<p>Can you recommend a model of TomTom (or other brand) that has easy interface for senior citizens?</p>
<p>My dad has a navigation system on his car, but it’s about 10 years old. So the interface is old/clunky, and the maps are dated. He does not have a SmartPhone. We’ve considered getting him a TomTom, which he could use in his other car too. It would need to have a very easy interface. He has a laptop but he only has novice email/internet skills.</p>
<p>We like the TT 2535 LIVE with HD Traffic, and got one for my FIL (age 80+). </p>
<p>It is pricey, but relatively easy to use, map updates are free, and traffic is free for the first year (annual fee thereafter is $40 IIRC). </p>
<p>For us, especially my wife who drives to Jersey City 5x/week, the traffic algorithms are worth the price. I’m not sure we’d buy it if we lived somewhere with no traffic. It has routed us around traffic that was epoxied down. Avoiding a one hour delay? Priceless.</p>
<p>Ps: if he has a laptop, TT updates are easy enough to do, as is address entry, entering favorites, etc. I’m 60+ myself, and I find the 5" screen nice for my older eyes. If he can drive, he can use the TT 2535.</p>
<p>Thanks for the quick feedback! </p>
<p>“Ps: if he has a laptop, TT updates are easy enough to do” - Maybe yes, maybe no. He’s getting better with gmail. But he’s still really can’t do google searches on his own. It’s hard to teach from 2000 miles away. (I’ve tried getting a local hs volunteer… or even paid helper, but no luck so far). We do have crossloop (remote login) set up, so maybe I could work him through it. We have rented a vacation house for 2 weeks in August, and he will bring the laptop - that’s why I was thinking timing would be good for teaching the TT.</p>
<p>I don’t know if the portable TomTom’s are the same, but I have an integrated one in my new car, and I hate it. The last few years, the cars had Navteq systems which were much better. My husband works for a car company, and he says they have been getting a lot of complaints from customers about the new TomTom systems. I would go through a thorough demo before buying one to make sure you can put up with its functionality.</p>
<p>We’ve always had really good experiences with Garmins so that is what I recently bought for my 80 year old parents. I sent them the nuvi 50LM which has a 5" screen and lifetime map updates. I did a fair amount of research and this one receives very strong reviews and is only $100 at best buy.</p>
<p>We just bought a Garmin nuvi 50 (but not LM) from Amazon and mailed it to our son. Glad to hear that this model is relatively good. If your 80 year old parents can use it, so can my 25 year old son.</p>
<p>He has a smart phone; but I think a GPS device is better for providing the instructions while on tge road, so we insist on sending him one.</p>
<p>The reason we did not go for the LM version: I actually regard this kind of device as someting that has a limited life time. If people tend to replace their smatphone every few years, why can they replace their cheaper GPS devices every few years also?! Also, Garmins is not a computer software company. I therefore do not want to deal with their automatic or manual update procedure. I just want to treat it like something like microwave and use it while it still runs well.</p>
<p>I find the Tom Tom interface fairly difficult sometimes. And I work in IT… they are always releasing new versions of the software you use to link up from your computer (but don’t seem to get rid of the old versions when you upgrade). Half the time it does not recognize my device when it is connected. And the Tom Tom has crapped out (completely stopped working) twice on vacations in the last year, even though I updated it a few days before leaving. It needed some update to the way it finds satellites – it was particularly ugly on college graduation weekend when we were driving to the next town for dinner after graduation with my parents in the car…</p>
<p>I have heard better things about Magellan and Garmin… D1 uses a Garmin and likes it. But she is 23, so who knows if the interface is a pain? She might not mention it. The Tom Tom I have DOES have a fairly nice, large screen – important to me because I am not wearing my reading glasses when driving! This is probably important for your dad, too…</p>
<p>Agree with mcat2 that what I want is to be able to treat it like my microwave – would like to it to just automatically get updates from the satellite without me having to plug it into the computer… Also would like to be able to limit what is on it (I REALLY don’t need it to have Mexican or South American road maps installed… but don’t seem to have a choice).</p>
<p>My W could manage to use a Garmin just fine - nuff said.</p>
