I had this well over 2 years now. At the time of the purchase, it was like the best thing to have. Now it is 2008 where there are many more GPS units to compare it againt. This would be at the bottom of the list. I notice some reviews are written 2005. That is 3 years ago. You know how fast electronics change.

I have traveled quite a bit and rented quite a bit of GPS units along with the rental cars, Philly, NYC, L.A., Pittsburg, Atlanta, Maryland, Washington DC, Charlotte, NC...... This unit is almost useless in metropolitan area. Good luck using it in NYC. It couldn't even keep up with me on foot. Try it yourself.

It constantly loses signal in the city with high rises and the rerouting takes forever when you are driving. If you miss the original route, it will try to recalculate from that point on but since it takes forever, you would be driving away from the initial predicted route so by the time it finishes calculating, it needs to recalculate again with your current position. Unless you are stopped, you would have driven a few miles before getting a good route.

However, I found it quite reliable in the suburban area like Charlotte, NC where there aren't many grids of roads like other major metropolitan area. I am guessing it does not clutter up the processor of the GPS when it is rerouting since there are only a few routes to consider.

Another positive note about this unit is, the battery life is considerably high. I have used it like 13 hours straight and it still had some juice left. IIRC, they advertise some 20 hour battery life per charge, but I didn't believe that. I think 13 hours straight was pretty impressive.

I was impressed when I got it a couple of years ago because it was like one of the few available at the time, but the time has changed, there are so many GPSs out there cheaper than QuestII and outperform it in every aspects. I am getting something else.

Quest is a great portable unit. Just a warning to you all that after three years of use I had my first screen lock up and this happened of course during a trip navagation. Be sure to carry your map as an emergency.

I fixed the lock up by unscrewing the unit and unplug-replug the two separate power-cpu connectors inside.

I have owned many handheld and car GPSs over the past 15 years, many Garmins and a few from other manufacturers. This one is the best. Handsdown. Very good battery life, and since it comes pre-loaded with all the roads in the USA there is no need to fuss with Garmin's very quirky (read difficult to load and get running) software. This one works great in your car with the lady telling you where to go and what to do, and it also works great as a hand held. I recommend it with no reservations.

Order this for my boss and he loves it. It seems to be working great.

I purchased this GPS back in April of 2006 and have been very happy with it since. It is not perfect, but you have to remember that this is not a dedicated street navigator or hicker GPS, it's a hybrid of the two and with that there are compromises.

In the car: It is accurate and maps routes quickly 90% of the time. The other 10% of the time it either looses signal, has outdated maps (my update is ordered and on it's way as I type), or just slow processing for some reason. Of this 10% of the time I'd say only 2% of the time has this been an actual problem for me. The rest of the time I was able to simply guess what I needed to do next or it didn't matter at all. I have not found a perfect way of fixing the slow route calcuations, but the vast majority of the time this hasn't been an issue.

On foot: One of the features that sold me on this was the fact that it had a long lasting battery and it was waterproof. Both qualities needed to be used for hiking. The only catch is you have to turn off the lock to roads, otherwise you will get some really confusing directions! Also it is difficult to program in destinations by coordinates as opposed to addresses, but it can be done (put in and address then change everything including the coordinates in the confirmation screen before hitting route!).

On Boat: Haven't tested this as I don't have a boat, and haven't purchased the water based maps.

Overall I'm very happy with this and looking forward to the map update. I wish it was a little faster on route calculating and map drawing, and that it was easier to imput exact coordinate points. It's still better than buying/lugging around 2 seperate GPS systems to me.

This GPS ONLY work when you make no mistake/missing/stop/break/change on the route you set before you start driving. Suppose it would work on Marine, but didn't test it yet.

This GPS is for my friend. I've use others for 4 years and I do the testing on this one. I never expect it would be sooooooooo slow to re-calculate.

When you lost or miss a turn, it just frozen there and doing nothing for you lost. When you manually push it to re-calculate, sometime it's working, sometime it doesn't, seems all depend on if IT HAPPY and you don't trouble it. TOO SMART with temper, isn't it?

It may lead you to totally wrong direction. My friend drive out from Atlantic City to Philadelphia, set the destination to Niagara Falls; but he was confused on the toll bridge, then GPS lead him back to Atlantic City. He drove on Atlantic Express Way for a circle, till he realize by himself. It's totally wrong way to his destination.

It took so long to start. And in my testing, 60% of the POI is out of date. Couple of restaurant is closeout and one of it closeout 5 years ago. Well, seems it did a good job on record the history.

Probably I lost the patient to do more testing. At least it doesn't working properly as my old Navmin, even the map of it is also out of date. But I'm very satisfy for the speed to load up and re-calculate.

Our Quest-II arrived a few days ago (late December 2006), and there was already an upgrade to the operating software on the Garmin site. With ver-2.8 now installed and running, we are very impressed by the speed of recalculation, and response of the unit at route change points. Even in city conditions the Quest-II performs flawlessly, and with more than enough time to prepare for turns. By checking the Garmin web site, we also found a new map release to be available, and once our Quest-II was registered, it was a simple matter to order the DVD for that upgrade (at no extra cost).

At first we were disappointed that an AC charger was not included and we ordered one. However once the internal battery was fully charged in the car, the Quest-II was found to offer far more than enough power to do *extensive* trip planning in the comfort of the living room couch before snapping the unit into the car adapter. Obviously the internal battery has been sized to allow the unit to be used in complete portability for hiking, etc.

We have tried to fool the product by making wrong turns (in view of some of the prior reviews of earlier versions), but we were the ones fooled. The Quest-II automatically recalculated the route in a few seconds and selected viable alternative roads. In all, this is a very solid, high class product that is straightforward to operate. Additionally Garmin has done an excellent job of making this instrument upgradeable for even an amateur computer user by providing a desktop/laptop software installation via the internet that walks the user through setup and available upgrades: truly "icing on the cake"!

I'm not an "old hand" at GPS devices, this being the first I've owned. I bought it in anticipation of the travelling in foreign lands I was about to undertake. I did my research, but have always perceived Garmin as the market leaders in this technology. Consequently my research tended more towards model identification rather than brand identification.

In a word: "Wow!"

Apart from not getting lost more than once, thanks to the comprehensive USA map software, I have had a great deal of fun with my unit, discovering all the info that it can produce. It's accuracy is amazing!

In fact, the only time I did get lost was because by the time I realised I was supposed to turn 150 feet after a coin self-service tollgate, I was already kinda 20 feet past the turn-off, and still accelerating! (But that's another story...)

Would I buy another unit? Certainly! Would I give one to my mother-in-law? No ways! She already finds her way to our house too easily and too Frequently! It now just remains to take it into the deep Kalahari.

Wish me luck!

I bought the Quest 2 after researching all the Garmin products, plus the products from Magellan and Dell (Dell's PDA/GPS is not going to be continued).

I was literally able to open the box and set up the unit on battery power. The maps are pre-loaded, so finding locations is a matter of setting state, city, and address. Everything has worked, mostly..

The but part..the documentation is not as complete as I'd like it, and some things, like how to charge the internal battery (or if it can be charged), are nonexistant.

I mapped a trip to my folks in Arkansas, and it did a lot of recalculating when I knew the shortest route and it didn't. And it had their house on the wrong side of the road.

Locally, it had me turning onto streets that didn't exist.

I will look for map updates (and hope they exist) in the future. I'm a month into ownership, and so far, I'm impressed.

Firmware v2.6 greatly increased overall speed of this unit. I was a little doubtful in February when I bought this, but it is now amazingly fast on POI search as well as route recalculation.