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I've just added a Garmin 1695 unit to my wife's X3. It started as a project for my E91, but becuase of the order I've got parts in, I worked on the X3 first.
Background.
I hate with a passion cables and wires trailing from the dash, so was interested in the BMW solution with comprises the Garmin 3760 (a 4.3" widescreen unit, which you can buy for @£200) a bracket depending on the car plus wiring to power it from the car and depending on the age of the car it will route the audio output from the sat nav unit through the car speakers. BMW will charge you £499 for all of the above, plus if you want Traffic, they offer a TMC unit which will cost another £60 odd quid plus an extra hour of fitting. Considering that I get all of the above features on my Navigon Navigation on the iPhone I was waiting with baited breath for the BMW iPhone Station - which at the 11th hour was refused type approval here in the UK.
So I was talking with my friendly parts guy at my local dealer and asked him about the fitting kit for the BMW Garmin kit, and he showed me it, cost £30+ vat. In looking at it, the bracket which holds the sat nav unit is for the Garmin Ball mount, so I went down to Halfords and found that the new Premium Series of Garmin Unit plus the 1695's mounts fitted this ball mount - important becuase the USB power supply needs to be permently attached to the mount and not requiring to be plugged in and out of the unit every time it is removed from the vehicle.
Trouble with the new range of the Garmin's is that their Live Traffic services are only available via an Android App and as an iPhone user this is useless. So whilst it is last years model, the 1695 has it's own built in SIMM for connected services and has recently been dropped in price from nearly £400 to £199 including Free Map Updates for Life and 1 Years Live Services.
So the kit for the X3 to replace the hinged cover in the dash was £30+vat (Part No. 6590 0 445 996) this includes the replacement cubby, the mount and cabling to power the unit from the radio (this bit I've not yet completed).
So I've fitted the dash cubby holder, and immediately a problem is identified on the BMW unit, there is a hole in the ball mount to feed a USB power cable through, however the USB connection on the 1695 unit is about 2cm below the ball - so a 16mm hole was drilled to allow the passing through of the USB cable (not seen when the mount is in place).
As I mentioned, I've not yet wired up the unit with the BMW supplied kit to the Radio as I don't have the instructions (yet). However When I had the dash apart to replace the cubby box (you remove the centre air vent unit - pulls out first - then there are 2 screws to detach the original cubbby box - plus when the air vents are out you can see the 2 screws which hold in the heater controls). Removing these it was possible to thread the Power Adaptor supplied with the Garmin unit, from behind the mount and out below the Heater Control Panel allow just enough cable to plug the power adaptor into the cigarette lighter.
This gives me an almost cableless / factory fit installation (it will be complete when I wire the USB feed from the radio - as supplied) but I have basically got a 5" vs. 4.3" sat nav unit, BMW mount, live traffic and google search features - neither of which where available on the original BMW Garmin solution for a total of £250 or half the price with extra features.
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