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.

el gps es muy vistoso ya que su pantalla realmente es grande es algo estorboso de llevar en el parabrisas ya que ocupa un buen de espacio lo que hice es que lo puse en el tablero y me quita menos visibilidad, en cuanto a las funciones realmente es muy preciso me sorprendió que me dijo que iba en sentido contrario en una calle pequeña y si yo iba en sentido contrario hasta la fecha no he tenido problemas me falta valorarlo en un viaje largo, un detalle es que cuando me llego al parecer los de la aduana lo revisaron pero parecía que hasta lo usaron pq venia con manchas de dedos y las bolsas de los cables abiertas, sin dudas es un buen gps y mas que es garmin

It does not work. NO data or power to start the gps

I have had bought Garmin GPS products but the Garmin 61 Drive Smart GPS is awesome. It took myself a bit to learn how to use the voice commands but once I had understood how to use it, the easier it was for myself. The WIFI update is most useful when I drive for a living I can use store that have free wifi or wait to go home very handy because I drive for a living. The blue tooth hands free works well if not in a noisy vehicle like the one I drive for a living. Live traffic using your cell phone link application works well once paired with your cell phone. Four square feature allows you to find restaurants, Banks and etcetera in a four square radius is very handy. Find parking does the same as four square. The Garmin Drive Smart 61 has many excellent features that the basic Garmin GPS lacks. I am glad I decided to purchase this over the basic or truck GPS model.

Tengo grandes expectativas con este GPS, estoy ansioso de ver cómo se comporta el tema de mapas de por vida. Llego rápido a Ciudad de México . Luego les comentaré : Cómo se comporta el equipo en carretera .

GPS con actualizaciones gratuitas de por vida, buen tamaño y conexión wi-fi, se puede empatar con el celular y utilizarlo a manos libres. El precio es incomparable.