Rating: ★★★★☆

This review will assist someone like me who am not familiar with GPS systems and am looking for basic functionality. I was looking for a unit that is portable so I could also use it for walking or in rental cars and has a widescreen display, so I settled on comparing a Garmin Nuvi 650 with a Plenio VXA-5000.

The Plenio doesn’t say any street names but the Nuvi will say the actual street you want to turn down. So instead of “Turn right in 200 feet,” you would hear “Turn right on 1st Street in 200 feet”. I found the Plenio confusing if there were two possible right turns close to each other, and the display didn’t always help.

The Nuvi had a very bright easy to see screen while the Plenio display appeared dim and difficult to read on bright days. The When a turn is announced, the text of the street name was much easier to read on the Nuvi. This also makes it easier to keep track of cross streets when operating in “tracking mode” rather than inputting a destination. The Garmin is thinner and lighter.

The Plenio includes an FM transmitter, (sound can play through your FM radio) and Bluetooth; to get this functionality with the Garmin, a trade up to the Garmin Nuvi 660 is necessary. The Plenio includes an AC charger, a useful tool in a portable GPS. If you have a mini USB AC charger, you can use it with the Nuvi.

The Plenio has an internal antenna while the Garmin has a foldaway flip up antenna flap. The Plenio was totally unable to get a satellite fix, and therefore useless, while in my car because it has a metallic layer in the windshield as some cars do. The Garmin had no such problem. The Garmin also could acquire the signal while indoors. The Garmin allows the user to turn on “WAAS” which is a combined satellite and ground GPS mode that is more accurate than satellite alone; I haven’t seen that WAAS makes a difference to a basic user like me. The

Garmin seems to attain a signal from a cold start much faster.
The Garmin maps v.8 seemed “less out of date” than the Plenio. The Garmin has a more substantial list of POI’s. The Plenio allows you to program the unit to show your choice of POI’s as icons on the map, and bring up more information ( name, phone number) by touching the icon; the Garmin will provide this information from a separate search menu.

For some reason, the Plenio map orientation insists on switching from “driving direction up” to “north up” orientation and needs to be manually switched back each time it is turned on. The Plenio map displays a “compass rose”, a nice feature, but it is small and unreadable when in 3D mode. The Garmin stays in the map orientation as programmed. There is no compass, but when in “tracking mode” there is a text box that gives the driving direction.

To summarize, the Plenio had more bells and whistles which I willingly traded in for the much improved basic functionality of the Garmin nuvi 650 system any day of the week.