Do You Need A Dedicated GPS Unit To Visit Puerto Rico?

Dedicated GPS units are quickly going the way of the dodo bird.

Ded­i­cat­ed GPS units are quick­ly going the way of the dodo bird.

The oth­er day I received an email from one of our read­ers ask­ing which was the best GPS unit to vis­it Puer­to Rico. Although most may­or brand GPS units include Puer­to Rico in the US maps, I guess the real ques­tion should have been: do you actu­al­ly need a ded­i­cat­ed unit at all?

With the emer­gence of smart­phones dur­ing the last five years ded­i­cat­ed GPS units are going the way of the dodo fast. And I know this for a fact because my son worked sev­er­al years at a may­or big box retail­er and he was a wit­ness to this phenomenon.

Many peo­ple look at their Androids or iPhones and they just see a phone. But these units are so much more than that. They’re actu­al­ly pock­et-sized com­put­ers that hap­pen to make phone calls.

Since the announce­ment of the first iPhone on Jan­u­ary 10, 2007 many prod­uct cat­e­gories that were once very prof­itable have all but dis­ap­peared from the mar­ket­place. Case in point pock­et cal­cu­la­tors, dig­i­tal point-and-shoot cam­eras and ded­i­cat­ed GPS units.

Why? Because a sim­ple app, which in many cas­es is even free, can do the same job or even better.

But let’s sup­pose that for some rea­son you still would like to have a sep­a­rate GPS unit for your car. Well, I did some inves­ti­gat­ing and found the best deal for you.

Garmin nüvi 52LM

The Garmin nüvi 52LM has all the bells and whis­tles that you’ll ever want in a GPS unit and it comes in at around $120 street price. It comes pre­loaded with City Nav­i­ga­tor® NT, which includes data with street maps of the low­er 48 states, Hawaii, Puer­to Rico, U.S. Vir­gin Islands, Cay­man Islands, Bahamas, French Guiana, Guade­loupe, Mar­tinique, Saint Barthelme and Jamaica.

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It also includes Life­time maps (which is indi­cat­ed by “LM” after mod­el num­ber on the box).

And final­ly, the Garmin nüvi 52LM comes equipped with a vehi­cle suc­tion cup mount, a lighter sock­et pow­er cable, a USB cable to con­nect the unit to your com­put­er and the Quick Start Manual.

If you want you can order the Garmin nüvi 52LM straight from Ama­zon right now by click­ing on the image on your right.

Now, if you own a smart­phone there are two excel­lent choic­es that you can use for free.

Google Maps for iPhone

Google Maps for iPhone

Google Maps

The first and orig­i­nal smart­phone App was Google Maps and it’s avail­able for most smart­phone plat­forms includ­ing Apple and Android. It offers:

• Com­pre­hen­sive, accu­rate maps for 200 countries
• Voice-guid­ed GPS nav­i­ga­tion for dri­ving, bik­ing, and walking
• Tran­sit direc­tions and maps for over 800 cities
• Live traf­fic and inci­dent reports
• Detailed infor­ma­tion on more than 100 mil­lion places
• Street View and indoor imagery for restau­rants, muse­ums, and more

Google Maps is what we use on Puer­to Rico by GPS and it works like a charm.

Apple Maps on iPhone

Apple Maps on iPhone

Apple Maps

The oth­er pop­u­lar app is Apple Maps, and like the name clear­ly spec­i­fies it only works with Apple prod­ucts like the iPhone, iPod and iPad. It offers:

• Turn-by-turn spo­ken directions
• Inter­ac­tive 3D views
• Fly­over, which lets you select major metro areas from the air with pho­to-real­is­tic, inter­ac­tive 3D views.
• Vec­tor-based inter­face that scales and zooms with ease.
• Real-time traf­fic infor­ma­tion to cal­cu­late your ETA
• Siri integration

This app orig­i­nal­ly got a bad rap because it strand­ed a group of tourists in the Aus­tralian Out­back and led anoth­er across an air­port land­ing strip in Alas­ka. But Apple has put a lot of hard work and resources into Apple Maps and the lat­est reviews have been great.

