Garmin City Navigator Europe NT - Benelux/France

REVIEWS AND VERSIONSThere are some 1- star reviews here which had me worried initially; turns out those were made for either an older version of this map software, and/or used with an older navigation device. If you have a newer device, I believe you're better off reading only the more recent reviews to form your opinion. As for my setup, I purchased an essential (read: cheap) Garmin in mid- 2013, and a nondescript version of this software (no year number or picture) for around 30 bucks, which turned out to be as per 2013 as well.USING THIS MAPThe software comes on a Garmin- branded SD card of regular size, which is just an adapter for the microSD card inside. In order to use the card you need to do 3 things:1) Slide out the microSD card and put it in the Garmin's slot on the back.2) Disable the US maps (this took me a while finding. On my device, it's hidden under an "info" menu button on map view; this is also where you'll see version/year info).3) Be at destination. I got quite concerned that my map seemed empty at first! No POI's, no streets in Paris, nothing.. while in the US. But once the GPS locked onto position in France, it all worked as expected.MAP QUALITYCompared with the quality of the US maps, this France map is maybe 90-95% there. The roads are present as far as I could tell on my one- week trip, the routing works the same ... it's just that there are some kinks that one needs to get used to. On the more harmless side, it often displays too many lanes (like, 6 out of 4 that actually exist). A little more serious is the fact that the speed limits are often not displayed accurately: it either switches too late or entirely misses reduced speed areas- definitely do pay attention to posted limits! I also noticed some routing errors, such as the Garmin trying to get me to go against traffic a couple times, and being quite stubborn about it (repetitively trying to get me on the against-traffic one way street whereas things would have been fine one street over). On a positive side worth mentioning, the POIs seemed of good quality- no problem finding any of our numerous destinations (hotels, castles, supermarkets, fuel stations) by "nearby" list or search.DRIVINGUnlike other reviewers have noted, I saw all street names spelled correctly (including accents) on my 2013 GPS. Pronunciation is in English though, which will be confusing or even irritating if you do speak French. For example "rue d'Orsey", which should be pronounced "Dorcy", is spoken as "Dee Orsay". That said, this is a feature that may actually be helpful for people not speaking French, looking to match the street names with what the GPS announced. I did expect that and it worked fine for me.OTHER CONSIDERATIONSAllow me to share 2 remarks for Americans driving in France:- don't rent a big car if you don't need it. Roads in Paris and the countryside are very narrow, and the drivers go fast, often leaving mere inches when crossing. Parking can be trouble as well: I rented a Hyundai (toy size in the US), but the wheels went on - and almost over - the parking marks even though I had it 1 inch from the curb. Driving an SUV here would be an absolute nightmare!- make sure you're comfortable with roundabouts. They're great as a time saver and traffic optimizer, but seriously they are everywhere - I could swear I saw more roundabouts than traffic lights in France! At the larger ones, people drive into it like there's a prize.

