Review of the Garmin Nuvi 50, GPS

I was gifted a Garmin about 7 years ago when I started a career in real estate. I figured it was the perfect thing to get me out and about in unknown places I did not know well. My old school Garmin was a blessing, and I used it a heck of a lot more than I thought I would.

Sadly one fine day when returning a rental truck to Budget, I accidentally forgot to remove my Garmin, and instead of Budget letting me know I had left my personal item behind, they acted like it was my issue and they could not help me get it back because I failed to buy their personal item insurance. So there you have it, Budget rental on blast, never will I use them again.

So that aside, my GPS was gone, in the hands of a pathetic Budget employee, and there was nothing I could do about it aside from buying a new one.

I knew that I wanted another Garmin, I mean heck, it worked, and it worked well, why replace it with a Tom Tom or something else?

This was when I came across the Garmin Nuvi 50, for a price I could not deny. A Cyber Monday deal landed me a Garmin Nuvi 50 for just $65.00! Hot diggity dog!
The new system was much larger, and seemed to just be a lot more refined in comparison to my old Nuvi. Only, when I powered it on, I realized that the interface had not at all changed. Yes, the screen was much larger at 5 inches, and the picture quality was vastly improved upon, but beyond that nothing seemed new about it.

I did not mind though, it made navigating through it easy, since I was already used to how their layout worked.

After toying with it for a bit, I learned that it also would speak the names of streets when you used the female voice. This was a new improvement, as well as the Junction View, which seemed neat in theory, but never even once popped up for me, which bothered me a lot, because the Junction View was primarily why I even bought this unit.

Junction view just gives you a better understanding while driving, which lane you will be needing to turn into. For me no matter how heavy or big a highway, the junction view never popped up. This is because not all areas have junction view covered. I wish I would have known that before buying it, but what's done is done.

Granted Junction View never once made an appearance for me, the GPS itself has some pros and some cons. Sadly for me, there are more cons than pros.

Issues:
 
The very first issue aside from a working Junction View, occurred the 3rd time I used the Garmin Nuvi 50. I plugged my destination in, and headed off to where Garmin told me to go.

The vocals are clear, loud, and the screen shows excellent clarity even in heavy sunlight.

However during my voyage, I realized that the Garmin wanted me to take a route which I knew was just a total waste of time! I ended up continuing on toward the route I knew, and waited for the Garmin to update for my new location. I did this around 10 times, I kept disobeying the GPS directions and carried on with my own route.

It was never an issue with my old Nuvi. It would simply re-route and continue to point me toward my destination.

With the Garmin Nuvi 50 however, apparently it can grow pissed off, and it literally re-route me to a destination on the side of a major highway more than half way back from where I had come from.
This is very worrisome to me, because I take a lot of road trips far from home where I will rely solely on the GPS for directions. I cannot have it flunking out on me, and re-routing me back to where I came from because I failed to follow its strict order. If a GPS re-routes itself because you miss a road it directs you to go down, you would expect it to re-route you to your correct final destination, not to some random spot in the side of a busy highway 30 miles back from where you came from!

The next issue aside from poor directions, and random changing of your plugged in destinations, the unit also does not point out local resturants in the interests category. This irritated me, while on a road trip I had to actually google the address to a Cracker Barrel in Connecticut in order to plug in the address to get there. It would not just recognize the name of the restaurant, like my old Nuvi could.

Overall:
 
Too many deal killers. I feel ripped off even at the low price I bought this unit for. It is not even worth that, and it is clearly not worth the higher end prices it is selling for in the market now.
I cannot trust it, as it has proven to be unreliable.