Garmin DriveLuxe 50 NA LMTHD GPS Navigator System with Lifetime Maps and Traffic, Smart Notifications, Voice Activation, Driver Alerts, and a Sleek Metal Design
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Product Specifications
- Driver Alerts - Receive alerts for upcoming sharp curves, speed changes, school zones, a fatigue warning, nearby red light and speed cameras and more
- Easy To Use - Dedicated GPS navigators display current street, current speed, speed limit and arrival time
- Garmin Real Directions - Guides like a friend, using recognizable landmarks, buildings and traffic lights
- Smartphone Notifications - Customizable smart notifications let you display calls, texts and other app alerts on your navigation screen (select models)
- Hands-Free Navigation - Bluetooth calling and voice-activated navigation allow your hands to remain safely on the wheel as you navigate and make or receive calls
Box includes: Garmin DriveLuxe 50LMTHD,Lifetime maps and HD traffic(indicated by “LMTHD” after model number on the box),Lifetime traffic antenna/vehicle power cable,Vehicle suction cup mount,USB cable,Quick start manual
Product Description
Garmin Drive Luxe 50 North America LMTHD is an elegantly designed, 5-inch premium auto navigator with pinch-to-zoom display, smart notifications (calls, texts and other app alerts), Bluetooth hands-free calling, voice-activated navigation and driver alerts to encourage safer driving. With its sleek metal case and powered magnetic mount, Drive Luxe features preloaded maps of North America with lifetime updates, free HD Digital Traffic and more. You’re alerted if approaching dangerous curves, speed changes, red light/speed cameras or upcoming traffic jams. New driver awareness warnings make Garmin Drive Luxe auto navigator the watchful companion for your daily commute.
Product Reviews
HOT (literally!) new GPS and a worthwhile upgrade from nuvi…
I bought this as an upgrade to a Garmin nuvi 2595LMT that I’ve had for a little over 4 years. Of all the little annoying things I wished my 2595 had, this DriveLuxe delivers. I cannot give much info on the Bluetooth versatility of the unit as I have not experimented much with that at all other than to verify it all works as described. The Pros and Cons, given by a not-very-tech-savvy person:Pros:- Very sturdy build - solid metal case with glass screen. “Pinch to zoom” instead of using the + and - keys make things much easier to fine-tune exactly what you want to do on the screen.- Correction 10/14/16: I was under the impression that the unit was capable of stand-alone Traffic guidance without the power adapter but others have pointed out that this is not the case.- I like the different tools available that can be set to display on the screen while driving, my favorite being upcoming turns without having to press the top bar and scroll down to see turn-by-turn directions.- The alerts have been accurate and the “Real Directions” actually have been helpful! As an example, last night it gave me a landmark of “make a right at CVS” and with it not being traffic light intersection and just a side street, it made things much easier to locate the street without having to listen for a distance of “500 feet” or the street number.- Updating custom Points of Interests is intuitive and seamless- Being able to adjust your route by simply dragging it to the preferred road(s) is -exactly- what I’ve wanted all along and probably my favorite feature as of yet.Cons:- Due to that solid metal case, this unit can get amazingly hot. The weather has topped out only in the high 80’s so far in Arizona and I could barely touch the unit to remove it when exiting my vehicle. This does not bode well for the upcomng Phoenix summer.- Voice command is still a bit iffy at times. It is more intuitive but there are just some words or places it cannot or does not understand when being used to search for specific locations. I tried some examples and of the 5 local landmark/tourist attractions, 2 of them were completely unrecognizable and gave false search results (Tombstone, Arizona and Grand Canyon Railway)- Not specifically a “con”, but I believe this model should have come with a carrying case especially with the potential issues people may have from the molten lava heat coming off these units after being used in their vehicle and then transporting them from car to pocket and/or purse.This unit is still new to me and I’ve added what stood out immediately as compared to my nuvi 2595 LMT. I’ll add more as I come across more Pros/Cons with more use!——————————————-Edit 5/6/16: Yep, only 5 days after receiving this unit I have to drastically reduce my review and am truly hoping this is not an ongoing issue or this will be heading back to Garmin shortly.- Above, I mentioned that this GPS gets HOT. Well it gets so hot you cannot physically touch any part of the casing after it sits on your dash while it’s doing what it’s supposed to be doing (I prefer Friction Mount over Windshield Mount). With the temperature reaching over 100 degrees yesterday, I believe this GPS unit basically overheated and shut itself down. This was during a 40 mile stretch of straight, flat interstate where the Garmin continuously showed our vehicle symbol veering off the roadway and losing satellite connection (just outside Phoenix, AZ where there should be no reception issues at all). As an aside, due to the crazy antics the Garmin was displaying while it went haywire, I got to experience what it would display if we ever went the wrong way on a one-way street! You WILL notice the audible and visual alerts it gives you! After about 5 minutes of this, the screen went black and the unit shut down. Grabbing a rag, I was able to pick up the Garmin and about 10 minutes after that, I was able to turn the unit back on. It took about 10 more minutes before I believe it was even cool enough to function and it did a hard reboot and relocated the satellites and started to act normally again.Why they did away with the soft-grip silicone backing of the nuvi brand, I have no idea. But this metal casing is an absolute failure.
