- Sunlight-readable, 5-inch backlit TFT color touchscreen display with 480 x 272 WQVGA pixel resolution
- Preloaded with City Navigator NT data for North America (U.S. and Canada) and Puerto Rico, with nearly six million points of interest
- Free lifetime map and traffic updates for the most up-to-date maps, POIs, and navigation info, along with constantly updated traffic information
- Advanced navigation features including voice-prompted turn-by-turn directions, lane assist with junction view, fuel-saving ecoRoute
- Integrated Bluetooth wireless technology with a built-in microphone and speaker for hands-free calling. Comes with One-year warranty.microSD card (not included)
The screen is impressive, while going from 4.3" to 5" does not sound like much it is really amazing how much more map and information that fits well on the screen. The screen itself is anti-glare that works, and very bright if you want it, I have the brightness at 60% and that is fine even in bright sunlight. The images are very crisp and clear, street names and such are auto-sized to not obstruct the map but big enough to read easily. The volume when it is reading out direction is also outstanding, so loud I have it also on 60%. So a solid 5 Stars on the screen and voice volume, as well as the pronunciation of the street names!
Quirk: When I first got it I was in my office and opened it, plugged it in to just power and fired it up, it kept asking for me to agree to the license terms and no matter how I answered it rebooted itself, did this like 4 times and then was ok. This would happen each time I turned it on. Not a big issue really, as soon as it "sees" the sats it stops doing it and is fine. Little off for the scare factor, it has never done it again.
The update process is very easy but long, likely very long on a slower PC and/or slow internet connection, the map data is huge. That said it is the nature of the beast and Garmin makes it as painless as possible, the registration and update process was very slick.
Once all updated and ready to go it is time to go through the options, you don't have to, out of the box it picks everything, but I think most will find it worth it, there are a lot of options on how you want it to find routes, deal with traffic (comes with lifetime traffic info), how you want the maps to look in many aspects, 2D, 3D, Track top to your direction or top to always north, and all kinds of additional information that can optionally be on the map screen. Out of the box Garmin has every bell and whistle turned on which I guess I understand but this is why I say it is worth getting it where you like. From the factory you will only see 4.3" of map on route as it has 4 tabs of optional information along the right side. I wanted 5" of map so I disabled the side tabs in settings, very nice option, you can also pick what tab is showing what information from a good selection of options.
Quirk: If you are using the traffic information and have the traffic avoidance enabled you can get some really odd routes, since I was just trying mine out around town and to work and back I knew it was telling me wrong turns, a little time in the manual and I found out why, it was automatically altering the route around traffic alerts, while this may sound like a good thing and would be if it told you it was doing that, in my case it was not, no other route is going to help and I did not know what in the heck it was doing :) I found you can have the best of both worlds, keep trafic information turned on but disable traffic in the avoidances setting tab. Then it warns you of traffic on your route, lets you see where, and gives you a detour option at that point you can take or ignore. It would be better during the route calc process if it said it had added detours, and when it does it on the fly it should also, minor quirk once you know. This is a 3 star feature in the auto mode. 5 star would be to tell you and offer y/n detour options for each point.
Junction View to me was one of the most impressive features, I go through one very complex set of interchanges for 3 freeways with express lanes to bybass interchanges and local lane to pick up any direction to or from any free way, many a folks have left on the wrong path... When I was aproaching it the garmin flipped to junction view and wow, it had a clearly marked path through the maze, and nailed every lane on the money, and the optimum lane for the follwing turn if there was more than one lane leading into it. Very nice! Another 5 star feature, this would have made my first time through that a lost safer than the old garmin with just a yellow line through it.
The routes it comes up with are 4.5 star, it hits most very very well but will toss a few more odd ones out than my old Garmin did, they all do some, I think this could do better, the good news is these are not horrible routes, just not the better or best always.
The next 4 star item is the power cord/FM Traffic radio, it is like having jumper cables going up your dash, why it is not in the unit is beyond me, I am stumped so far as to how to route the cables a lot more cleaner than this and have traffic info.
Another option is to skip the traffic radio and run on battery, with the right settings you can get 3 hours, but with my settings I can get just over 2 hours on battery before the warning. The final power option is just power, that is an optional cord you have to buy that is a lot less bulky than the powered traffic cord. So battery life and traffic radio/power cord is 3 star.
Bluetooth phone paring was very easy and works great, the noise cancelling is pretty good also on its mic, so your caller can hear you and not road noise. 5 Star
Another nice feature is the speed limit that shows up in a little speed limit sign icon by your actual speed, if you are going over the limit for the road, the actual speed turns red in the display. (I will not say how I know but it is a relaible source!) 5 Star, speed limit signs on a lot of our local town roads is a problem.
