[highway star]

It's less than a month until my b-day, so happy b-day to me. I got a 465. I'm on my way to Dexter, Mo. for Monday morning and right now I'm at the J in Oak Grove, Ky. The route it's giving me is quite different that my 330 is giving me and I think I like the 330 route better. I'm gonna run both for a while to compare.

On the volume, I don't think the level is much less than my 330, but the voice quality isn't as good. Kind of muffled. I switched to the Austrailian guy voice to see if it's any better. It looks like it will only operate on local time. I liked leaving the 330 on eastern.

That's it so far. After I've had a couple of runs I'll update.

[cheri1122]

Volume was a problem for me with the Nuvi, as I listen to audiobooks through mine. On Turtle's advice, I got an FM transmitter to route it through the radio, but it required finding unused FM channels - preferably 3 consecutive, which I couldn't find. The wireless model requires an output jack that the radio didn't have [on the front, and I wasn't willing to pull it out to check the backside] so what I've done is get a pr of earbuds. They work well enough that I only need to have one in, leaving the other ear open to my surroundings. Works pretty well for me.

[rollnthunder]

This is one thing i really like about the worldnav 7100 over the garmin.The worldnav has a built in FM transmitter and it will come across the stereo on a certain station so you can listen to your radio then when a turn comes up it comes across nice and loud so you can hear it.

[highway star]

I was going to wait until I had a couple of runs with it to form an opinion, but...

The routing... As I mentioned before, it gave me a different route than my 330. The 330 took me across 60 from Paducah to I57. At first, the 465 wanted me to go up to Il146, cross I57 and stay on back roads down to Dexter. After a recalc, it wanted me to take the Pennyrile to I155, then up to Dexter. At one point along the way on 60, I exited the routing and restarted it. I was less than an hour and a half out and it came up with a route taking I57 up to I64! 358 miles!!! Are you kidding me?!!?

On the voice, it is volume as well as quality. The 330 is quite a bit better in that department. With the time display, I tried changing the time, but it still displays the ETA in local time. What's the point of being able to change it?

I sent an e-mail to Garmin.

[piper1]

I played with one at a Pilot the other night. I liked the feel and accuracy of the touch screen. It is better than the 1.5 year old nuvi 250w I have.

But after reading some of the above comments I might hold off. Routing smart is just to big a requirement to have fail in a unit. I have a Pioneer in dash navi that uses Igo and Tele atlas maps, it is horrendous, If you are going from Toronto to Wichita KS, why on God's green earth would you go to Iowa? Igo says to!

[Turtle]

Not being able to fix the time zone to eastern would be a big issue with me. It's bad enough having to keep track of the ever-changing time on the cell phone. Nothing like being near a time zone border, setting the alarm on the phone, and then wake up to find the phone is now working off a different cell tower in another time zone.

As for the goofy routing, it may depend on the type of truck you set up in the profile, "over the road" or "delivery". If it's set for "over the road" I would imagine that it will highly favor Interstates, for example. And if the truck is big enough, it'll favor STAA routes, even if it's not the most direct route.

Here's a pretty intense review of the unit, lots of pics, goes through pretty much everything on how to use it.
Garmin nuvi 465T Truck GPS Review (GPSmagazine.com)

[highway star]

The link's a good look at what the unit does. Thanks, Shelled a Lot. They list automatic time zone as a pro. Why couldn't there be another option?

Even if I forget about the incredibly stupid route it gave me, why wouldn't it put you on 57 south off 146 instead of staying on back roads? Hmmm...

I went back and looked at the comments. It appears others take issue with the routing.

[Dakota]

It just goes to show that even with all this technology. The old standby, the paper atlas is good to look at to get an overview of our routes.

[rollnthunder]

I take it the Garmin 465T doesnt give you the options to select from Truck practical,truck quickest,truck emergency,truck shortest and so on.Also does it give you a option for county rounds or not?I know these are options the worldnav has.

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by highway star

The link's a good look at what the unit does. Thanks, Shelled a Lot. They list automatic time zone as a pro. Why couldn't there be another option?

Most people actually do prefer to have the Time Zone automatically change to wherever you are, same as Streets and Trips lists all times in local times. But most of the trucking industry operates in the eastern time zone, including many national carriers out of California. This is something that needs to be addressed in a GPS unit marketed for trucks.

Fortunately, it's a relatively easy fix to add the option of selecting static or dynamic time zones with a firmware update. It all depends on how many calls and e-mails they get on it.

Truck Quickest and Shortest is another one that is pretty important. That may all be moot if it's too focused on the STAA routing, but it's something that's needed.

I went back and looked at the comments. It appears others take issue with the routing.

There are usually some rather large routing issues with every new unit that comes out, even though they all use the same map data. But each unit has its own routing algorithms for each vehicle type, and with this one being brand new for trucking, trying to take all of the vehicle dimensions and other factors into account, it may take them a while to get the bugs worked out and get the routing tightened up.

One that drive me crazy is I can be sitting in Milton, Brantford, anywhere over there towards on Ontario, and if it's set for Truck as the vehicle type, it refuses to route me into the State via Buffalo. It wants to go through Sarnia. Change it to Car, and it's fine.

Sometimes I have to change the vehicle type while en route and have it calculate again, just to use Car for one portion and Truck for another.

[piper1]

Every routing thing I own has the border crossings in it as favorites so I can add them to a route, otherwise as you said, routes you to Sarnia/Port Huron every time. never understood why, Detroit is shorter if you are westbound into the US 95 % of the time, and customs is waaaaay better at Detroit.

[ritasroy]

Originally Posted by piper1

Cool, what settings did it ask you for about your truck? (just size or what?)

It asks how high you are, width, axle weight, lenght,
What hazmat you have . You set up the truck and save it.
Then depending on the load you can change what needs to
be changed without redoing the truck setup.

So far we really like it

[highway star]

I just finished my second run with the 465 and it worked great this time. It calculates ETA different than the 330 does and seems to be closer to what I actually do.

I got a response from Garmin to my e-mail. He claims to know nothing about any complaints about the voice volume. On the time, too bad, that's the way it is. He suggested I update the unit on-line, which is the very first thing I did with it. Wouldn't he be aware that there are no updates for this unit yet? Guess not.

[highway star]

I'm wondering what kind of parameters they used to decide that a road isn't a "preferred truck route." For example, in Michigan US 23 and M32 are not preferred truck routes. Also, in Mi, In, and Il, the unit showed the speed limit for cars.

[Dreammaker]

Anybody come up with a good solution on the audio volume problem with the 465?