One addi­tion­al ben­e­fit that smart­phones offer over ded­i­cat­ed GPS units is that they can dou­ble as portable GPS units for walk­ing and hik­ing. For exam­ple, the maps on Puer­to Rico By GPS ask you if you are dri­ving, cycling or walk­ing. Why? Because they always show you the short­est route. How­ev­er, the short­est route on foot could go against traf­fic if you were dri­ving or cycling.

Puerto Rico By GPS

And final­ly you have Puer­to Rico By GPS. Our site is based on Google’s pop­u­lar Google Map ser­vice. But we take things a step fur­ther. Puer­to Rico By GPS has hun­dreds of pho­tos, detailed infor­ma­tion, audio, video and the Google Map ser­vice. And we add new des­ti­na­tions constantly.

All this is based on my 50+ years of local knowl­edge. Why? Because I live on the Island and I know it inside out. And my com­mit­ment is to always steer you in the right direction.

Oh, and one last thing. Many rental car com­pa­nies rent GPS units sep­a­rate­ly when you pick up your car. But with the steep charges you’ll soon dis­cov­er that you’ll be bet­ter off buy­ing your own.

So there you have it. You can buy, rent or just use your smart­phone. And no mat­ter what you decide, be sure to use Puer­to Rico By GPS as well.

Enjoy your stay in sun­ny Puer­to Rico.

©2014,Orlando Mer­gal, MA
____________________

Bilin­gual Con­tent Cre­ator, Blog­ger, Pod­cast­er,
Author, Pho­tog­ra­ph­er and New Media Expert
Tel. 787–750-0000, Mobile 787–306-1590

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Learn More About Puerto Rico

OLD SAN JUAN Enjoy an adven­ture through cen­turies of history
EL YUNQUE NATIONAL FOREST Explore the only trop­i­cal rain­for­est in the U.S.
LET’S HIT THE BEACH Have fun at one of Puer­to Rico’s world renown beaches.
Orlando Mergal buys all his photo equipment at B&H
Dis­clo­sure of Mate­r­i­al Con­nec­tion: Some of the links in this post are “affil­i­ate links.” This means that if you click on a link and pur­chase an item, I will receive an affil­i­ate com­mis­sion. Regard­less, I only rec­om­mend prod­ucts or ser­vices that I use per­son­al­ly and believe will add val­ue to my read­ers. I am dis­clos­ing this in accor­dance with the Fed­er­al Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Con­cern­ing the Use of Endorse­ments and Tes­ti­mo­ni­als in Advertising.”

3 thoughts on “Do You Need A Dedicated GPS Unit To Visit Puerto Rico?”

  1. I won­dered if Ver­i­zon has good ser­vice in Puer­to Rico? That is where I have ser­vice with my smart phone and I would hate to get there and have spot­ty service…do you notice any trou­bles with that? We are plan­ning a trip in May 2015. Thank you.

  2. Hi Kristi­na:

    I am glad that you are plan­ning a trip to Puer­to Rico.

    I am sor­ry to say that Ver­i­zon does not oper­ate in Puer­to Rico. They used to, but they sold their net­work to Amer­i­ca Mobile, who in turn oper­ates in Puer­to Rico as Claro.

    That said, cel­lu­lar ser­vice on the Island is quite good, There are sev­er­al com­pa­nies that you should know like AT&T, Sprint and T‑Mobile. So your phone would prob­a­bly work in roam­ing mode.

    Anoth­er option would be to switch over to AT&T, take a nation­al long dis­tance plan and then it would be like being on the main­land; you would­n’t pay any addi­tion­al charges. The nation­al plan is only about $10 more than the reg­u­lar plan, so you will make it back in the roam­ing charges that you’ll save.

    I hope these lit­tle incon­ve­niences will not detract you from vis­it­ing sun­ny Puer­to Rico. It’s a beau­ti­ful place, the food is great and the peo­ple are nice.

    And of course, what­ev­er you do, don’t for­get to bring a smart­phone so you can take advan­tage of Puer­to Rico By GPS.

    Have a great day!

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