The Bean Bag is back in style

I love my Garmin Nuvi GPS however, I’m not a fan of windshield suction cups. While they work for the most part, I primarily use my Nuvi in rental cars and therefore have to move the mount from car to car each time I travel. I’ve had the Nuvi literally fall off the window on more than one occasion while driving. While the Nuvi has survived the fall each time, it was a pain in the butt (and a hazard to my fellow motorists) to get it back on the windshield. So I started looking for other mounting solutions when I came across this “Portable Friction Mount – ie. Bean Bag” on Garmin’s site. In order to use this mount you also need the Automotive Mount. The Automotive Mount is designed to stick permanently on your dashboard as some states don’t allow anything to be mounted to the windshield (probably for the reasons above). However, it does slide neatly and not permanently into the Bean Bag mount. So in theory you could use the base that comes with the Automotive Mount in your car and still travel with the Bean Bag mount and the part that attaches to the Nuvi for other/rental cars. This isn’t a concern for me as my personal vehicles all have factory navigation in them already.

I took the Bean Bag mount for a test drive and it stayed in place even on those Indy 500 style turns that I’m known for. It’s also neat to just pickup the whole thing when you arrive and go inside. If you find that suction mounts “suck (or don’t suck)”, then I highly recommend this solution!

8 Replies to “The Bean Bag is back in style”

  1. I have used the Garmin StreetPilot 2620 for a couple of years now, with the Bean Bag, and it is still performing as it did when I bought it. I too, recommend this solution.

    A friend of mine has a smaller unit (much like yours) and as we were riding on a smooth road last week, his unit fell on top of his console, then onto his lap, and finally onto the floor. It survived, but distracted him for a few seconds; long enough to get into an accident. Fortunately, there was no traffic around us at the time.

  2. Thats great if I switch between my radar detector and a GPS. My only problem with the GPS units is I have not found one that oroks with Mac software. Any ideas?

  3. Hi Jim,
    Actually Garmin has software available in Beta for the Mac for many of their GPS units. I’ve used the beta to update the software in my Nuvi as well as to add custom POIs.

  4. Haven’t been on line for a while. Thanks so much for the answer, I really appreciate it.

  5. I love my Garmin.
    I use the suction cup though. I put it on the left of the windshield all the way towards the door. I am learning my way around my city more because I no longer say “I don’t know where that is” I just go.

  6. Terry,

    Just to let you know the suction cup holder for any item is not legal in California! So here we have no choice and the bean bag holder works great anyway!

    With Respect,
    LT Geoffrey Lander, USN

  7. Question on the beanbag . . will it support the new Nuvi 265WT? I agree, the windshield suction mount doesn’t work consistently and I’m looking for an alternative. Thanks!

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