin sat navs are pretty good but I have a built in one in my picasso maps are about 10 year old like the car so a bit useless or I had a tom tom one before it was nicked