Choose between garmin nuvi 1300, 1350 and 255W

General talk
1

Hello

I am looking for a (good) GPS :

  • cost less than 200$
  • working with OSM maps
  • able to record tracks (to contribute).

It seams that most Garmin GPS supports OSM maps so I looked in the wiki and on the Garmin website :
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Garmin/Nüvi_series
http://www.garmin.com/garmin/cms/us/ontheroad/nuviseries

Nuvi 1300, 1350 and 255W seams good but I wanted to ask on this forum to be sure they work well with OSM.

The Wiki is a little bit messy… for example it describe method to log GPS trace on 255 but it also say that 2x5 only work with software version 2.50 and 2.70 … Is 255 really included in 2x5 or is it special ?

So if someone can confirm me that OSM maps and recording are working on 1350 or 255(w) I would be happy :slight_smile:
Does they work but with some limitations ?
Which one is the best ?
etc…

PS : excuse me for my bad english

2

I find that the “Navigator series” GPS do not make it convenient to record GPS tracks to upload to OSM. While they are superb for navigation, I have not found an easy to turn on track recording. I think some people have had limited success with recording tracks.

Good units for track recording are the Garmin Legend or Vista Hcx, but they lack voice announcement which are handy for turn by turn directions.

3

Thanks for the reply

I found :
http://blog.roozeec.fr/2009/11/16/openstreetmap-gps-garmin-nuvi-250w-et-linux/
for the 250w

EDIT :
but new version seams to be unable to record tracks :
http://www.gpspassion.com/forumsen/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=98909&whichpage=49

Legend or Vista seams good be I really need car navigation features like “voice announcement”.

I think I will choose nuvi 1350.

4

Hi,

I would like to know whether in the meatime you bought that GPS unit and in case yes if you are ok with it? I’m currently considering purchasing either the 1350 or the 1390t …

I saw on page http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Garmin/N%C3%BCvi_series#General_information that the 1350 works fine with OSM appart from “adresses do not work” which sound worrying. Can’t the unit register an adress when working with OSM?

Anyhow, I don’t advice buying the 250w, as it does not support in an easy way route planning, plus I didn’t manage to have the unit working with an OSM for the whole of Europe, I had to limit the size of the OSM map to a few countries (even if it was on an external SD card).