Verizon Wireless Navigator- Review

My husband purchased the Verizon Wireless Navigator for my phone so that I would have a GPS system when traveling on our long road trips. We used Verizon Wireless Navigator on our trip fromSan Diego, CA to Northwest Montana.

The Good Things about Verizon Wireless Navigator Features
- If you go off route, Verizon Wireless Navigator will direct you back to your original route so you can't get lost (theoretically).
- You can search for local restaurants, grocery stores, gas stations (and it will show you the price), hotels, ATM's and much more. It also lets you enter a specific address.
- It will speak to you for the whole route with directions so you don't have to look down at the phone at every intersection (theoretically).
- There is a preview for each turn shown on the screen.
- It gives you the amount of time remaining on your trip in miles and minutes. It also shows the amount of time and mileage until the next turn.
- It gives directions whether you are walking or driving.
- It's only $9.99 a month or $2.99 for 24 hours.

The Bad Things About Verizon Wireless Navigator
- Running Verizon Wireless Navigator will suck the life out of your phone. You WILL need to charge it while you are driving. On two phones we used, the phones died in about 30 minutes.
- The speaker volume is pretty crappy. No matter how you adjust the volume, Verizon Wireless Navigator's Narrator sounds like someone at a McDonald's drive through. Too often I had to look down or have my son tell me what it said because it was too muffled.
- Searches for local restaurants and gas stations will occasionally take you to boarded up buildings, empty lots, residential houses, parks or 10 blocks away from your destination.
- I still hear the sing song tone of "recalculating route" because it does this quite often.
- While on the interstate, the map will show you driving through lakes, streams, fields and anywhere BUT the interstate. Every exit passed will have a voice telling you to "enter highway on the left (or right)" and it will continue for quite a while. It's longest stretch was 50 miles through central California.

Be Prepared to Detour
- Verizon Wireless Navigator apparently loves residential neighborhoods because I drove through more of them on every trip I have taken and for no reason.
- It also loves to have you drive 3 blocks into a neighborhood only to have you turn around, go back out and end up one block from where you started.
- The detours are interesting, at best, but make no sense. Several times it had me exit the interstate to follow a highway 20 miles out of my way, creep through in-town traffic only to turn and get back on the interstate.
- In Missoula, Mont. it took us on the most convoluted route it could find to get to the hotel. It wasn't easy enough to just go 5 blocks down the highway and have us turn left into the parking lot. Oh no! Verizon Wireless Navigator took us through the outskirts of town taking a few laps around several blocks, going out to God-knows-where to have me come back in from the other direction and then turn into the parking lot about 25 blocks later.

The Ugly Side of Verizon Wireless Navigator
- It only works where there is cell phone signal. Once you are in an area with no signal, you are on your own. This is a no-brainer but something I didn't think about before purchasing it.
- In the middle of Sacramento while searching for our hotel in the middle of the night, Verizon Wireless Navigator quit working. It kept trying to reconnect only to leave me hanging. I had to call my husband for the rest of the directions.
- That wasn't the first time either. While in Northern California I was driving at night. I searched for a gas station and got the best one about 2 miles off the interstate. When trying to find my way back to the interstate it informed me to turn left, so I did. I waited for the next direction as I drove further into darkness only to glance down and find "You traveled off your route, do you want to continue?" No warning. It just quit on me. And I was following the route.
- Traffic warnings and congestion ahead are a good thing but Verizon Wireless Navigators idea of "traffic congestion" is a man on the side of the road clipping palm trees with not a car in sight. We had several warnings of traffic congestion and "serious traffic incidents" only to find absolutely nothing. But when we sat in traffic for a 3 car pile up, Verizon Wireless Navigator didn't make a peep until 8 miles later.

Lost Sense
Many reviewers have complained that they lose their sense of direction or navigating by using this. This is complete and utter hogwash! You won't lose your sense of direction at all. In fact, it would be wise to buy an atlas or print out your directions from google maps before you head out on your fantastic trip of wild detours through the most convoluted routes that Verizon Wireless Navigator will take you on.

Overall
On the 5 star system, I give Verizon Wireless Navigator only 2 stars. -1 for the detours, -1 for leaving me hanging and -1 for the headache I got for using it.