I was also impressed that I could pick maximum map detail and it keeps up even in the city, during fast turns in very high street density it will occaisionally repaint the screen instead of smooth scrolling with your motion but it does it so fast, unlike my prior Garmin, they it is not distracting or leave you hanging with a partial map. This is 5 star all the way.
Overall I have to say I am very happy with the Garmin 1490LMT, I could not give it a full 5 for the things it fell just a little short on to me, but if I was to make the decision on a model again with what I know, I would buy it again, I think it would be hard to beat.Garmin nüvi 1490LMT 5-Inch Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator with Lifetime Map Updates and Traffic
Buy Garmin nüvi 1490LMT 5-Inch Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator Now
*** UPDATE at the bottom of this review (February 2012)****** UPDATE at the bottom of this review (September 2012)
Background I own a lot of technology. I like electronic toys and I indulge myself in whatever the latest gadget is. This has given me a broad taste in different segments of gadgets, and a pretty good eye for what works and what does not work.
Some convergence works but to date, most just plain suck (January 2011). Prime example of poor convergence is my iPhone 4 and Apple App Store GPS software like Navigon, Garmin, TomTom, MotionX, iGO, GlobalNav, MapQuest, Google and others. I tried them all and in one way or another, they all suck. Why? Because the iPhone is primarily a mobile phone and an iPod. When an SMS message comes in, or a Facebook alert, or a Calendar alert, or a phone call, it either distracts or switches away from GPS navigation. Not a good idea when driving, far less when driving in unfamiliar areas!!!
Convergence in GPS mapping systems is completely understandable. Magellan, Garmin, TomTom and others are scrambling against an ever increasing golden horde of Androids and iPhones, other smart phones plus in-car navigation and GPS stereos, OnStar and other competitors. The GPS manufacturers HAVE to offer everything under the sun to keep in business MP3 player, Audiobook player, Bluetooth connectivity, JPEG player, USB hard drive, Travel Guides, Traffic updates, offline maps, nearby shopping coupons you name it, there is a GPS unit that has it. Long gone are the days of the single purpose GPS unit. Now most of them include the proverbial kitchen sink.
This Garmin 1490LMT replaces my still fully functional 2008 model 3.5 inch Garmin nüvi 370 3.5-Inch Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator. Prior to that, I had other older Garmins dating back to the StreetPilot days. My 370 has old maps, but it is a workhorse. It has never failed me as a GPS unit. Battery life on the 370 was a healthy 8 hours. The 1490 is about 2.5 hours with my settings. However, my Nuvi 370 has a raft of useless features a Bluetooth hands free system, a MP3 player, a Travel Guide etc. and well, frankly, those features sucked. And they sucked bad. But then, they all do. No one unit can do it all and do it perfectly. Not yet. See above. :-)
Things to do before you first use your 1490 :
Go to "my dot garmin dot com" and register your device. Update the firmware first it takes a while primarily because the Garmin website is horribly buggy and unstable. But keep trying to update the firmware until it is the latest version. Then update your maps. This takes even longer, but is worth the frustration and the long wait. Keep trying and eventually it will complete and your GPS unit will be the better for it. My updates from start to finish took just over 4 hours. I have read of people taking 12 hours (unconfirmed) and most taking about 3 hours for this laborious process.
Garmin Nuvi 1490LMT : My Review :
Firmware 4.90, GPS 4.30
>Pros :
There is much to like about the 1490.
GPS functions Outstanding! With all due respect, all of the GPS mapping nay-sayers must be mentally deficient (no offence meant). Big, bright, loud, 5 inch screen, beautiful resolution, extremely fast GPS lock and lightning scrolling as smooth as butter with maximum map detail switch on. It's like my Nuvi 370 on steroids.
Screen 5 inches of wonderful. Did I mention it was big? It is HUGE. I absolutely love it. I do not need to look away from the road to see where I am and where I need to turn it is in my peripheral vision. I keep the brightness at 70%. It is that bright. Polarised sunglasses do NOT black out or dim the 1490 LCD. They have no effect. My 370 could not be seen with polarised lenses. Major plus for me as I wear prescription polarised sunglasses.
Volume loud. Really loud. And clear. I use the British Daniel TTS voice (taken from my 370) and it is crystal clear, no "crackling" or distortion at 80% or less. Maybe other negative reviewers had older firmware. More about Voices later in this review.
Interface clean and clear and simple. A small child could use it. In fact, small children have used it without instructions or tutelage.
Keyboard QWERTY, at last! That stupid ABCDE Nuvi 370 keyboard drove me to distraction. Now you can choose between QWERTY and ABCDE keyboards.
