It’s difficult to comprehend a truck driver’s tasks and obligations until you’ve driven a truck through various cities across the United States. Every other day at their work, they have to transport merchandise from point A to point B with a time limit, it’s like playing the video game Burnout in real life. As a trucker, you will be required to go to different locations daily and arrive on time or you will be penalized in earnings : navigating with speed is very important.

Wandering around a city because you’re lost is a waste of both time and money at the end of the year. That’s why truckers should be thankful GPS navigation systems that changed their way of working, maps were more difficult. When trucking around, there’s no way your company will allow you to drive without using a GPS to maximize the kilometers that you’ve ran.

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The Garmin Dezl OTR500 is a GPS unit that has been reviewed among many trucker Facebook groups as one of the best alternatives today.  We’ll see if the Garmin Dezl OTR500 is the finest truck GPS on the marketplace by making it go through extensive tests in the cars that our review team uses.

Garmin Dezl OTR500 Features Overview

The sensitive screen on this Garmin offers a great quality of 1024 x 600 pixels, that ranges about the same for almost every GPS. This is a higher screen display than the GPS from TomTom counterpart, which has a display of just 480 x 272.

The Garmin Dezl OTR500 has a 5.5-inch touchscreen. It also includes the premium mapping and sophisticated connections from Garmin’s branded AI that is supposed to save you money.

The device has an uncomplicated break planning process to make your travel on the highway more bearable. This tool allows you to find attraction sites for truckers, such as gasoline, restaurants, restrooms, rest facilities, accommodation, and banks.

Garmin Live Services sends you traffic warnings and lets you view what’s going on the path ahead of you, it’s available for a fair fee every month. These notifications will notify you of any blockages and direct you to a different route, that is the standard today in most gpses the you find on the market.

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The OTR500 makes keeping track of your driving time easier and ensures that you comply with the FMCSA ELD regulations, something that every truck driver worries about. Without needing to link your cellphone to get the data, you can quickly check your hours of work on the screen.

It also allows users to add a rear view camera to your own personal vehicle if you decide to take it outside of the truck. Once it is enabled, the relayed video from your rear view on your screen, you will be able to see what’s going on around your car as a result of this.

This GPS device includes a truck tracking method that enables fleet managers to keep track of their workers’ whereabouts if you set it up properly, this is perfect for trucking company owners who are looking for a GPS. They may also connect with them via messages and exchange locations over mobile services if there is a problem with the driver.

Why We Recommend The Garmin Dezl OTR500

The amazing Garmin Dezl OTR500 trucker device offers plenty of reasons for you to buy it such as the durable materials it’s built with, it also comes with various accessories that will make your life easier. A GPS from Garmin always has the highest and most advanced technology on the market, joyous rides are in front of you.

5.5-inch Touchscreen

The Garmin comes with a 5.5-inch touchscreen that offers a crisp-high, a bright resolution display even in the sunlight where some GPS tend to fade away. The buttons are fairly accessible allowing you to multi-task while you are driving while it is not recommend.. You can adjust the brightness and contrast of the screen’s resolution according to your own needs while your car is turned off if you need to make changes.

Voice-Activated Navigation

If you’re unable to access the screen with your fingers, the microphone inside of the GPS will be able to relay your commands to the system. This is why we recommend it to every road driver because you don’t have to take off your eyes off the road to operate this GPS. This is a time-saving feature designed to ease your problems that you usually encounter on the road.

Driving Break Planner

The OTR500 comes with an already installed Driving Break Planner, no extra updates needed, it will automatically plan the breaks that you need. There’s also a function that acts as soon as the map detects a point where the vehicle can stop for a few minutes for a refreshment and it plans a detour for a stay automatically.

Custom Truck Routing

You’re going to get customized truck navigation depending on your vehicle’s weight and size. You will also get notifications of impending overpass heights, sharp bends, and other hazards, in some cases you won’t even see the changes to your route. In some places, customized truck routing is not possible but you can send their team a request and they will produce a software update in the coming days, Garmin is a very interactive company with its customers.

Why We Do not Recommend The Garmin Dezl OTR500

Despite the positives, there are a few negatives that come with purchasing the Garmin Dezl OTR500.

Software Glitches

When I tested the model, I was impressed with the advanced features used in the making of the gadget. However, there were a few software glitches that didn’t sit well with me. Take the route, for example; if there is a low bridge on the right shoulder, it might not give you the exact whereabouts of the bridge.

When you ask too many commands to the GPS for your route, sometimes, the computer can plan a funny router that’s not right. We also noticed that some truckers have said that the screen just froze in middle of a route but we have not experienced this glitch by ourselves because we do not have time to spend 10 hours driving around for nothing. This is quite a worry because in some cases the truckers reported that they lost all their route information so they had to estimate their whereabouts.

Inaccurate Route Information

Some of the route information stored on this device isn’t accurate enough, it’s kinda like you have to contact their support team to get updates out for certain development of a town. If you have to find a weigh station or anything like that in the middle of the journey, the device will not be able to guide you accurately to it, it will act like you are offroad. I really hope that they can fix this bug that has been happening with GPS devices since a long time.

Map Needs Upgrades

The map that is included in the Garmin Dezl OTR500 out of the box is not enough for the GPS to function properly, it doesn’t have new parts of my town in Baltimore. I had to connect the device to my computer, I was blessed that the updates to the map from Garmin were totally free, something that wasn’t in the past.

Conclusion

As we are nearing the end of our Garmin Dezl OTR500 review, we can safely state that it is a great GPS for any normal users, while it presents rare bugs and need and update right away, it is one of the finest GPS for truckers on the market today. It has all the features that a trucker would need such as custom truck routes where you input your truck’s size and it automatically creates optimized routes once it is set up.

It will help you fulfill all the requirements of your employer if you need a GPS for trucking because it respects the regulations by letting you know when to stop and other things like that. The points of interest on the Garmin Dezl OTR500 are updated regularly, making it simpler to identify ATMs, eateries, and other driver-related services. If you work as a skilled trucker, this will be a useful tool and a worthwhile purchase that will certainly make your life simpler.