If you are planning to travel, but have a hard time finding a GPS unit that has features that you need, you might want to find a GPS unit that’s an affordable one.

Now that you have finally decided that you want to get the first GPS unit for your car, you might as well want to get a cheap solution that isn’t hard on your wallet but works fine at the same time. In this article, we’ll try to take a look at what features a GPS unit should have, along with a pricing guide that should give you an idea of how much a cheap device should cost you.

Most of the low-budget GPS units cost somewhere below $200 and if you see a device with a higher price, it’s not a budget GPS unit anymore. The only features that a budget GPS unit should have are: Lots of POI’s (Points of Interest) in the database (e.g. the Garmin Nuvi 205 has 6 million of them), a detour function, an easy-to-use interface and of course, a large map database that has pre-loaded maps of your area. Most of the GPS systems have an anti-theft alarm, as the trends are showing that the theft of the GPS systems has increased quite a lot as they’ve become more popular.

If possible, you should seek for a unit that has additional features. Most GPS units, even low-end ones, offer a wide variety of features that can come in handy. Some are compatible with FM and MSN traffic so you can receive live traffic reports for an additional fee. If you live in a remote area, chances are that it’s unmapped, so double-check every map that’s included with the unit; ask the seller whether or not it has maps of your location. Some of the GPS units also come with useful features like the Garmin’s "Where am I?" emergency feature – a feature, which allows to call emergency directly from the unit, save your current location in an address or locate nearby services, such as hospitals, police stations and many more.

Overall, it’s easy to get a cheap GPS unit that can be used in a car and become a proud user of a GPS unit. If you have some experience using GPS, the TomTom 125 would be a great choice, as it costs below $100 and offers a lot of features for that price category. For example, detouring isn’t missing out in TomTom 125 along with preloaded maps of the area it’s sold in. But POI’s are missing in it. However, if you have no experience using GPS devices, you should give the Garmin Nuvi 205 a try, as it’s extremely easy to use and costs just a little more than the aforementioned alternative of TomTom.