The Garmin NuVi is a really neat evolution in small Car Navigators. NuVi is billed as a "Personal Travel Assistant" and not just as a GPS Car Navigator. The NuVi 350 includes complete USA and the best available "all Canada" maps PLUS it has about 700 megabytes of user memory left for other user maps, audio/music/image file storage and other data files. (The European NuVi 300 edition has 200mbytes of USER MAP MEMORY in addition to Garmin/NavTeq's "all Europe" maps. See the Garmin website Mapping section for road coverage detail..) The NuVi has few vestiges of an off road/hiking/marine GPS unit. It is strictly designed as a Car Navigator with a pedestrian capability similar to QUEST models.. Track back, compass page for Off Road routes, and related hiking/marine features are NOT available in NuVi. The unit has an OFF ROAD mode but basically it just gives you a line from A to B if you put in a destination in off road mode. The destination still has to be a POI or an address. There is no way to put in a lon/lat directly into the unit but you can "point" to a location and have that "point" be entered as a destination. HOWEVER... We think the NuVi is an outstanding Car Navigator and "personal travel assistant" and it is not sold as having hiking or marine features. Please read on.
Special Features
The NuVi continues Garmin's line of simpler to use GPS car navigators. NuVi will easily fit into your shirt picket and can operate on internal battery power for 4 to 8 hours. NuVi recharges automatically when plugged into AC or DC power using the proper adapters. The NuVi is functionally more akin to the Garmin QUEST, and SP2720 models than to Garmin's general purpose handhelds. UNlike the QUEST and StreetPilot 2720 models, NuVi has a speaker built into the unit. Fidelity on voice is fine for voice and audio books, but on MP3 music, a feed to an external amplified speaker system would be nice. The NuVi does not have TrackBack, or a compass page and other hiking based features but only a GOTO function which means it has little offroad and hiking utility. NuVi can operate with Garmin's GTM-10 RDS Traffic radio to provide real time traffic information on the screen of the unit. NuVi also has a "Travel Kit" which includes Language Guide, MP3 player, audible book player, picture viewer, world clock, currency and measurement converters, and calculator. The 700 megs of user storage can be used for music, books, images, or additional Garmin maps AND the Nuvi includes a SD memory card slot so you can even add additional user memory. NuVi includes two USB ports, but the one on the rear of the mounting adapter can only be used for external power input. The USB-2 (full version 2 speed capability) port on the side can be used for map/MP3/Audio Book/image/file loading.
NuVi GPS, Display, and Mechanical Features
These compact units (3.87" W x 2.91" H x 0.87" D) have the GPS antenna integral to the unit. The antenna flips out for navigation and folds flat into the back of the unit for storage. The unit is designed to snap into a small suction cup mount and attach to your windshield. and provide visual and audio directions for navigating your vehicle on unfamiliar streets and roads. Unfortunately (for the kids), Garmin did not choose to put any games in this model. The NuVi continues Garmin's marketing plan of "Market Specialization" which means to position various models for specific functionality and leave out specific features of interest to a specific group of users. For example, our "ideal" general purpose GPS receiver would have a color screen, CF or SD card memory, full marine and hiking feature set, full car navigation capabilities and a rechargeable battery pack with external power capability. Lets see how the NuVi fits these requirements.
The NuVi's screen is a high brightness and is very daylight viewable WHEN the backlight is turned ON. The screen brightness and readability falls between the brighter SP26xx/27xx models and the c3xx models with less readable screens. The NuVi has an adjustable brightness and audio level control and no contrast control is needed. NuVi has no marine feature set and NO features for hiking or geocache activity are provided. . NuVi does have a rechargeable battery pack which will run the unit with backlight for several hours and it does have the capability of being run from external 12volt power (furnished voltage regulator/cigar plug cable required). Note that the NuVi internal battery is charged anytime the unit is running on external 12volt power from either the 12volt power cable OR by a USB connection to a laptop or other computer's USB connector (Computer must be ON to power or charge the NuVi). Note: On my Dell 8200, plugging in the USB from NuVi with NuVi having low battery charge results in a "USB Port Overload" alarm on my laptop. This does not seem to cause any problem except you cannot communicate with the NuVi until the battery is charged enough for the alarm to go away.) The Lithium Ion battery is sealed into the package and is not normally user serviceable. The battery pack is NOT a "snap in" battery pack and replacement requires disassembly.
An Articulated Suction Cup cradle to attach NuVi to the windshield of your car is included in the kit. The suction cup has a 'snap on" ball joint connection to the NuVi's cradle. The cradle has a USB connector for that power cable (no real USB connectivity) which allows use of the USB connection on the SIDE of the unit for data I/O with the GTM-10 while powering the unit via the rear USB connection.
The features of the miniaturized NuVi make it a direct competitor to the Magellan RoadMate units and to the StreetPilot 26xx/27xx models. Our Magellan RoadMate and Garmin StreetPilot reviews can be found in the FEATURES section of our GPS INFORMATION WEBSITE. As stated before, NuVi is NOT a direct competitor to the full featured hiking and marine oriented handheld units and it is NOT suited for geocache hunting..
