Home > Consumer Reviews > Garmin MapSource City Navigator, North America DVD-ROM for Garmin StreetPilot GPS Units

For those of you who are deciding between City Navigator and City Select, buy Navigator. Here are reasons I find over various forum and news groups when I was making my buying decision.

Garmin has about 8 different levels of street classifications, all the way from pedestrian and animal pathways to multilane controlled access highways. For each roadway, there can be up to 60 invisible attributes, indicating the number of lanes, number of stop signs or traffic lights per mile, speed limits, presence of medians, time of day restrictions, heavy vehicle, pedestrian and bicycle restrictions, and so forth. Whether these 60 pieces of data are included in the software or used by the GPS for its calculations is part of the feature set of the 3 map packages offered by Garmin.

The basic level (Metroguide) does not support automatic route generation. (Note: Metroguide 4.01 and below use data from TeleAtlas. So Metroguide 4.01 is the best version you can find that won't need an unlock code to use the routing function on your Garmin)

The intermediate level (City Select) supports automatic route generation, but does not contain certain 'high end' road attributes such as truck restrictions, time of day restrictions, stop signs per mile, mid-road barrier awareness, and various other road attributes.

The highest level (City Navigator) contains all those things, and is targeted for Garmin's higher end GPS's. This can explain the why Navigator's map data are much larger than Select. I bought the Navigator for my 60Cx and within the same order I also bought a 1GB microSD memory chip. The Navigator has about 1.6 GB map data. With 1GB microSD, I can hold the map about half of the US (from west of IL all the way to the east coast)

As far as the quality of map detail, I'd say it's about the same as MS Streets & Trips 2006, which I use a lot on my PC. I haven't found any errors yet. None of them has the railroads of Chicago CTA train, which, interestingly, are in Garmin's US Topo map. All have Metra railroads though.

For the actually performance and accuracy of the map, you could refer to the reviews of other Garmin's models that are dedicatedly made for in-car use and preloaded with City Navigator NT, such as StreetPilot i5, c340, and Nuvi 350, etc. Navigator NT uses the same data and only differs in compression techniques. From what I read, it seems about 80% of the people are happy with the routing result. To my experiences, by only giving start and end waypoints, I couldn't get my preferable route for most of the time. I have to specify several additional waypoints to "manipulate" how the route is calculated. (All software and online maps are like this so I have no complaint here). I am not planning to heavily rely on the turn-by-turn routing feature.

This review is for version 7, BTW

I got this software for my Legend C. I had also considered the City Select version (newest version is also V7). I could not tell what the functional difference was between the two versions. Historically, I think that the Navigator was more complete.

Well, the software is fine, and it turns out that the difference between the Navigator and Select is immediately apparent, unfortunately. The navigator has 10x fewer map segments, and each segment is takes much more memory. Many segments are larger that the Legend can handle (24MB) when full routing information is included.

It turns out that the City Select (v7) has exactly (as far as I can tell) the same map and route info, but it has more map segments (like the previous versions of Navigator) so that it will be useful for the smaller memory devices such as the Legend C. Even the middle-of-the-road units like the GPSMAP60C probably would be better with the City Select version.

Be careful when you are deciding which version to buy. I probably need to try to return this software, if I can. I am not sure Amazon will give me a refund because I had to "unlock" the software before I could find out that it was not actually fully compatible with the Legend C.

I do a lot of traveling all over the US and I am very pleased with the performance of this product. I use this with a Garmin 60CSx GPS unit with the entire contents of the DVD stored on a 2GB mini-SD card. Since purchasing I have been in at least three different geographical regions away from my home and this version 8 software seems to be very up to date and accurate. I have not encountered any missing streets or erroneous information thus far, including in and around my home area in Texas. If you were to compare this software to Microsoft Streets and Trips, you will find a much more robust and accurate mapping product. The breadth and scope of content is much more richly detailed and accurate. Performance on the PC is equally impressive. Downloading waypoints and tracks from the GPS is a snap and allows you to save multiple map sets for easy reference. Planning out specific routes and uploading to the GPS is also very easy to do.

