Home > Consumer Reviews > Garmin GPS 18 Deluxe USB Sensor for Laptops

For the money, this is a great value. If you already have a laptop, then for $129 you have most of the functionality of a $1500 built-in navigator. For basic functionality, it's a 5 star item. I have used around New England for about two months, and have navigated back roads and highways. Resolution, maps, screen displays, ETA, position, etc, are all superb. Once you have selected a route and are on the way it's better than the built-in units, because it has a bigger screen (your laptop) with more information.

But without a touch screen, it's a little clumsy to use, and you have to plan on putting in destinations while stopped somewhere. It's not a bad process, takes only a few minutes, but it's slower and not as smooth as a Honda Navigator (point of reference).

You can save any waypoints or routes and recall them easily. You can show gas stations, atms, etc. It talks to you, and anticipates turns, etc very well.

Overall, a fantastic value for the price. Any defects are forgiven. When they produce a pda or tablet version, so that you could use a touch-screen, it will be a huge hit.

I've tried out the three popular GPS systems for laptops and find this the best. The other two; Delormer, and Microsoft have a long way to go to match the Garmin usb unit. They all have good features its just the Garmin does it best. For example, when aquiring satelites, by the time you've got the program booted the Garmin is ready to go. The others can take several minutes and clicking around to get them running. Not a good thing when your in a hurry. Next comes auto-routing. The Garmin excels in this area.In normal use, its very good and faster than the others. Garmin makes a lot of GPS units unlike the other 2 and I think they've got this right. However no GPS I've used is perfect at routing, it's just far less likely to take you out of your way. And if you don't believe or like their route, the Garmin has a handy feature in that it automatically and quickly reroutes itself when you don't follow its direction. Within a block of ignoring its directions it has replotted a new course for you. This handy feature lets you head in the direction you want and then if you get lost, you can just start following the GPS again - handy for us know it all guys that occasionally get lost. The other units are not nearly so friendly in this regard. They want you to follow their map or else. The Delormer unit, while better than the Microsoft unit, has the habit of being late in its direction and also likes to give you directions that amount to simply going straight on the same road.
Some other handy Garmin feature: 1)The map changes to night time display automatically when the sun goes down.This is much easier on the eyes while driving 2) There is a button you can press that will find a route from where ever you are to home. Just press the button and it will show you the way home. 3)With a click you can set your PC clock to GPS atomic time. 4) The unit will let you select two items to display on the map, such as expected time of arrival, and time or distance to next turn. As with any product there could be improvements. The search feature is not as friendly as I'd like. To search, you're expected to type in the name only, not north, drive, etc. You then pick from a long generic list of names that might not even exist -so this is a bit funky. However, if you can find the location you want on a map, you can right click it and route to it. Overall this is a great unit and I have now installed a laptop in my minivan so it will always be available. I would not do this with the other units because they require too much fiddling around with to make them work and this is too dangerous while driving. (I've made a tray to hold and hid my laptop that fits between the two front bucket seats and rests on top of the plastic base for the seats. The tray also acts like a table between the seats.)
I must tell you however of a few facts about this soft. The unit in the box I got had old software and old maps. You need to go to Garmin's website to download the updates for the software and you need to request Garmin to send a free CD for new maps. Both were updated around June 05. Once you load these in, you need to unlock the maps. There was an unlock code in the box that worked with the original maps, but so far, I have not been able to successfully to keep the updated maps unlocked. Everytime I turn it on it wants me to unlock them again. Perhaps connecting to the internet and registering will help. Even with this issue, I will give it 5 stars

All of the previous reviews are pretty much on the money. The unit works great, very accurate. I do wish it was easier to change the routing the way Delorme uses VIAs, maybe there is a way i haven't found yet.

My main addition to info for everybody is that using a little $10 program called GPS Gate will turn the Garmin 18 USB from a proprietary Garmin format to a NMEA compliant device. I had a copy of MS Streets & Trips and it worked fine. Just do a google search for gpsgate and you can try it for 2 weeks before you buy. That removes the only downside I thought this product had, now it can work with any application looking for a NMEA compliant GPS.

