Well, I've been using the original Garmin Quest for about 9 months now. Found it online for
Two nice things about the Quest, it is water resistant (certainly sufficient for motorcycle use) and it has rather a good lithium battery built in so plumbing into the bike electrics can be considered optional (battery life between 4 and 16-ish hours, depending on backlight usage.)
Bad things are, in the case of the original Quest, map memory limited to about 115 Megs and no card slot to expand it. It also uses the older, less memory efficient maps, so that 115 Megs doesn't go as far as it does in the newer machines. On the plus side though, the maps that come with the unit are nice and granular so you can be very selective in what you add for any given trip (unlike the newer units/maps, which tend to cover huge chunks of a state, if not the whole thing, in a single map segment). For context, I can fit all of Texas and bits of a couple surrounding states into the memory at once. My g/f's Garmin i3 can fit Texas and
all the sourrounding states into 128 megs.
My other dislike of the unit is the button size/feel. They're tiny little things, the 4-way rocker is actually 8-way, though which of the three possible options you get when you try a diagonal is anyone's guess. They're rubbery and horrid and close to impossible to hit predictably with gloves on. There's no tactile feedback. Furthermore, even if you plumb the audio output from the unit into your headphones, there still isn't any audio button feedback. Ick! On the upside, I suppose it discourages me from trying to play with it while I'm riding. Indeed, if I'd bothered to plumb it into the bike's electrics and my etymotics, I could get voice directions and wouldn't need to look at it at all.
Other points:
- It's small, meaning it's screen is small, and it's graphics are much less 'pretty' than newer units. Limited I think to 256 colours as well.
- It's not that tough. The fold out antennas are known to be a bit of a weak point.
- If you don't like the idea of ever having to download map data for a trip out of your normal home area, there's the Quest II which costs a couple hundred more, but comes with the entire continental US in memory, with space to spare. Same physical device (albeit with more Flash storage) but using the newer type maps. Evidently it's pretty much identical in use, but much much slower for certain types of search (understandably)
- The user interface is logical though it follows Garmin's own internal logic more than it is innately intuitive. I've found it to be pleasant and simple to use, but then it's my 3rd Garmin GPS unit so I'm familiar with their ideas about user interface design.
- The GPS receiver hardware itself seems very adequate. It gets initial locks plenty quick for most purposes and it's sensitive enough to navigate fine through all but the most built up city streets. (Downtown Houston is a pain in the arse if the unit hasn't got a really good lock on all the birds in the sky before you get in between the skyscrapers) Of course, it's nowhere near as sensitive as the new SiRF based units (like the Garmin Nuvi) but then it's much more rugged than them as well. Swings & Roundabouts really
Anyway, back to work for me. Those are the most salient points I can think of. Since the original Quest is nearing end-of-life, you can find it online for really really good prices and I for one would consider it to be a total bargain. I love it and I have come to depend on it (or at least I've come to forget to pack my maps for most trips)
If I've left anything out, reply this thread with a question and I'll check it later.
///d
