Garmin GPS Receiver

• Traffic Message Channel (Tmc) Receiver & Antenna
• Recieves Digital Information (Where Available) On Traffic & Road Construction Tie-Ups
• Gives Prompt, Accurate Notification Of Accidents, Road Construction, Police Or Emergency Action, Etc.
• Provides Continuous Traffic Broadcasts In Real-Time (In Most Areas)

Price:$120.33

Garmin GTM 12 FM Traffic Receiver Product Reviews

The technology gets a “B”, the execution gets a “D”, August 17, 2006

After one month’s use the traffic module continues to disappoint. While I love the nuvi, I cannot think of a time where the traffic module has given me insight.

From a technology standpoint it works. You can see on a list all the traffic impediments (e.g., construction, traffic conjestion, wreck) and each is rated a green, yellow, or red. If one of these impediments is on your route and it is rated yellow or red, an orange diamond will appear on the map to prompt you to investigate. It can even highlight how much traffic is backed up.

One thing the traffic module does not do is calculate how much time traffic tie-ups will add to your trip. Wish they would fix that. It is also a shame that the FM antenna will not plug into the mounting bracket, therefore you have to plug/unplug vitually everytime you get in/out of the car. These two issues are minor nuisances.

The major nuisance is how the technology is executed – not well at all. I lay all of this at the doorstep of Clear Channel. I find myself in a traffic jam slowing down to 0 mph – but there’s nothing on the map. There is an accident on the map (should I re-route?), but when I get to that spot nothing is there and traffic is running at the posted speed limit. Both happened on this morning’s commute alone. One time it had a major close-down-the-highway-reroute-all-traffic-to-the-feeder-roads accident as being in the north-bound side of the highway. It was on the south-bound side, and I found myself trapped on the feeder road.

I sent an email to Clear Channel to volunteer sending emails to whatever person that controls this. Got a nice, “Thank you and we will forward your request on to the appropiate person.”

My free subscription runs out in 14 months. Something tells me the service will improve by that time. If the service did not improve, I could not for the life of me understand why someone would pay $65/year for it.

This could be a best-thing-since-the-microwave product. Right now it’s just a frustrating disappointment.

Poor quality traffic info, October 12, 2006

The antenna itself is great, and it works well with the GPS software, but the Clear Channel traffic info for my area is usually very stale and of only limited use.

I’m in the San Francisco Bay Area, driving mostly on 680, 280, 101, and 237, where the traffic info is only helpful when there has been a severe accident blocking lanes. It’s not particularly helpful for reporting on “slow traffic” and the like, but it does attempt this. Yeah, I still plug it in, but I check the radio for a much more reliable traffic reports.

Unless the quality of the reporting gets much better, there’s no way I’m renewing this service. I’ll keep the nuvi, of course, which is great.

A cool novelty, but not always useful, January 16, 2007

Like the previous reviewer, I also live in Atlanta. Traffic can be a nightmare here, so I had high hopes for this add-on to my Nuvi 360.

Everyday between 3:00pm and 7:00pm, my Nuvi constantly tells me “TRAFFIC AHEAD”, which is handy. But everyone in Atlanta knows that there’s always traffic ahead in the afternoon in Atlanta. Checking the GPS screen reveals such info as “accumulating traffic” and “slow traffic” – true, but not terribly helpful in a city where this is always true. The Nuvi offers to route me away from the expressway, but I guess I’d do that anyway without the warning. It’s more useful on late nights and weekends when unusual traffic events take place.

I find the service reasonably accurate for the most part, but I sometimes find that it reports outdated information (cleared accidents, etc), and the information is generally vague (“accumulating traffic”, “slow traffic”, etc.)

The traffic receiver is novel and kinda cool, but it really doesn’t save me much time or provide much information I didn’t already know from regular, daily traffic patterns. If the service were updated more promptly and provided more detailed information, it would be more useful.

Update Jan 26, 2007: I’ve been paying attention, and the detail provided by the traffic add-on seems to be improving. I’m noticing more information on accidents and incidents, rather than the vague ‘slow’ and ‘accumulating’ messages I’d seen for the past few months. Perhaps it’s a coincidence, but my opinion of the service is improving.