I purchased the Benelux/France map well in advance of a trip to Europe so I could enter destinations as favorites and be certain the maps were functioning properly. Everything worked fine while I was still at home in California. Upon arriving in France, I unloaded my U.S. map and loaded the Europe map. The GPS functioned very slowly the first day, between Paris and Epernay, France. However, the next morning, for the journey between Epernay and Bruges, Belgium (i.e., between two countries), it took the GPS over one hour and a half to complete the route calculation (meaning that we were completely on our own for the crucial first half of the trip.) It then functioned normally for about 15 minutes before it then cut out and reverted to 0% and then took 20 minutes to do the calculation over again, all for no apparent reason. It continued to malfunction in this way for the entire trip. This particular leg of our itinerary, which I was not previously familiar with, was the whole reason for our purchasing the map and bringing the GPS with us. Since that day, the GPS has continued to malfunction in pretty much the same way. Today, for example, for a trip of just 30 miles from Bruges to Ghent, Belgium, it took 20 minutes to do its initial calculation, by which time we had already wasted 15 minutes trying to find the appropriate road to start out on, with no help from our GPS. This performance is completely unacceptable, and there was nothing in my pre-travel experience (specifically in loading the destinations in advance) that would have indicated that a problem was likely to occur. In other words, you will have no way of knowing in advance whether your GPS will work or will fail.I sent an email to Garmin support (the same email address with which I had corresponded before making my purchase from amazon.com, and from whom I then received an almost immediate response.) I explained the problems I had encountered and asked them to tell me how to fix them or, failing that, to refund my money. Three days later, I have still received no response to my email. I decided that I needed to contact Garmin directly. When I was able to get to a working telephone, I called Garmin support in the U.S. I had a 35-minute wait on hold before I could speak to a real person. That person proposed troubleshooting my Nuvi 2460 and my software, which would have required a connection cable that I had not brought with me from the U.S., and a fast Internet connection, which was not readily available to me at the same time as a phone connection. When it became obvious that he had no practical fix to offer, I asked that Garmin refund the money I had paid for their defective software. I was then told that, since I had purchased the software from amazon.com, Garmin would provide no refund or compensation of any kind. Because I purchased my software well in advance of my departure, in order to be sure to work out any problems, the 30-day return period for an amazon purchase had already expired and I therefore have no recourse.I am writing this to warn other potential purchasers of the following: 1) based on my experience, the Garmin software is defective and may fail to work when you actually need it; 2) there appears to be no way to know in advance whether or not it will fail you; 3) if it fails you, expect Garmin to be of little or no help (long waits on hold as the international phone charges mount up; the expectation that you will have brought with you all of your connection cables, etc.). Garmin will absolutely not stand behind its product unless you purchased it directly from them, so amazon.com purchasers beware. (I am not convinced, based on the totally unsatisfactory response I received from Paul S. (#6080) at Garmin support, that they would not find a different reason not to make good on their defective product even if I had purchased it directly from them!) In short, Garmin is not a responsible company to deal with, and however much you may feel that your Garmin unit works fine at home, you can expect it to fail miserably when you are counting on it the most, in a foreign country where you have no other alternative to rely on. I strongly recommend that you reconsider purchasing this software, and I will personally steer clear of Garmin products of any kind in the future.

Had mixed success with the France chip. Worked fine in cities but in smaller towns it would lose signals, and vocal turn commands were often at odds with the visual next turn command ( verbal turn right at next street versus the arrow giving a left turn signal for the next street)The voice command interprets" St." as "street" rather than "Saint" which was confusing at first.Caution for rental car users: Our Europcar had the Lighter/9vdc outlet disconnected by removing the fuse/circuit breaker. Don't know if this is normal practice to discourage smoking or to stop you from using your GPS and rent theirs?

Bien, dommage que les cartes ne s'installent plus sur l'appareil après l'enregistrement chez garmin, lenteur de l'appareil à cause de l' échange de données avec la carte mémoire. Le fait qu'il n'y ai plus d'enregistrement de l'achat sur le site garmin et de sauvegarde des cartes sur cd rom, implique la perte des données. Ce qui arriva précisément.

Senza problemi, da acquistare a occhi chiusi

Amazing. I just got back from 2 weeks in France using this in my Garmin Nuvi. It was indispensable driving round the south of France and especially while we were trying to got out of flood ravaged Paris. Many of the main roads were blocked due to the tractor trailers sinking into the roads. The Garmin worked us around the closures.It was easy to find desired destinations 90% of the time using it set on English. Buying the updates here was half the price of getting them from the manufacturer. I also checked and they are the latest version. Everything worked flawlessly.

Not used yet so I cannot comment on accuracy but it is copyrighted 2011 and it is only May 2012 so the map should be pretty much the latest that Garmin have. Worked immediately in my Nuvi 300. Have seen some reviewers comenting on the currency of the mapping and the speed it takes to load but I dont foresee a problem with load speed - how often do you load your maps and what is so important that you cannot wait for a second or two. Clearly there are one or two geeks out there who would rather sit measuring load time than drive off on holiday. So overall would I buy again. Well not this map obviously because I have just bought it but yes I would buy another map from the same range. I like the fact that because it is a micro SD it will plug into any garmin unit which has a card reader. If you buy the downlaod version you are stuck with using the map on the one device. And what is more it is much cheaper buying from amazon than buying direct from the Garmin shop - strange that.  Garmin Maps of France & Benelux on SD-Card/microSDGarmin Maps of France & Benelux on SD-Card/microSD

Die Karte an sich, technisch funktionierte den gesamten Urlaub über gut. Auch die Navigation war im Nachhinein akzeptabel. In kleineren Städten jedoch und auf Landstraßen waren einige Dinge, wie z.B. Kreisel noch nicht, oder gar nicht eingetragen. Weitere Probleme lagen warscheinlich an meinem Navi (Nüvi 205), dass sehr langsam und ungenau reagierte und uns des öfteren im Französischem Straßengewirr kleiner Städte uns zu spät informierte.Ich habe der Karte außerdem nur drei Punkte gegeben weil sie sehr teuer ist.