Recommend budget GPS for car

EDC Gear for Flashlight Carriers
1

I’m looking forward to buy a GPS for my car and would like to know if there are any models that you recommend under 100$.

I need something basic I can use in Los Angeles area. Has to be able to run on battery since my DC plug (cig lighter) doesn’t work.

Thanks for your help in advance!

2

You can routinely find refurbished 5” Garmin GPSes in the $100 range. I’ve had a refurbished 1490LMT for a few years. Recently I’ve seen refurbished 2595LMTs for $95 and a 3580LMT for $110. Keep an eye on deals sites like fatwallet.com and slickdeals.com…

Edit:
Since your cigarette lighter jack isn’t working, you’re going to have a hard time keeping any of them powered for very long. Car-style GPS units tend to have short runtimes. There’s not much that can go wrong with a cigarette lighter jack…is it a blown fuse?

3

Prices have been going down on portable gps units. So you can get a nice name brand unit for less than $100 with life time maps. Like the garmin 50LM. You just have to figure out how much you want to pay and what features you want.

4

I have had about ten different gps units. I ended up with the magellan roadmate 1700 for it’s 7 inch screen. The biggest one out there. Costco puts them on sale for about $150 every now and then. Probably cheaper now…

5

I have had a bunch of Garmins all Factory Referb and all were great.
Got the 50LM for my daughter when she moved to Memphis and it is working great.

The updates are a little funny to set up and install.
I took all night to do the map updates but seemed to work OK
And make sure you get Life Time Map Updates

6

Before there was a BLF for me, there was “MioPocket” I had it real bad, I spent a lot of time with my GPS.
Before there were IPads and tablets, there was a community that hacked GPS units into tablet computers. It still could be used as a GPS, as the GPS was just one of many “Apps” that could be installed.

There isn’t much sense to this now, as they are obsolete, but in 2006 to 2009 they were quite the thing. Here are a couple of pics and a link.
These are pics of the screen of a 4.3” GPS unit that functioned as a small tablet computer.

http://www.gpspassion.com/forumsen/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=126303

7

Is the Garmin 1450lm any good? Found some good prices on that model.

I don’t actually know what’s wrong with my DC. I don’t smoke and hardly ever have the need for car charging so I never bothered checking it. Maybe it’s something easy to fix, I’ll ask my mechanic.

8

Since most GPS units can also be powered of a usb port, maybe a powerbank is an idea? They tend to loose their capacity over time and might not last as long as you hope for.