I first tried Microsoft's Streets and Trips with GPS and I was quite dissapointed. I'm not sure how they even consider it a GPS system. I then tried Garmin's GPS 18, as Garmin is considered to be one of the better known GPS manufactures. I have no regrets at all. The Garmin met my expectations.

Benefits to the Garmin GPS 18 are:

1) Voice prompts (what good is a GPS system without this?)
2) Auto-reroute, it automatically will recalculate a route if you go off track. This requires no user interaction at all.
3) The status screen automatically tells you what house numbers you are driving by or what streets are approacting.
4) Large text display stating clear and accurate directions.
5) Provides estimates of ETA and mileage to destination and next manuever.

I have no complaints really. I do agree with one thing though, finding addresses could be a little simpler. For example, it will find "Stop & Shop", but not "Stop and Shop". It will find Malden Dr. if you type Malden, but not if you enter Malden Dr. A couple annoyences, but you learn how to use it and it's good.

I purchased the Garmin GPS 18 Deluxe after reading numerous customer reviews of this and other competing products. Not having had the opportunity to review the other products I can only attest to the performance of the Garmin unit and software. Much of what I read seems to hold true.

The Garmin GPS 18 Deluxe works very well. The GPS unit is quick to pick up a signal from the satelites and is ready to navigate in a very short time (15secs or less) in most cases. The maps are pretty accurate and upto date as is the business address database. The voice navigation feature is a must have for solo navigation.

That said, here are some shortcomings I've found.

1. The software would not install on my laptop untill I discovered that it has a problem with installing from a DVDROM. The problem was not just my laptop it wouldn't install from either the DVDROM on my desktop nor the DVD burner either. I had to install it from a shared CDROM over the network which took forever. Once installed the cd was no longer needed so problem solved... (I'm glad I figured that one out.)

2. I ordered the unit with the USB GPS even tho I was aware (from another user review I had read) that the Garmin USB GPS used a proprietary Garmin format. Normally, I would have steered away from anything that didn't conform to an already established industry standard but I really didn't want to have to deal with the serial GPS because I didn't want to deal with another power source and I didn't feel that it would be a problem because I thought I would most likely only use it with the Garmin software anyway. I quickly duscovered my mistake. There are now three applications that I wish I had a standards compliant GPS for.

3. The voice navigation commands get confused sometimes when it has been running for a while and you have to shut the software off and restart it. Fortunatly, the software remembers your last route and resumes right where you left off so you don't have to set up your route all over again. It just takes about ten seconds to pick up right where you left off.

4. The software is near flawless at getting you to your destination once mapped but finding the destination to route to it can be a litle cumbersome. If you don't spell the business or street name correctly you may not be able to find it at all. The controls for finding your destination are not the most forgiving of errors and are unnecesarily clumsy to use. Also, if you don't put in enough info to narrow your search down sufficiently the program can effectively lock up while conducting a search. (It'll come back eventually but sometimes you just don't want to wait that long and you know when it finally does come back after that long a wait there won't be any usefull information so its faster just to go to task manager, kill the program and then restart it.

Overall, I give the Garmin GPS 18 Deluxe 4 out of 5 stars. Though it may have its shortcomings it is an excellent product that does what its supposed to do and does it well. Its easy on system resources and should run well even on older laptops. The voice navigation feature, as I said before, is a must have feature if you don't have someone else along to navigate for you. Garmin's works very well giving you plenty of time to maneauver. It would be nice if the map and business database had more frequent updates available but I understand that the same applies to the other competing products as well. As it was, in my tests it performed very well finding raw addresses, gas stations, restaurants, car rental places, banks, and retail stores in my own town as well as unfamiliar cities.

I wish I had the means and opportunity to review Garmin's competitors and compare them for myself but from what I've seen Garmin deserves the accolades it has earned from other reviewers.