Garmin GPSMAP-640 Car Marine GPS
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List Price: $918.99 Our Price: $834.99 You Save: $84.00 (9.1%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours (as of 4:08 PM CT - detail)
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- Waterproof Land and Sea Navigator
- 5.2 in Diagonal WVGA Touchscreen Display at 800x480 Pixels
- Preloaded with BlueChart g2 Marine Cartography of the Coastal U.S./Including Alaska, Hawaii and the Bahamas
- Supports GXM 40, XM WX Satellite Weather, XM Satellite Radio, XM NavTraffic
- Turn by Turn Directions and Text to Speech
Product Description
GARMIN GPSMAP-640 Car Marine GPS. Garmin International is pleased to announce the new GPSMAP 620 and GPSMAP 640. These two new Garmin products offer elements of the GPSMAP 5000 series marine chartplotters combined with elements of the popular nuvi series for use on the road all in one easy to use device. Portable and powerful, the GPSMAP 620 and GPSMAP 640 feature a high sensitivity GPS receiver and boast a large, super bright 5.2 in WVGA touchscreen display that reacts as users tap and drag through the intuitive user interface. Out of the box, the GPSMAP 640 comes complete with marine and automotive mounts. This true land and sea navigator features preloaded maps such as highly detailed BlueChart g2 marine cartography of the coastal United States /including Alaska, Hawaii and the Bahamas/ as well as highly detailed City Navigator NT road maps for North America.
Spotlight Customer Reviews:
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Summary:
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Piece of Junk!!!!
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Comment:
If I could give this item ZERO stars, I would!!! I bought this unit to use on inland lakes and rivers in the Southeast United States and the installed map gave absolutely no spot depths for the Tennessee River, which is one of the major rivers in the United States. Then, I bought the G2 Vision card and wasted another $325+ dollars, as it also had no depth information on the map. In my opinion, Garmin marine products are a total waste of money. Then, when I tried to return the items to Garmin, they refused. Oh yea, their customer service is also absolutely horrible!!!
Comment:
I purchased this GPS as a back up to use on my boats and on land when required. I had contacted Garmin to make sure that the inland rivers were a part of the data base. When I received the unit and started using it I found the rivers were not on the unit. I then checked and found an update on the software was available. After reading the instruction, easy to understand, I hooked the unit to my MAC, with the provided cable, and down loaded the updated systemware and the river charts.
The unit meets my expectations at this point and I feel with more use, marine and auto, it will exceed my expectations.
Comment:
So I bought this unit for one purpose, to use it on boats in my boat club. I currently own many of Garmin's products, from nuvis on the street to a GPSMAP 4208 on my own boat. This is a great little GPS. I have been using it in the car until the weather warms up and I can use it in the boat. I would not recommend using the included friction mount. RAM has an awesome windshield mount that works great. As far as functions and usability, I have no issues, everything is where it is on my Nuvi in auto mode and marine mode on my GPS MAP 640. I have a G2 Vision card that I use in my 4208 and I put it in the 640 and I get all the additional map features missing from the base map. For the reviewer who posted about the navigating function moving over land while in the water, that is because you need the G2 Vision card to use auto guidance. I would recommend this GPS to others who need a portable GPS.
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Summary:
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Great GPS for on the road or on the water
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Comment:
First-off, I have no idea what the other two reviewers are complaining about regarding XM traffic/weather while using the unit in automotive mode. You have to buy a separate XM receiver to even get XM reception, and on top of that a monthly subscription. Rating the entire unit as 1-star because of the absence of a tiny feature that almost no one will miss (XM traffic/weather in automotive mode) is short-sighted, reductionist and unfair to Garmin and potential customers.
The GPS is great - the touch screen works well, provides a lot of real-estate, and is very responsive. The built-in data has loads of information on local facilities and points-of-interest, and is really good at showing you current speed limits and adjusting quickly when they change. The on-land navigation is excellent, as you would expect from Garmin. You can choose from several voices, it does an excellent job re-routing and estimating time-of-arrival, etc. It comes with many accessories, including a mounting kit for a boat, the base for the car, and AC adapter for charging at home.
On the water it is very impressive with the level of detail in the charts that come with this unit - shipping lanes, lots of soundings, hazards, channel markers, everything is there. It has tide and current information for many stations, has built-in knowledge of the local deviation which allows you to configure the unit in True or Magnetic, and again is good at calculating arrival times and headings.
The are a few minuses to the product. It tends to support only straight-line navigation on the water so if there's any land in between you and your destination, it oddly just plots a course right over the land. It is also insanely expensive given its size and target audience (presumably people who want to use it both for automotive and nautical purposes and aren't interested in shelling out a small fortune for a full-fledged on-board nav system in their boats). The battery life (at least in my unit) is also less than ideal - it seems to last only a few hours, which is unfortunate. The battery pack that you attach to the back does add some weight/bulk (total unit is about 1 pound 2 ounces with battery), so it's not quite in the category of handheld or easily carried on a hike, so one would think (therefore) that it would have substantially more battery life than it does.
Overall, it's a great product with a ton of features. I just fear the downfall of this unit (or rather this particular line of land/water combo GPS from Garmin) will be its excessively high price point.
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Summary:
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Technology in reverse...
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Comment:
The 640 could/should have been so much better, had Garmin enabled the XM Weather capability in Automotive mode, in addition to the Marine mode, which does support XM Weather (WHY would they do such a stupid thing?!), and kept the Tracks/Tracks Management feature of the 276C/378/478 models, which are also geared toward Marine/Auto users. The unbelievable thing is that these missing features are all features that Garmin has implemented in older units - it is baffling why they would eliminate them in newer models, particularly at a time when this basic GPS functionality in the 640 is so widely available in smartphones. They also reduced the number of saved Routes. As the 640 is currently configured, I will stick to my trusty 478 for a long time, despite the fact that I would have liked to upgrade to a larger screen and updated GPS receiver technology found in the 640.
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