Garmin nüvi 50 5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator(US and Canada)

I've been using GPS units for over a decade. My first unit was a Magellan hiking oriented unit. I ditched it after two weeks and got a Garmin hiking unit that lasted me 6 years. The UI was much better, and Garmin really seems to pay attention to that. When the Nuvi wide screen units came out, that was the price performance price to get me into a unit oriented for driving. I've had both the 200w and the 255w. The 200w was good. The 255w had subtle UI improvements such as the speed limit display.

The new Garmin 50 beats them hands down. It's larger, and for less money than the others when they were new. The 5" display makes a huge difference. In addition to the larger display, almost everything about the maps details, fonts for text info, icons and symbols all seem larger, beyond just scaling up for screen size. Everything is much easier to read at a quick glance. The bootup is much faster. The first couple of times, there's a rather annoying license click-through, but it goes away after that. It hasn't been back. There's a "safety mode" which tries to tell you what a bad idea changing settings while driving is. It's easy to override, and easy to turn off.

Lane assist! It works... Sometimes it's timing is a little off... If it triggers too early you can end up in a "disappearing lane". Too late, and it can be tough to get into the correct lane in time, so this feature isn't an easy one to get right. It's still a big help.

When approaching a critical intersection, the screen splits, and a "street view" of the intersection appears. A cartoon depiction. I was worried that this would be disconcerting. But it's not. It works. It's helpful. BTW, this size screen in a motorcycle-toughened unit would be FABULOUS. Just my view.

The menus are very simple and easy to understand. Navigation is accurate. 5" display is plenty big enough. Reception is great. One thing I would change is the voice option. There are 2 voices. The standard voice is a bit muddled and speaks street names. The other voice is much clearer but DOESN'T speak street names. I think you can download more voices online but I haven't tried that yet. Overall the GPS is well worth the 179 we paid.

UPDATE: I don't care for the lack of street names on the screen. My old garmin gps shows all the street names. This one only shows half of them even if i'm zoomed in or out. I need to know what street I'm on! See photo I uploaded.

This GPS is 100 times better than my old GPS, the Garmin 750! Everything is a lot quicker now from finding satellites to scrolling on the screen. Plus, there's a whole bunch of great new features. Some examples are how it now tells you which lane to be in so you don't have to guess, the screen refreshes faster so it's easier to actually tell when to turn, the junction view is pretty handy, and apparently it shows you speed traps and red light cameras! Definitely a great buy.