The only two things that I find to be inconvenient is the lack of compatibility on Mac OS X. It would be nice to be able to connect to my Mac since that is my primary computer; but this is not a major issue. Also, the other issue that is somewhat annoying is the timing of pop up windows on the GPS unit to alert you of your turns or exits. I am not sure if this is an issue with the GPS itself or with this software, but in any event, I have found that sometimes you don't get much notice of upcoming turns and exits. It would be nice to be able to set this to trigger at about a 1/2 mile from the waypoint instead of 2/10 mile as it is currently set. Again, not a major issue as long as you're paying close attention - otherwise you might just shoot past your turn or exit, especially if you're traveling fast.

Overall, this software provides all the data and maps you need to navigate anywhere in the US, Alaska and Hawaii. It seems to be current and accurate and a necessary component to any GPS device used for traveling.

Make sure this software works with your GPS device. I checked several forums, websites, and read through many postings (Amazon included) to figure this out.

As others have noted, the base map in Vista Cx is pretty limited. Since my goal was to get a GPS device for hiking, mountain biking, and driving directions when I travel, this was the logical upgrade for the Vista Cx. If you are seeking turn-by-turn directions for a Vista Cx, then this is a must have.

Here are my likes:
1) The directions are pretty good. I tried out several routes that I take on a daily basis and the directions followed my usual way. There are times when the software (both on the computer and on GPS) favors the shortest routes over shortest time (e.g. streets vs highways). However, you can also refine the routes by selecting intermediary points and letting the software recalculate.
2) Extensive list of POIs. This information is very broad and covers many things (maybe a little too much, see dislikes). Most of the POIs are current. Definitely very useful when I was driving up I5 from LA to SF and needed to know food options at upcoming exits. Some of the POI data is limited, for example, I had a tough time finding one particular store because it was buried amongst other stores in a large shopping mall. I haven't researched ways to update the POIs, but Garmin provides a utility to create your own icons and POIs (xImage).
3) Very detailed street data. Version 8 is quite current, it even has many of the new roads that have been built in the last 2 years around north Las Vegas. Don't expect it to be perfect, I definitely found roads that probably should been mapped (even in the highest detail setting they were not visible), but for its breadth, the street data is very good.
4) On the fly recalculation of route. This may be attributed to the Vista Cx and City Navigator combined, but I was very impressed when I missed a turn and the directions were recalculated.
5) Tech support. I called tech support because I couldn't figure out how to unlock the software (too many options for unlocking). He was very helpful and walked me through the whole process. He also stayed on the line to give me a quick tutorial for using the software. Lastly, he wasn't one of those typical CSRs that reads from a script or needed to look things up, he really knew the products and how they work.

My dislikes:
1) Too many POIs, Do I really need to see all the nail salons within 3 miles of my house? Really. The POIs is so extensive, it has businesses that you don't really care about. It would be nice if Garmin provided a feature where you could select which POI categories to download from the map into the GPS.
2) The price. This software is very expensive, but if you consider the versatility in getting navigation and something small enough for hiking and a combined price that is less than an auto navigation unit, then this is pretty good. For comparison sake, Magellan is coming out with a new unit that can be used for both auto navigation and hiking, but its MSRP is still more than the combined price of a Vista Cx with this software.
3) Updates to the software. This is where I think Garmin can change their approach. The upgrade price for v7 to v8 is $75. That is a lot of money and not something I wish to spend to go from v8 to v9. I'm hoping there won't be reason to, but we won't know until that time comes.

Recommended upgrades:
1) Definitely get a bigger memory chip. If you can reduce some of the POI info, this may not be as critical. However, I was only able to fit So Cal on a 64MB chip.
2) Check Garmin website for software patches. I ran into a few issues when I installed Topo after CN. I needed some patches from Garmin to get this resolved. Not a big deal because I got a very helpful pop-up screen from Garmin about the patch just before Mapsource crashed.

I've had my GPS and CN for a couple weeks now. Overall, I'm very satisfied with it. It isn't perfect, but it does many of the things I was looking for and Garmin's strong experience in mapping and navigation shows in this product.

I bought Garmin MapSource City Navigator North America, v.8 to go with my new Garmin 60CSx GPSmap handheld receiver. I also bought a 2gb SanDisk microSD card. The entire 1.6gb North America map fits on this chip and works well with the 60 CSx handheld.

This map is so detailed that it even has my neighbor's driveway.

It has all of the small roads.