How do you easily compare Garmin GPS units? As of the writing of this article, Garmin has listed on its site 27 automotive GPS, 10 basic handhelds, 26 mapping handhelds, 10 fitness GPS, and 4 cycling GPS. These numbers are current units. They do not include the discontinued models or other specialty models like marine, aviation, or motorcycle units.
You may be surprised to know that the best place to compare Garmin GPS is on the Garmin website.
Garmin has a feature on its website that will let you compare four GPS units side by side down to the most detailed level. Let's walk through an example of how to do this.
Open up another window on your browser and go to the Garmin home page. You can read this article in this current window and perform the comparison in the other window. Just switch back and forth between windows as we proceed.
For our example, let's compare the Garmin GPS units in the new Garmin Nuvi 1200 Series. On the Garmin home page, float your cursor over the "On the Road" link on the left of the screen. This will open a dropdown box where you will click "Automotive". This will list all the current automotive GPS units.
On the right side of the screen, you will see a small square box by each unit. Click this box for the Nuvi 1200, 1250, and the 1260T. This will show a checkmark in each box.
When you have selected the units for the comparison, scroll to the top or the bottom of the screen and click the "Compare" button. This will present the units you have checked in a side by side comparison table showing all available features.
Scroll down this comparison table and look for gray shaded rows. The gray shading indicates that there are differences in the specific feature between the units in the comparison.
Garmin does not permit comparison of current units with discontinued units. If you want to do this, you can create the comparison table for each unit separately and copy them one at a time from the Garmin site and paste them into an Excel spreadsheet. Once in Excel, you may have to shift some of the rows in a column to line up features since some features that are listed in one of the units may not be listed in the other one.
Follow these instructions to easily compare Garmin GPS and help you select the GPS that is right for you.
