Comments on: Garmin Nuvi 500

By: Bluechart G2 Vision

Bluechart G2 Vision — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 21:56:01 +0000

I tried loading a Bluechart G2 Vision card onto the Nuvi 500. The same issues as described above were seen. In addition, the raster birds eye view picture of the surrouning land did not come through properly. The overlay is visible while in non-marine mode, but then none of the bluecharts show up. After switching to boating mode, the overlay pictures do not work … you are just left with the regular Bluechart details. And, as described in the above post, one cannot select and look at any of the details. This does make the Nuvi 500 unit pretty useless for marine navigation, I wish Garmin would fix this so that I caould buy some charts.

By: Garmin User

Garmin User — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 03:46:00 +0000

I agree … this is a major gripe for me as well. Not being able to look at the POI details is a real pain! It would be so much better if Garmin would add a “More” button when a POI is selected so that one can look at all the information that goes with the Marine POI. They already have this type of button for Geocaches to look at detailed description, logs, and hints; this makes me think that it would be very easy for Garmin to add it to the marine POIs as well (if they only wanted to). Without this button, a lot of the Bluecharts and fishing maps are completely useless, you cannot look at the fishing hints … they could really increase map sales if they added it to the Nuvi 500/550. If anyone is interested, please complain to Garmin … hopefully once they hear the same complaint many times over, they will act (after all, they will sell more maps and make more $$).

By: Steve

Steve — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 03:29:47 +0000

If you are planning to use the Nuvi 500 for boating, here is a couple of disappointing facts. This is an e-mail exchange with Garmin Support:

+++++++ Customer (that’s me):
I just bought a Nuvi 500 and Bluecharts and I have a couple of questions:
1) Before I bought this unit, I read over the Nuvi 500 manual as well as read the description on Amazon. In both cases it states that this is a WAAS enabled device. But I cannot find the button to enable WAAS, and the accuracy seems to be at par with my previous non-WAAS enabled Nuvi 265T. Is WAAS always enabled? Shouldn’t I get 2m accuracy similar to other WAAS enabled devices (I owned an eTrex Legend). The satellite capture screen does not indicate any WAAS information.
2) When I load Bluecharts, everything seems to work fine except that when I select map information or a POI (ie I select it on the screen and then press the magnification glass in the corner), it only shows the name of the POI and not the full text (ie wreck depth, map notes,etc.) Is this a deficiency of the unit? Will it be fixed in a future release? These are basic and key features for which I bought the Nuvi 500 with Bluechart. I was also planning to buy some inland lake maps … but if these features are not available I will reconsider as it is like having half a chart and likely return the unit.

——— Customer Support response:
Thank you for contacting Garmin International. The nuvi 500 uses a High-sensitivity receiver, for reception. This feature replaced the WAAS technology, so your nuvi 500 doesnt have WAAS capability.

With your second question about the Bluecharts, some POI names are abbreviated on the map screen to cut down on the amount of information on the screen. This unit will not display the information the same way as a marine unit.

+++++++ My Response:
It looks like I will be returning the unit and the charts as it does not do what it claims to do.

I would suggest to remove the “WAAS Enabled” statement from your NUVI 500 manual as it is false advertising. High sensitivity and WAAS are two completely independent things … and without WAAS the Nuvi 500 is no where close to providing the accuracy of a WAAS enabled device. High sensitivity improves the ability of the GPS device to receive a signal under poor conditions; WAAS decodes information embedded in the GPS signal to correct for atmospheric conditions and improve the precision of the reading. Sensitivity and precision are different things.

On the other topic, if I can only see part of the charts, it would be irresponsible for me to use on the water (ie wreck depths are included in the notes, without being able to look at the notes you do not know the depth … many other objects also contain critical information in the notes). As it cannot show the full chart, I would suggest to remove the Bluechart compatibility statements, as it is very misleading and false advertising as well. This could pose a safety issue to your customers, I guess you will have to wait for a boat to run aground before acting … similar to the Bluechart g2 recall.

By: Crash50

Crash50 — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 05:30:40 +0000

I have had the Nuvi 500 for almost a year, so far no issues, until tonight.
I bought the Mountain North upgraded chip and put it in the device. It ran okay for about 30 minutes, then the screen went dark, and it said, “loading Maps”.
I turned it off, brought it inside and went to do a software upgrade, using the Garmin, “web updater”.
Turned it back on, and it said, “Software Missing”. What the Hell!
It was working fine, before I put in the new chip.
Anyone of you experts got a clue?
You can contact me at ibcmcl@yahoo.com

By: Crash50

Crash50 — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 05:29:59 +0000

By: Ian

Ian — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 05:58:52 +0000

The satellite information is still available on the Nuvi 500. Touch the satellite bar for about 5sec and it will come up.
(on version 3.5)

By: In-Depth Review: Motorola Droid (with some iPhone comparisons) | The Changelog

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:26:24 +0000

[...] have a Garmin Nuvi 500 (see my review), and despite not being a terribly expensive GPS, it runs circles around the mapping in Android 2.0 [...]

By: Bill V

Bill V — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 22:01:31 +0000

FYI, this unit now has text-to-speech capability. I don’t know if it is or ever will be an out-of-the-box feature on new units, but it’s definitely available as a free download from the Garmin website, and works great.

By: George

George — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 16:00:01 +0000

I like the address book feature feature too, but there is a bug in the unit or firmware that changes the coordinates and the address to just say address book or coordinates instead of the street number/street name or for coordinates to not show the lat & lon. A call to Garmin and they said they would look into it.

By: YeOleImposter

YeOleImposter — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 07:17:13 +0000

I wish that Garmin would give an option to turn off the POIs — many times I am not looking for businesses — why should they clutter the screen. Right now when I turn them off it also removes my custom POIs — not something I want either.
Please Garmin!!!

By: Lure

Lure — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 09:52:23 +0000

Check if it supports “Spanner” mode (Garmin PVT) for communication – this is the mode that they added to Garmin Colorado/Oregon models to support real-time position to PC. In this mode, when connected to PC, it can provide current position.

http://garmincolorado.wikispaces.com/Tracking?f=print#toc2
http://www.gpsbabel.org/htmldoc-development/tracking.html

By: Brian Ewins

Brian Ewins — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 02:45:06 +0000

You’re not missing anything by not having Garmin’s windows software – it is atrocious. (though I do like the hardware – I have a Forerunner 405 and an Edge 705)

The browser plugin in particular is a joke; its completely unnecessary too. At registration, it only detects the device type and you still need to type in the serial number! You can manually upload files grabbed from your device by USB-mounting or ANT wireless devices (the plugin tries to transfer them off the device again, badly – it only works 1 time in 5). The Training Center tool is also just laughable (it can’t display time and distance travelled for a point on your route, for example), and isn’t integrated with their website tools at all. At least the formats they use are quite open now and you can mess with the xml for yourself.

BTW in case you didn’t know, OpenStreetMap maps are dead easy to get onto these usb-mountable devices; they have pretty good coverage these days (in my area anyway).