
The 1490 was an upgrade for me from a 200W, and it's a superior unit in every way. Far from perfect, but I'm much happier with it.
Satellites are acquired very quickly from startup. Processing overall is much faster and smoother. The bigger screen allows for more information to be displayed, and one of the options includes elevation, which I was thrilled to see.
But this thing has its issues too. On a stretch of I-74 in Indiana, the route the 1490 displayed took an "as the crow flies" approach to my route and wandered off the interstate, indicating I should be driving slightly OFF the interstate in the middle of a farm field. The 1490 didn't go to "Recalculating" or anything...just displayed the pink line off the road. Last night, the 1490 displayed my vehicle icon as being off the road I was on completely...showing it off in nowhere-land to the north, for a few miles. This after indicating I was on the interstate when in fact I was in a parking lot quite a bit south of the interstate, which resulted in the route it chose being the wrong one. And don't even get me started on downtown Cincinnati, where my old 200W got so confused it just started repeating "Recalculating" over and over. The 1490 fared better, but couldn't keep up the directions (visually or audio) with the rate of travel, sending me 20 minutes out of my way trying to get across the river to Covington.
Some of the features in this unit are limited in their ability, some to the point of being worthless...Lane Assist is a nice feature but isn't always accurate...It only seems to show multiple lane arrows in certain cities, and even then sometimes is inaccurate (it showed five lanes in Indianapolis where only four existed, for example). It will get you there, it just doesn't display perfectly. Junction View seems to be nothing more than a simple image that pops up briefly and again is only available in very limited areas (I owned the 1490 for nearly a month before I ever saw one pop up...it never appeared in Salt Lake City, Omaha, Des Moines, or the Quad Cities, for example). The traffic indicator has never displayed anything but green, even when there's been traffic problems.
Overall, I do like the unit and find it helpful, but there's much room for improvement. Aside from fixes to these issues down the road, I would like to see a vehicle GPS with a built-in weather radio that can not only pick up the NWS stations, but read and prompt weather alerts and road conditions, for example. That would be a great help to travelers.Get more detail about
Garmin nüvi 1490/1490T 5-Inch Widescreen Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator with Traffic.