Wonder if I’ll ever hit traffic…, March 29, 2007

I live in the Wash. DC area and we have pretty bad traffic. I normally take a route that isn’t extremely bad but does has congestion. I get no warnings at all.

Also, recently there was a smaller side road (Non-Highway but well used road) that was closed on both directions but had no information on this road. The antenna works but Clear Channels Traffic information sucks.

Sucks really bad. When I check the traffic information, the only information I get is the main large interstate highways.

Do yourself a favor and don’t buy this.

Who knows, maybe the XM traffic service is better but I can honestly tell you Clear Channel Traffic Service SUCKS!

Maybe I’ll get some traffic information traveling on I-95 somewhere…

Sorry for the unproffesionalism but its the honest truth.

Cool but a compromise, November 3, 2006

I find this traffic receiver very helpful in large cities, and is a really great concept. I love Garmin products, generally. I use it a lot, and it’s very nice to have. But there are a couple of things that I’m not so happy with: Outside of urban areas, or in the country, there is no data available, and thus this is useless on long trips. But when in a major US city, it’s extremely cool and very, very useful. It will visually highlight, and announce traffic problems, and will also show a text list. It took awhile to figure out how to install it, though, as the instructions are pretty scant. For example, on my Nuvi there is a rear power input connected with the suction mount that must be used if one is to also use this Receiver – who would know??!! Not in the instructions for this Receiver, nor for my Nuvi. The Traffic Receiver goes into the same input as the power adapter (on the side of my Nuvi), but then gives error messages on boot-up, as it will not work on battery. It was totally up to me to discover this.

While this receiver is great, and helpful, it’s a stand-in for XM NavTraffic devices which I’d prefer to use, but are not compatable with my Nuvi. So this is a compromise. The next question in 15 months after the free subscription to the data runs out — will I pay $60 a year for the data? May be, but I still have awhile to decide.

Works mostly; barely worth the price, June 10, 2007

These comments focus on the receiver connected to a Nuvi 360.

On a 360, it hooks up on the usb port to the right side. Unfortunately the usb connector is attached to the body of the receiver and the whole thing wants to extend out the back of the Nuvi, bumping into the dashboard (I have my Nuvi mounted on the dash).

It usually picks up traffic info in my area (SF Bay Area). It’s slow to update; there’s a lot of time when the traffic report says there’s heavy traffic, but, I found the traffic was very light (i.e., hours after the rush hour completed for the day).

Problems are with the Nuvi 360′s interface and overall satiisfaction with the traffic receiver when compared to a Nuvi 660.

Nuvi displays a yellow diamond on the screen to let you know you got traffic on the road you are on. The symbol is a solid diamond; if you want to know if the nature of the traffic is an accident or traffic is just slow, you have to push some menu options to get there. The Nuvi 660 puts an icon cluing you in on the nature of the problem in the diamond.

The Nuvi 660 is more agressive in re-routing you dynamically when something develops. Never saw a re-route on the Nuvi 360.

Coverage is limited to major freeways, not expressways or busy surface streets. So if your commute takes you through major freeways, the traffic info is useful. Otherwise, it might not be.

In the end I recommend this add-on to folks who purchased a Nuvi 360 and want traffic. It’s the only practical option and if you can live with its limited coverage, it’s probably worth your money, but, barely. If you are buying a new GPS and definitely want traffic coverage, consider the Nuvi 660 or 680 instead. You get within $100 of the price of the 660 and you get the bonus of one less cable to worry about, since the traffic receiver on the 600 series is built-into the car power cord.

Only as good as Clear Channel Allows it to be, January 4, 2007

I purchased this item after receiving my Garmin C340 GPS receiver and thought this may help in the traffic snarl that is Atlanta. Overall it works very well and has helped me avoid some major traffic jams in and around Atlanta. After plugging it in to my Garmin in less than a minute the broadcast traffic events were loaded onto my GPS and any routes I planned in severely impacted area were re-routed automatically to avoid them. A very nifty feature.

My only complaint is not with the device, but with Clear Channel Communication’s Traffic Management Service which broadcasts the traffic data. They seem to be a little slow in getting the data onto their network. I know this is a relatively new service, but they need to get a little better in updating their information and using all of the traffic data available to their users. This item came with a 15 month subscrition, afterwards it will cost $60 a year to use. I am hoping in the next 15 months they get better at providing better data so that the GPS can do it’s job.