<p>Intparent, I guess that’s what makes horse races. I had to change batteries once, but otherwise it works fine. My wife’s car has thick glass, so we installed an antenna amplifier (it’s a Range Rover with heating element in the windshield). We keep 3 separate devices updated without a problem (I just have to put in my son’s email for his, my wife’s, …) and I used to work in IT :-)</p>
<p>I learned from somewhere that the menu tree (on the graphic interface) on a Garmin is relatively shallow, like 2 to 3 levels deep only. Its graphic interface is relatively “old style” and has rarely been changed over the years. If you stick to the basic model, I think a simple Garmin is user-friendly.</p>
<p>As compared to computers or smartphone, the icons are huge on GPS and there are very few clickable (tappable?) icons on each screen – thus it is easier to use in general, as long as you do not have a sophisticated model.</p>
<p>A complaint about some Garmins is that it takes a long time to find the satelite when it is just turned on. We are patient enough to live with this inconvenience. (We ourselves have had an older Garmin with a smaller screen for 2 years.)</p>
<p>I’m assuming dad doesn’t have a smartphone. That’s all you need.</p>
<p>^ Really?</p>
<p>DS said the same (i.e., he can use iPhone as a GPS device.) but somehow we (parents) do not agree. We stubbornly ordered one GPS device for him. Hopefully, he will find a use for it.</p>
<p>Maybe we do not use our smartphone (iPhone) correctly. We are relatively new adopters of smartphone. We think a (simple) GPS device is relatively sturdy (under extreme heat in the summer) and cheap (as compared to iPhone) – if it stops functioning, we can just go buy a replacement. No need to wait till the expiration of the contract.</p>
<p>My impression is that the smart phone does not need to be synchronized via connecting to your computer regularly as the #$%^ TT does. That would be the big advantage in my mind. I find the user interface to the TT itself to be pretty good (except when it has turned off completely and WILL NOT restart due to an “urgent software update” that I was not aware of because I was out of town when it was released). But if I had a smart phone and could get out of ths silly synching business, that would be a pretty good deal.</p>
<p>At the moment, on Amazon the nuvi 50LM (lifetime maps) is cheaper than the regular nuvi 50.</p>
<p>I don’t care about the lifetime maps especially because IME they don’t last long enough for the maps to get really out of date, and if you read the reviews you’ll see a lot of people brick their GPS’s when they try to update the maps.</p>
<p>Wow… I love my CC product consultants - great discussion! </p>
<p>We went to Best Buy today and saw TT and Garmin and Magellin. Unfortunately they did not seem to be set up for easy “play time”. I was impressed by how many are in the $100 - $150 price range, especially when on sale. The return period is only 15 days, so we will wait and buy it on vacation… perhaps after some compare and contrast with Dad’s with 2003-ish anitquated Lexus navi system. We will likely decide a newer portable unit is better. </p>
<p>EASE OF USE IS #1 PRIORITY. Keep your thoughts coming…</p>
<p>P.S. I bought two nuvi 50LMs last week from Amazon for my kids. As a result of this thread, I looked it up again on Amazon to see something, and noticed the price had dropped $10 since last week. A quick on-line chat with customer service, and I am getting $20 back. So thanks for starting this thread, you saved me some money!</p>
<p>Ha - great Amazon story. Report back here when the kids have some thoughts on the nuvi 50LMs.</p>
<p>I actually have one of my own. It’s very simple to operate, the screen is quite large, it does a very decent job reading names.</p>
<p>Once you set your “home”, you can navigate to home in two presses.</p>
<p>It is no frills - no trip planner, no multi-destination, no bluetooth, no voice recognition, no traffic, etc. You enter an address, it tells you how to get there. The exit ramp feature is nice.</p>
<p>The 5" screen means the buttons to enter an address are reasonably sized, although not huge. I fat-finger them fairly often.</p>
<p>For $100, it’s a good deal IMO.</p>
<p>what are the differences in the graphic user interfaces between nuvi 50 and nuvi 50LM?</p>
<p>I am of the opinion that for a consumer product like GPS devices, if I do not need a feature, I really do not want to see it on my GPS device. The less feature, the better - unless it lacks some feature I can not live without.</p>
<p>I knew the regular nuvi 50 is more expensive. But I am willing to pay slightly extra to remove any potentially hard-to-use “map upgrage” button from my device. I may be somewhat extreme on this but the fact is that well too many devices/gadgets/computers Today could give the customers inconveniences (keep bothering the user to do the software upgrade) or even headaches (brick the devices.)</p>