Not long ago, my family and I went on a trip to visit friends, family, and some cool attractions in Florida. Since it was a place we weren't familiar with, we realized we'd either need to rent a GPS unit, buy one, or print out oodles of maps.

For ease of travel, we decided we'd use a GPS rather than maps. We also decided we'd buy a GPS rather than rent one because rental rates run $10 a day or so, so buying would save us money in the long run. We'd also have it to use on other trips as well.

We searched around for the best machine and best deal. We ended up buying a Garmin 550c off of eBay. It was a fantastic deal and had a bunch of cool new features that some of the older brands didn't have.

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 brought her Magellan brand GPS unit. She'd thought it'd be helpful as well. However, hers got her into all kinds of problems because it couldn't figure out where she was and/or couldn't figure out how to tell her to get places.

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.