it's that summer gps navigation time again

If there's one thing I know to be true, it's that putting capacitive screens in cars was a really bad idea, and it's for one main reason. None of them handle heat well, and none ever will.

Every time I see one of those screens, I see something that will fail and be ridiculously expensive to replace. And that's assuming if it can even be replaced at all. Screen size doesn't matter. It could be a little panel screen, a large infotainment screen, whatever. Every screen is a future point of failure.

It's not if that screen will fail but when, and what will kill it will be heat. After a few summers in Arizona, Nevada, California, Texas, Florida, or anywhere else it gets nasty-hot in the summer, oh yes, there will be screen failures aplenty.

The same thing is true for phones if one is used in a car for navigation. On a hot summer day even with A/C running at full blast, if that phone is getting hit by the sun, it will heat up and shut down in about, oh, 15 minutes or fewer.

I've got a bunch of Garmin navigators, and it's my tradition now that every time summer comes around, I switch over to a very specific model, the Drive 52. Why that one? It's the last matte screen model they ever made. It is a touchscreen, but not capacitive, so it emits less heat and can also handle summer heat a whole lot better.

The 52 obviously isn't as advanced as the DriveSmart 66, but it is daylight readable and does its job. Yes, it does require the additional purchase of a 32GB microSD memory card to fit all the modern USA/Canada/Mexico map data, but that's just a one-time thing.

Where I appreciate the 52 most during summer is in two specific instances. Parking in a lot with no shade, and when sitting in traffic.

In a lot, such as a grocery store parking lot, if there is no shade to be found, after I park I can easily take the screen off the mount and put it in on the passenger side floor until I get back. If it's a stupidly hot day where I have to put up my sunshade, same thing. The screen has to come off the glass to put up the shade anyway.

While true I could do the same with a capacitive screen model, I then have to deal with waiting. As in waiting for the interior of the car to cool down before I can put the screen back on its mount. With a matte screen, I don't have to wait. Even if the interior of the car is hot and the dashboard is radiating heat, I can just click back the 52 on the mount, power it up, and off I go.

There have been times in the past when using a capacitive screen model where I've been sitting in slow or stopped traffic, it's summer, really hot, I touch the screen to adjust volume or whatever, and uh-oh, it's hot. This happens even when the A/C is running. Sure, the car interior temperature is fine, but the screen is on the glass and getting beaten by the sun. Now I'm nervous. With the matte screen, yes, it's warm in those instances when I touch it, but not hot to the point of getting nervous.

I lose features (like voice control) by switching over to the 52, but it's one of those things where the navigation matters more than anything else. I just need the thing to work. The 52 may be an older model, but for summer driving, it works.

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