Recently, my family and I took a lovely trip to the State of Florida. We were there to go to a wedding, visit family, enjoy the beaches and other local attractions. To get around, we realized we'd either have to have a bunch of maps all printed off, or we'd have to rent or buy a GPS unit.

Thankfully, we opted for buying a GPS unit. It proved to be well worth the money and we figured we could use it on other trips as well, so the cost could be spread out over more than just one trip.

We bought a Garmin 550c off of eBay. What an incredible little piece of equipment! We paid under $200 for it which was a fantastic deal for that brand at the time with a cool array of features.

Our new GPS not only got us where we needed to go, but helped us find new places to visit that were close to where we were. It helped us find beautiful beaches, shoe stores, Walmarts, grocery stores, and all kinds of other places.

My sister came on the trip as well, bringing her husbands new Magellan GPS unit that he got for Christmas. Unfortunately, her Magellan didn't work nearly as well as our Garmin. It often couldn't figure out where she was and got her off course quite a bit.

Obviously, from her experience, we learned that it pays to get a high-quality brand of GPS units! It wasted a lot of her time and cost her extra money as well trying to deal with that little machine.

So our recommendation is that GPS units are one of the handiest things to take on a trip, you just need to make sure you invest in the right brand! Garmin is one of the better brands, in our experience.