Garmin Sat Nav Highlights
- Easy-to-use, dedicated GPS navigator with 5 inch dual-orientation display
- Preloaded with detailed worldwide maps with free lifetime map updates
- Driver alerts for increased awareness, including upcoming sharp curves, school zones, speed changes and more
- Garmin Real Directions feature guides like a friend, using landmarks and traffic lights
- Find new and popular restaurants, shops and more with Foursquare
Helpful Driver Alerts for Your Daily Commute
Garmin Drive 50 sat nav provides driver alerts to encourage safer driving and increase situational awareness. Warnings include alerts for sharp curves, speed changes, railway crossings and animal crossings.
Additionally, Garmin Drive 50LM notifies you when driving the wrong way on a one-way street and sends warnings for nearby school zones. Receive alerts for nearby red light and speed cameras.
For longer drives, a fatigue warning suggests break times and potential rest areas after hours of driving.
The Up Ahead feature lets you easily see places up ahead and milestones along your route like borders, without leaving the map view.
Guidance Using Recognisable Landmarks
Garmin Drive 50LM redefines “spoken turn-by-turn directions” with Garmin Real Directions, easy-to-understand driving directions that guide like a friend, using recognisable landmarks, buildings and traffic lights (e.g., “Turn right after the red building” or “Turn left after the McDonalds”). It’s preloaded with millions more new and popular places, thanks to Foursquare.
Find Exactly Where You Need to Go
The Direct Access feature simplifies navigating to select complex destinations, like airports and shopping centres, by finding a place within a larger location.
When navigating to the shopping centre, Direct Access gives additional location information for specific retail stores inside. For example, “Arriving at Lakeside. Debenhams is inside, on the upper level”
Easier to Search, Quicker to Find
Garmin Drive 50LM has a search field that makes it easy to find addresses and millions of points of interest (POIs). Simply enter a category (like “pizza”), an entire address or a proper name (“Starbucks”), and Garmin Drive 50 quickly returns your results.
In case of a misspelling, Garmin Drive 50LM provides multiple search results that sound similar to what you’ve entered.
Always find your way - Lifetime Map Updates
Never worry about road changes or closures thanks to the device's built-in Lifetime Map Updates.
Specifications
General
Dimensions 14.0 x 8.4 x 2.0 cm
Display Size 11.1 x 6.3 cm; 5.0" diag (12.7 cm)
Display Resolution 480 x 272 pixels
Display Type WQVGA color TFT with white backlight
Weight 170.8 g
Battery Type Rechargeable lithium-ion
Battery Life Up to 1 hour (approx)
Maps & memory
Preloaded Street Maps Yes
Storage and Power Capacity microSD™ card (not included)
Lifetime Map Updates Yes
Navigation features
Lane Assist with Junction View (Displays Junction Signs) Yes
Speed Limit Indicator (Displays Speed Limit for Most Major Roads) Yes
Additional
Trip planner Yes
Trip log Yes
Powered magnetic mount No
Garmin Real Directions™ landmark guidance Yes
Foursquare POIs Yes
Our Expert review of the Garmin Drive 50LM Sat Nav
What would you use it for?
Sat navs are still very relevant today, fantastic at getting you from A to B and often come with some really nifty extra features. The Garmin 50LM is one of those satellite navigation devices. It will look for and connect to GPS satellites and provide you with the optimum route for your destination.
What’s good about it?
The Garmin Drive 50LM has a 5 inch screen with a widescreen aspect ratio. This means more essential info can be displayed for the driver at any point. It comes loaded with Garmin Real Directions, worldwide maps and lifetime map updates. Most you’ll find have Western or Full EU maps, where as the 50LM maps cover the entire world and can be updated for free for the entirety of its usable life.
Are there any drawbacks?
The main competition to a standalone sat nav device is the other device that almost everyone has in the pocket or bag 99% of the time, your smartphone. Google Maps, Here We Go, even TomTom have an app that can be downloaded from the app store so the question presents itself, where is the need for a sat nav?
Are there alternative products available?
There are other manufacturers such as TomTom, that are producing competing products but the main alternative comes in the shape of your smartphone. There are so many apps available on the various different platforms that a difficult question presents itself, does the humble sat nav have much of a life span left?
