Well, that's just great. No sooner than I declare the Garmin StreetPilot c550 my current Editor's Choice and the LCD display goes and craps out on me. On exactly day 30 of ownership, I turned on my StreetPilot c550 only to discover there was something wrong with the display. The unit was able to navigate fine, and it gave audio prompts, but the screen was barely visible. I took a photo of it (above), and had to do some Photoshop work to get anything visible at all. Tilting the unit at an angle made things visible enough to tap around and see if it was merely a brightness/contrast setting issue, but alas it was a more serious problem. I tried doing a hard reset and that also had no effect.

Luckily, I had kept the original box and receipt. I looked carefully at the exchange policy on the receipt, only to discover I could only return a defective item within 30 days -- yikes! I headed out to Circuit City right away, and an hour later I had a new StreetPilot c550.

If anyone else is having issues with the Garmin c550 display, I'd like to hear about it and gauge how widespread an issue this is.