Garmin External Speaker with 12-Volt Adapter for StreetPilot ( 010-10477-01)

• GARMIN EXTERNAL SPEAKER WITH 12/24-VOLT ADAPTER CABLE (REPLACEMENT)

Garmin had to go out of their way to engineer the poor quality connector on the speaker/power cord. It is an over-all dumb design perdicated out of the Garmin's apparent desire to make it a little less epsensive to build the main unit to water-resistant specifications.

In less than a year, the poorly designed and manufactured connector on the main-unit end of the connector cable began to de-laminate and cause random unit resets when my car was jarred by pot holes or road irregularities.

I also own an older Street Pilot III which uses a much more robust round connector with pins that stick into holes in the cable. It probably cost Garmin about fifty cents or a dollar a unit more for the old style connector. Given Garmin's reputation for quality products, I'm really surprised they changed the engineering to the lousy leaf spring connector they're using now.

Garmin really should have a voluntary recall and replace these junky connectors to promote customer satisfaction instead of making us shell out between $30 and $40.

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Works fine with my Garmin StreetPilot 2610. This was a replacement for the first one that broke. The plastic end is not particularly strong, so be careful when not in use. Speaker quality is fine for its purpose.

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Overall, the adapeter replacement works fine. I plugged it in and the unit powered up. I am still a bit frustrated that I needed to replace this adapter. The Garmin unit is great the directions and interface work incredibly well but this adapter design is less than ideal. I had the 2720 unit less than two years and I needed to spend ~$100 to get it current replacing this adapter and buying the updated mapping CD.

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I've about had it with this durned power adapter/speaker cord. Every year it falls apart and I have to buy another one. Garmin just makes the durned thing too durned cheap. Speaker and cord part is great. . .just the part that plugs into the lighter socket keeps falling apart. Gotta admit I'm a heavy user. . .like all day everyday for 5 years. The GPS itself is fabulous, as long as you order the update maps when they're available, (which isn't often enough). Update maps are $150 plus $25 or more for the adapter. . .costs me $180 a year to run under this system. Gotta admit. . .I love it. . .cept when it breaks.

The new one works fine, and was about 20% cheaper than buying it directly through Garmin.

It still is a bit disappointing that Garmin didn't step up to the plate and replace these for nothing. When I was searching for my replacement, I found quite a few people also had to replace the adaptor.