Traffic Many have complained that the "traffic does not work". Actually, the traffic works perfectly in the areas it services. But first you have to go into the "Tools/Settings/Navigation/Avoidances" and make a change. Set Avoidances to clear (no green tick mark) next to Traffic and press OK. Make sure your Route Preference is set to "Faster Time" and you are all set. Traffic now works like a champ. For my thoughts on Lifetime Traffic see my comments later in this review.
Lifetime Maps love it. $80 was a tough pill to swallow for yearly map updates so I didn't update. Having Lifetime map updates (up to 4 times a year for the life of the unit) is one of the reasons I chose this GPS model.
Boot picture I had this on my 370 and thankfully I have the same feature on my 1490. It is trivial but it does give me a small sense of personalisation.
Vehicles there are (literally) thousands of them on the Internet. The Garmin site has a scant handful, but in the wider Internet you can get a beautifully rendered "Batman Returns" Batmobile, or an Aston Martin Vantage, or a Volkswagen Beetle. Sky is the limit. Lots and lots of choices.
Bluetooth don't care. Really do not care at all. Useless feature for me i have Bluetooth in my Jawbone and car stereo which is superior to any GPS unit's Bluetooth feature. If I cared about Bluetooth, I would just use my iPhone 4 with the Garmin GPS software and not bother buying a standalone GPS. In my humble opinion, all the complaints about Bluetooth are wide of the mark because this is a GPS unit not a handsfree unit! In hindsight, I should have bought the 1450LMT (which is a 1490 without Bluetooth) but did not understand the differences in models when I bought the 1490LMT. See my comments on "convergence" above.
>Cons :
All is not rosy in Garmin-Land
* Zip Code search when will GPS manufacturers realise that in America, we have these little things called zip codes? Why do I have to laboriously type city then address etc. when I can get within a dozen miles or so of my destination if I have the zip code? Only one GPS manufacturer has woken up to this minor fact. Garmin is definitely asleep at the wheel here.
* Annoying (and loud) key press beeps cannot be disabled without muting the entire unit. I could disable the key press tone in my 370. A backward step from Garmin here.
* Voices there is an absolute dearth of voices for the Garmin. Garmin and Pigtones offer a few unexceptional voices but nothing like the truly excellent TomTom "Star Wars" voices. From the factory, the 1490 comes with almost no voices to speak of. Luckily I copied my Nuvi 370 factory TTS voices over to my 1490, otherwise I would not have anything I could stand listening to. A major step backwards for Garmin!
* Annoying Traffic advertisements. I would happily pay more for the Lifetime Traffic to NOT have these intrusive and annoying advertisements and coupons popping up and obscuring the screen. It's easy enough to dismiss the ads, but they are very annoying. Resounding "F minus" to Garmin for this "feature"
* Things I could do without : Language Guide, Offers (coupons), Picture Viewer. All useless, all pointless. But hey! it gives Garmin "feature tick boxes" they can fill against their competitors, so whatever works, I guess.
* Onerous, tedious and very buggy firmware and map update process. Garmin need to get with the programme and buy more servers and/or hire better Mac/PC programmers.
Undocumented Features :
Garmin, for reasons unknown, have undocumented features, some of which make great selling points. Maybe in their rush to market with their plethora of GPS offerings, they forget which unit has what feature and do not tout these neat hidden features.
Breadcrumbs a blue line appears behind you, everywhere you travel, showing you your path. This may seem pointless until you are lost and you see the blue line and realise that you are traveling in a circle. Also great for finding your way back to, for example, an unfamiliar airport rental depot. Lots of uses I like this feature a lot.
Satellite View with the unit switched on and on the Home screen, press and hold the signal strength bars in the top left corner for about 10 seconds. It will switch to the satellite view and you can see your GPS accuracy, speed and elevation as well as a graphic of the GPS satellites overhead and their signal strength.
Screen Calibration Power off your 1490. Now press your finger on the top left corner and press the power button while keeping your finger in the corner. Wait about 30-45 seconds and a black dot on a white screen appears in the top left hand corner with crosshairs. Follow the on screen instructions to calibrate your touch screen. Only necessary if you find that when typing you keep hitting the wrong key or the menus are hard to navigate because of incorrect key presses.
Master Reset Power off your 1490. Now press your finger on the bottom right corner and press the power button while keeping your finger in the corner. Wait about 30-45 seconds and a "Do you want to reset all user data" message pops up. Select "Yes" and your 1490 is reset to factory settings all your personal data is erased. Use with caution all user data like Home, POI, breadcrumbs, routes etc. will be erased. However, this is a great feature if you wish to sell you 1490LMT in the future or if it is malfunctioning/unresponsive and needs a master reset.
