Garmin Street Pilot c330 any good?

[OlllllllO]

Just saw the Wal-mart thanksgiving ad and they are selling a Garmin Street Pilot c330 GPS for $128.

Is that unit any good for trail use?

Is there a better unit with more bang for the buck (I only have about $200-$250 to spend).

I am new to GPS so I could use some good advice!

[OlllllllO]

No responses, but based on my research I think it is only good for the street. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[DuffMan]

Map sets are road-based.

While not brand new, a good, Garmin GPS V from eBay (like this) is a very good trail unit - that has on-road capability as well (it's monochrome and doesn't talk - only beeps) for about $100.

[phittie1100]

Street Pilot 330c is great for traveling, but I still use my old Magellan Sport Track for offroad. 330c does not like being off the internal map, does not have route or waypoint capability. But it does a great job of getting you down the road.

[OlllllllO]

I am thinking about giving the Magellan Crossover a try, the reviews on it are a little mixed but it seems to be a quality unit and Costco has it on sale for only $229 ($100 off) right now.

I am also considering a Garmin hand held unit but because it will be used in my daily driver most of the time the screen size concerns me. Additionally, I would have to buy the city maps for a $100.

My biggest concern is Magellan's poor customer service if I have any problems.

[mezzfit]

I have a 330c permanently in both of my jeeps but use an eTrex Legend for off road. I'd recommend having one of each.

[OlllllllO]

I have heard that from some others too, I just wanted to have one for convenience but, I may need to reconsider.

Just curious, what happens when you take a road based unit off road? Would it make a track of your location or just get confused?

[mezzfit]

Pretty much, it gets confused. It either looks like you're driving through a field (in the case of the new subdivision they are building behind where I work) or it will try to snap to the nearest road if you are close enough to it. I called garmin and asked if it would do breadcrumbs and if you could put coordinates into the 330 and they told me that they didn't have one that would do it at that time. They very well may have one that does that now. I guess my new subdivision/shortcut home from work will be on the 2008 software when it comes out.

I had the eTrex Legend for geocaching with the kids. I can load points of interest and detailed road maps into it, but only 8 MB at a time. Also, the hand held just gives me a straight line to my destination. Having the road based one tell you when to turn or when an exit is coming up is pretty cool.

The nice thing is that the 330 is ready to go when you take it out of the box. I literally stuck mine to the windshield in Circuit City's parking lot and within 5 minutes it was ready to go.

[BlooMule]

I have the c330, it's a good road unit for the money, doesn't have text-to-speech capability (only calls out the turn, not the street name. Street name is displayed on screen however). Only did some minor off-roading around Kalkaska, it just keeps re-computing a route to the road. I don't know what it would do if you got more than a mile from a road.
I also have a Garmin Geko 101 handheld that does waypoints,gives latitude and longitutude and elevation, it's decent for off-roading or geocaching (I used it on the sled and hiking) but no map capability. I got it at a pawnshop cheap- between the two I don't have $200 tied up in GPS.