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My family and recently took a trip to Florida. We rented a lovely minivan and spent several days visiting family, animal attractions, etc. When we were planning the trip, we realized that we’d have to either print off a bunch of maps to get everywhere we were going, or rent a GPS unit, or buy a GPS unit to help us get around.

Thankfully, we opted for buying a GPS unit. It proved to be well worth the money and we figured we could use it on other trips as well, so the cost could be spread out over more than just one trip.

We bought a Garmin 550c off of eBay. What an incredible little piece of equipment! We paid under $200 for it which was a fantastic deal for that brand at the time with a cool array of features.

What that little GPS unit did was make our trip go smooth! It helped us find all kinds of places. We’d punch in where we wanted to go and it’d help us figure out how long it’d take us to get there as well as help us find new places to visit along the way.

My sister came on the trip as well, bringing her husbands new Magellan GPS unit that he got for Christmas. Unfortunately, her Magellan didn’t work nearly as well as our Garmin. It often couldn’t figure out where she was and got her off course quite a bit.

So, we learned from the experience that it definitely pays to get a good quality brand. Not only did it save us time and frustration, but it also saved us gas money since we weren’t taking oodles of wrong turns all the time!

So our recommendation is that GPS units are one of the handiest things to take on a trip, you just need to make sure you invest in the right brand! Garmin is one of the better brands, in our experience.