From SA to Europe and back

We take Garmin’s GPSmap 76CSx on the ultimate road test. Joel Dorfan reports back from the roads of Europe and South Africa, where he spent lots of time on the road, being told where to go.

You need to insert two AA batteries and the supplied blank micro SD card. Then using the supplied CD follow the instructions to activate and load the South Africa Street Maps on the unit. The whole of South Africa and neighboring countries supplied will fit onto the micro SD card meaning that you will not have to redo this process when you want to travel to another region. The mapset is continually updated and new releases come out periodically adding more detail. These are made available as a CD upgrade for a nominal fee.

Yes. The manual is well written and easy to follow. Once you understand what the various buttons do, the rest is pretty intuitive. This is a very feature rich GPS so even if you are not a new user a good scan through the manual is suggested.

I will say that initially there was a problem with the unit taking far too long to recognize that you were off route after having made a wrong turn. I then put Avnic’s support to the test. All I can say is that they passed with flying colours. They were receptive and understanding of the problem and even got the experts in the USA involved. In a short space of time Garmin released a software upgrade for the unit which was easily installed from their website. This solved the problem and now the unit makes sure to let you know pretty quickly if you put a foot wrong.

As mentioned above, it combines the clever routing of the Street Navigator products with all the features of a true off road GPS into one easy to use package.

At a recommended retail of R6700-00 this is very good value for such a feature rich unit. It comes complete with USB data cable, wrist strap, mapping software and 128MB micro SD card. Also, many luxury cars today have satellite navigation as an option. At R25 000 odd it does not come cheap and is dedicated to only that car. For about a quarter of the price you could get yourself a 76CSx with all of the associated features and benefits discussed above.

If you would like to find out where you can buy this and other Garmin products please contact sales at Avnic Trading, the South African distributors for Garmin products, on 011 7046147. Visit the Garmin web site at http://www.garmin.com or Avnic on www.avnic.co.za

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