Points of interest (POIs) are, just as the name implies, a geographic point that may be of interest to you. They are typically divided into categories like dining, shopping, lodging, recreation, etc. If you are navigating to a business, you are likely to use a POI; if you are navigating to a residence, you'll probably enter an address instead.
These days, most auto GPS receivers come with anywhere from 750,000 to 6 million or more POIs. I find units with 2 million or less POIs to be extremely frustrating to use, since often, the business I am searching for is not in the database.
I really like Garmin's approach to this. All of their newer auto units come pre-loaded with City Navigator, which has nearly 6 million POIs. TomTom fudges this a little bit, citing "miliions of POIs" for their products, though my take is that they are closer to the high end of the range than the low end.
Magellan and Mio put more POIs on their higher end devices. On the low end Magellan goes down to as few as 750,000 POIs. You can see how these sort out on my Mio and Magellan GPS comparison charts..
My advice? Avoid GPS receivers with low numbers of POIs.
Related posts:
Can I buy a preloaded topo map on sd card for the magellan 1200 roadmate I would like to use it for hunting and hiking thank you roger
Posted by: Roger Karstetter | December 16, 2007 at 01:43 PM
Roger,
It's hard to tell from the Magellan site but it doesn't look like it.
Posted by: Rich Owings | December 16, 2007 at 01:53 PM
How does one go about getting the location of our business mapped in the overall GPS system? Is there one particular vendor who handles all database entries that GPS manufacturers subscribe to? Also, is it possible to have our location listed as a Point of Interest?
Thanks,
Tom
Posted by: Tom | December 01, 2008 at 02:18 PM
Tom,
There are two main map data suppliers, NAVTEQ and Tele Atlas. You can submit your location to NAVTEQ at http://mapreporter.navteq.com/. They have a service for chains at http://www.navteq.com/support/direct.html.
You can report POIs to Tele Atlas at http://www.teleatlas.com/Support/MapFeedback/index.htm.
Posted by: Rich Owings | December 01, 2008 at 04:50 PM
Thank you very much for those contacts for submitting missing info to the supplers. I've been looking for that for a while!
Cheers,
Bob.
Posted by: Bob | February 02, 2009 at 11:12 AM