Product works fine, but traffic service is terrible, May 7, 2007

Living in the NYC area, traffic is always bad somewhere. The problem with the Clear Channel data is that it is not up to date – I find that I still have to rely on radio reports. Even though I keep it in the car and plugged in, I do not use the data from the traffic receiver, it is more of a game to see how inaccurate it is. For example, it reported heavy traffic on a route to the GW Bridge, so I decided to take the Lincoln tunnel. When getting to the tunnel proved difficult because of a parade, I turned around to brave the traffic to the bridge. Turns out there was NO traffic on the way to bridge, so I wasted more than 30 minutes due to inaccurate information. I can’t count the number of times I have been on a highway (NJ Turnpike, Garden State Parkway, the Hutch, I-87), seen that the device is calling for traffic ahead and then never gone slower than 50mph. The service is a total waste of money. I’m upset that I spent $140 on this, thinking it would be the next killer app, and being so let down.

If the data ever improves, this could be great. But once my free trial runs out, I’ll never know, since I can’t foresee spending another cent on the traffic feature

no information is sometimes better than wrong information, January 2, 2008

My opinion more or less mirrors a lot of other people’s it seems. I’ve had this for going on near a year now and while the device itself is ok (although a little bulky and awkward), the service is really hit or miss.

I drive around in the Boston area, and one of the first things I noticed was that it only reports major multi-lane interstate highways, basically.. and even at that, not all of them. Anything in the city proper or its suburbs is totally silent, even if it’s a major thoroughfare. More often than not, my nuvi will try and direct me off the highway onto a road that’s just as jammed if not more so. And this is when the data’s accurate, which isn’t terribly often. It seems to me that in my area what I get is around a half hour behind most of the time.

For me, it got to the point where I really didn’t trust the directions my nuvi would give me when I had it plugged in. Even though I have a couple months left on it, it sits unused in my glove compartment.

If you’re looking into getting one of these, I’d strongly suggest you find someone nearby who already has one and look at the sort of reports it gives on a regular basis, and decide if that quality of information is good enough for you.

Don’t let this steer you away from buying the Nuvi itself though, I love mine and would recommend it to anyone.

Useful for Trucking, March 12, 2008

I have the GTM-12 connected to a Garmin C340 in my semi. As a driver I’ve seen the unit provide information in numerous large cities. The real-time traffic information can sometimes be outdated (a problem with both FM and XM traffic radio broadcasts, incidently) but where I find the unit most informative is CONSTRUCTION ZONES. For instance, I64 in St. Louis is completely shut down between I270 and I170, and this unit display this and knows to route me away from the area. The C330 I have does not support traffic info and would blindly route me down I64.

My C340 has been helpful routing me around major traffic jams. When it detects something ahead an icon shows up on the map offering to reroute me. I’ve found this useful.

The only problem I really have with mine is a hardware issue; My GTM-12 seems to be rather sensitive to heat, IE if it sits in the sun while I’m buying fuel, or if I’m running the defroster, the GTM-12 seems to lock up and the Garmin can’t talk to it. If I let it cool off and then powercycle it (I pull the 12v power long enough for the Garmin to start its poweroff countdown, then plug it back in) then it seems to recover. I haven’t taken the time to contact Garmin about this yet since I’m still on the road with the new unit on its first trip out.) It just doesn’t seem to like an ambient temperature over 80F. I don’t know if this is common to the GTM-12 or just my particular unit.

I plan to renew the nation-wide service when it comes due.

UPDATE: The unit I had was quickly replaced under warranty once I contacted Garmin, no arguments or issues. The replacement unit is not at all heat-sensitive and has been working well for the past year. It also appears that Garmin has altered their FM radio subscription service for this unit–it now seems to be free! The expiration date for the FM subscription has a date up around 2027, as I recall…

Another feature I discovered is that the FM Traffic information sometimes contains information about unusual events like major league baseball games, NASCAR races, and other such things that can cause localized traffic issues. These show up with an INFO icon in the traffic event list on my elderly StreetPilot.