Built in extensive hardware and software tests With the switched unit on and on the Home screen, press and hold the "battery" icon in the top right hand corner. After about 30 seconds, you will e presented with an overwhelming number of tests with many, many sub menus. If you are a competent and confident tinkerer, you can diagnose (and repair!) many problems with your new shiny GPS system. Please use with extreme and grave caution!!! You can COMPLETELY BRICK your 1490 playing with the hidden diagnostics menus. Again, if you do not know what you are doing, do not mess with this!
Final thoughts :
If you are looking for an all singing, all dancing system, the Garmin Nuvi 1490LMT is not for you. In fact, no convergence unit is for you. None of them are masters of all and most of them are masters of none.
The Garmin nüvi 1490LMT 5-Inch Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator with Lifetime Map & Traffic Updates is a GPS navigation system, and in that regard, it is spectacular. I like this unit. It does what I bought it to do GPS Navigation and it does it extremely well. I highly recommend it.
*** UPDATE: A Garmin system and map update in late 2011 now has Zip Code Search!!! At last! I am very pleased with this update.
*** UPDATE: I bought a new 2012 model Garmin 2555LMT here on Amazon for $139 when it was on sale earlier this year I recommend it. Garmin nüvi 2555LMT 5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator with Lifetime Maps and Traffic The 2555LMT has a few quite annoying quirks but no show-stoppers and is a nice upgrade from the 1490LMT. However I continue to use the 1490LMT on a daily basis; it is a workhorse. I will write a review on the 2555LMT soon.
Read Best Reviews of Garmin nüvi 1490LMT 5-Inch Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator Here
First of all, I'd like to admit that I'm a Garmin fan. I've used other GPS's in the distant past and they never seemed to stack up to Garmins. I'll mainly be reviewing this GPS to other Garmin units I've owned, so if you're looking for a review that compares it to other brands, this isn't it.I've owned several Nuvi's and the main difference between this and the others I've owned is speed and size! As another reviewer pointed out going from a 4" screen to a 5" screen makes a really big difference. And the speed compared to my other Nuvi's is incredible! Everything from initial boot-up to typing addresses in to map-drawing is lightning quick. I've always hated how my old Nuvi's would get me turned around or make me miss a turn after typing an address because the draw refresh rate was so slow, this 1490LMT nearly does it in real-time.
One note on speed; it doesn't seem like searching for something by name is any faster, still slow as molasses.
Build quality seems good, but the shiny black plastic around the edge of the screen collects fingerprints easily, if you care about that kind of thing.
Overall I really like the unit...with 1 minor and 1 MAJOR annoyance:
Minor: I can't seem to figure out how to get my current speed to not display on the screen. This Garmin has a feature that displays the current speed limit of the road your on (nice feature) and displays your current speed right next to it. If you go over the speed limit your current speed turns red. I KNOW I'm speeding Garmin! Quit nagging me! I live in southern California, of course I'm speeding!
Major: This is the first GPS I've ever owned that has ADVERTISING BUILT IN! On the homepage every time you turn it on, there is an "offer bar" that displays coupons for nearby businesses across the top of the screen, slightly blocking the "Where to?" and "View Map" buttons. How do you disable this wonderful "feature" you ask? By turning off traffic updates. Yes, they actually spam you if you have traffic updates turned on. The ONLY way to disable it is to turn off traffic updates, one of the main reasons I bought this unit in the first place! Someone correct me if I'm wrong...
Overall I'd buy it again, but I hate spam with a passion. I'm sure someone will be able to patch the software somehow, but that's really shady of Garmin to set up the software to spam you if you want to use a feature you paid for. Great hardware, weak and shady software.
Want Garmin nüvi 1490LMT 5-Inch Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator Discount?
You should know that the unit displays **Advertisements** while you drive.Who has the best Pizza? Want a discount coupon for some burgers? Click here! Switch to another screen to read more about this fabulous deal.
Want your kids doing this while they drive? Is it any benefit to you?
Garmin doesn't want you to enter navigation directions while you drive (it's dangerous!) but they have no objections to presenting you with fast food discount coupons to look at.
These Ads appear on the screen every few minutes in metro areas, blocking the map display, and there is no way to get rid of them.
I find them maddening. I've read elsewhere that all the Garmin Nuvi's do this.
Consider purchasing another brand.
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So you may pay a little more for the life time maps, but it;s worth it! Worked great out of the box. Be prepared, it took 4 hrs to upload the new maps, but hoping next update doesn't take that long. Its easy to work and quick to respond. One of the best buys I've made recently. My sister has the 13?? Garmin with the 4.7 screen. The 5 screen does make a difference and now she wishes she had gotten the one I have. Pay a little more for a bigger screen, you'll be amazed at the difference!
