Garmin nuvi frustrating. Help. Need better Nav.

[Jayelwin]

So I've been sort of happy with my Garmin Nuvi 550 and BaseCamp software. Theoretically it makes a whole lot of sense. You load up the software on your laptop and plan a route. Pick waypoints along the way by clicking the mouse and then upload it to the device and ride the route. But something keeps coming up that makes me want to throw the thing to the side of the road. Today I planned a route from the Lower East Side back to my house in NJ. One of my waypoints was the Holland Tunnel. I carefully planned the route to avoid any highways because my wife was on a KE100 that tops out at about 45 mph. Well on the way it must've missed that waypoint in the holland tunnel because from then on it insisted on trying to nav me right back to the Holland Tunnel. This instantly made the device and the route completely useless. It turns out there is no way to skip a waypoint and if you miss one by a few feet even it will never guide you to the next waypoint. Now imagine you're just exiting the tunnel and you're with your noob wife and she's on a tiny bike, you're looking at either the Pulaski Skyway or the New Jersey Turnpike. You know there's a surface road escape somewhere in there, BUT YOUR DAMN NAV WANTS YOU TO MAKE A U TURN BACK INTO THE TUNNEL SO YOU CAN CROSS AN IMAGINARY DOT SOMEWHERE ON THE PAVEMENT. Poop a brick.

I need a nav that allows you to preplan a route preferably on a big screen and then ride the route, but with some flexibility in case you miss a waypoint, or bypass one, or change your mind. I'll even take an iPhone app if there's a good one out there.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

[B1]

im using the nuvi 1450 which should be similar. i always use direct routing in mapsource when planning the route on the computer. it might need quite a few waypoints but just make a pile of straight lines for the route.

on mine, if i need over 100 waypoints it gets too big for the nuvi so i break it up into sections e.g. each fuel stop.

then on the garmin, don't let it auto-route, choose "off road" under navigation. then it will just show the route as a collection of straight lines. if you get off course, you can just zoom out on the gps and see where you left the route, instead of it auto-routing you all over the countryside.

this method also over rides glitches in the mapping. here in australia the auto routing will sometimes hit a part of the map which auto routing refuses to use, so takes a massive detour. very annoying!