Very disappointing performance for what should be a “mature design”
Sadly, I am packing up my new DriveLuxe 50 to return to Amazon due to numerous issues with the unit. I consider a good GPS to be one of the critical safety components in my family car. This unit actually became a safety hazard several times while I was testing it out on recent trips.I have a long (mostly positive) history with Garmin GPS units and bought this as an upgrade from my 3 year old NUVI 3597LMTHD. The 3597 had a few quirks that I expected would have been fixed in a re-designed model such as occasional weak satellite reception, running hot and rare but potentially dangerous navigation glitches.I read many of the fine Amazon reviews both positive and negative and convinced myself that the issues many people were having were possible lack of familiarity with the Garmin interface or simple operator errors. So I bought the unit tested it out of the box then updated to latest firmware and started using it locally and then on a long trip.To be fair , there were some improvements such as better turn guidance using landmarks and better routing inside parking lots and malls. But very quickly there were deal-breaker issues such as random lockups where you believe the unit is function but it actually was “hung” and no longer tracking or navigating. This caused several inconvenient missed turns and confusion.I was looking forward to the enhanced HD Digital Traffic solution but it was a big disappointment and seemed to add no value over my previous model and even worst performance at times.The potential issue of overheating seems to be real. My older 3597 model is based on the same metal case design and would get hot but the DriveLuxe 50 is worse. And I am not talking about heat from the sun hitting the unit on the dash, I talking about 11:30pm at night. I don’t have enough data points to correlate the lockups and issues to heat but I know that overheating is very harmful to electronics.Those issues were already bad enough to force me to send it back once we got home from out trip but then I experienced the most serious issue of them all: the satellite receiver design appears to be fatally flawed. I was noticing several time when it was slow to acquire the signal similar to my old unit but while driving east on I40 around Winston-Salem and Greensboro, NC under clear skies at night, I had a 50 mile stretch of “lost satellite signal” errors. I had seen other Amazon Reviewers reporting this exact same issue but just could not believe Garmin could have screwed up the fundamental design of the antenna/receiver. During this blackout period, my wife was testing both of our cell phone GPS signals and our car GPS unit and had zero issues with signal strength.I still buy “old-school” dedicated GPS units because we love to travel in very remote areas where lack of cellular coverage can render a smart phone useless and my in-dash automotive unit is no use if the car battery has died or we get out on a lake in a canoe. The engineer in me wanted to spend time trouble shooting this with some of the satellite signal strength tools available but I don’t have time to do field engineering for Garmin.I don’t want to give up on Garmin after all these years so truly hope someday to hear that Garmin has identified a “defect” in this product line and actually restored the proper sensitivity to the receiver. One of my older Garmins actually works better inside a building than this new unit outside.Sorry if I got too long winded here but I feel strongly about the safety aspects of an automotive GPS and want other shoppers to have a heads-up that the DriveLuxe 50 has some serious issues. Obviously many people are not having problems but there are enough reports of similar problems to convince me that it is not just a one-off defective hardware failure.Safe travels to all.
Very Pleased - Good Product
I’ve grown very tired of phones with poor maps and gps and directions. I specifically hate the fact that I often have to deal with poor service areas and thus lack of good directions and location. In steps the DriveLuxe 50.This thing has been great. Even the traffic has been better than Google Maps on an iPhone and Bing Maps on a Lumia 950. Very pleased. Great product.The “overheating” issue - never a problem for me and I’ve been using this for months. It gets warm if in the dash in direct summer sunlight without good AC around it. I use it extensively within my Yukon. I put it over my tachometer and it never gets HOT. It just gets warm. It is extremely fast to get a GPS signal and computes my trips VERY fast. I really like that I can put in avoidance areas and build my own routes. I tend to learn and know the fastest routes even though ALL GPS/Map Apps try to put you on the Interstates. These features make it so that where I want I can override the GPS “intelligence” and go my way while still having traffic info and getting back on main routes when I want. Wish I had bought long before I did. I NEVER USE MY PHONE ANYMORE.
Five Stars
the greatest gps and fastest mailing service thats next day
Read specifications for functions.
Be carfulNeeds your phone for some functions
Beats using your phones gps by a long shot
Very happy with this product. Works awesome and love the magnetic connection, which makes it easy to remove and put back up.
Like the Bluetooth feature that hooks up to my phone
Like the Bluetooth feature that hooks up to my phone. Some annoying aspects of the software. If you deviate from the route a box pops up asking if you would like to skip that…
Excellent Product!
I bought this GPS unit to replace an older unit that would no longer hold a charge. It has so many more features than my old GPS unit.
Works great as a basic GPS, but Driver Alerts do not work
The GPS works great -as a basic GPS, but am really bummed that I get zero ‘driver alerts’. In fact, when I go into the menus anything that seems to be related is greyed out.
Getting Better
Bought this as a replacement for my old Garmin. Nice little unit, like the voice command feature, need some voice recognition work though.
Great GPS at a Great Price, Easy To Use!
Perfect, exactly what I wanted. Didn’t want a plastic GPS. This one is heavy duty, seems very accurate most of the time.
Didn’t upgrade. First time for me with Garmin.
Couldn’t get it to update maps. Tried and tried, would just pause and never finish. Updated my older Garmin without problem using same usb cable.
What a Great Unit….. But
comments powered by DisqusThis the Best Garmin GPS I have ever owned. The features are great, so many useful tools while traveling.