Street priced at about $450 , (Check Latest Prices Here.) the NuVi, despite its compact size, is a high quality, full featured car navigator with MP3, Talking Book, and Automatic Traffic Information services. When we drove our usual 600+ mile assorted city/suburban/rural route testing, we were very pleased to note that the NuVi provided the best overall routing score of any GPS tested to date. It very slightly surpassed our previous high scoring SP26xx models by providing satisfactory routes in every one of our route generation tests. While NuVi is not one of the lowest priced Automatic Car Navigator units available, its small shirt pocket size along with excellent route generation capability and MP3 and Audio Books plus Automatic Traffic Information (optional) capability make it "Joe's Choice" Car navigator for 2005..
What about map loading and Map Memory?
NuVi comes "ready to operate" with pre-installed USA/Canada -or- Europe maps. NuVi uses a USB data interface for other map loading and data input/output and for loading MP3 and Audio Book files. It has no standard NMEA input/output capability and it cannot be used to up/download waypoints, routes and tracks to MapSource by conventional MapSource methods Instead, you can save waypoints in Garmin's GPX Waypoint format or Garmin's GPI Custom POI files by uploading to NuVi memory using special MapSource features or the new Garmin POI loader. (See NuVi Manual page 51 and 54 for more details.) The side USB port is also used to connect to the (optional) RDS Traffic Data Radio. Just for reference, the NuVi 350 700meg user memory will hold approximately the UK, France, Germany and a bit more in addition to the built in USA/Canada maps. CitySelect or CityNavigator maps (including Europe/South Africa/Australia/Middle East maps) are operable in NuVi. As a rough planning guide, a rule of thumb for calculating storage card capacity is: 4 megabyte for every million population.
The USA coverage area for the NuVi's CityNavigator maps is the entire USA and ALL of Canada. NuVi allows a user to automatically route using both the built in maps and/or any other Garmin CitySelect or CityNavigator maps. As of December 2005, Garmin is shipping the NuVi with its new CityNavigator 7 map system. (CitySelect/CityNavigator automatic routing maps are only available for the USA, Europe, South Africa and Australia as of December 2005. However, Garmin Licensees are providing maps for a dozen (plus) other areas such as Chile, etc.) Check Garmin's Cartography site for a list of countries and vendors to contact.
Other maps compatible with NuVi include: CityNavigator (Navteq Maps, the best GPS routable maps available in areas covered), MapSource MetroGuide USA (MetroGuide 6 uses Navteq Maps. Prior versions used Etak Maps, good maps but not quite as up to date as Navteq and only USA version 4.01 has autorouting capability within NuVi). Roads & Recreation, USA Topo, and WorldMap CD ROMs also work with NuVi, but without automatic guidance. Probably most other Garmin maps will load and operate, but Garmin supports only the above.
The NuVi is straightforward to use, and we think the manual is a lot better than average. Still, there is no substitute for a few hours of "playing around" with the unit in consort with the manual for quick learning and discovery of available features.
The NuVi provides automated guidance on a par with the very best of the GPS units we have previously tested. It is relatively quick to compute a route. Five to fifteen seconds is typical. Route Quality is rated "very good" and NuVi routinely gives routing "the same as I would have chosen". Sometimes the route generated is "just OK", but after all, these devices are just machines and they are operating without the local traffic knowledge an individual user has. The downside for NuVi as compared to the $3000 models is that many of the more expensive models have some sort of "dead reckoning" capability to permit navigation to continue for short intervals when signals are lost. Such signal loss can happen in "city canyons" such as NYC, Chicago, LA, and London where high rise buildings can block the satellite signals. In fact, NuVi/2610/2620/2720 and other Garmin models do have "poor man's dead reckoning" in that when signal is lost, the GPS assumes you continued on your last heading and speed for up to 30 seconds. The "real dead reckoning" capability is available in the Garmin StreetPilot 2650/2660 and in a few other units such as the VDO Dayton MS5000. The 2650/2660 will require a connection to the automobile speedometer output and backup light to be able to function in dead reckoning mode. Without these inputs, it will function same as the NuVi/2610.
The SP2610 that we normally use to benchmark route generation quality has a feature that allows the user to select options such as "quick", "better", and "best" routing. These take increasingly longer compute times. The NuVi has no such selection like other late Garmin units. But.. The NuVi (in our experiments) generates as good and occasionally better routes than does the SP2610. We are very pleased to note this as, in our opinion, the major job of a GPS Car Navigator is to generate good routes from A to B. . With NuVi, the calculation of a 400 mile route usually takes about 10 seconds. This compares to up to half a minute with the SP2610. One trial route from Atlanta to an address in Los Angeles took about half a minute with the SP2610 and about 15 seconds with the NuVi which is an improvement. Off Route, reroute recalculation typically takes a few seconds and it (generally) tries to take you back as quickly as possible to your ORIGINAL route. It does this the first THREE times it goes "off route, recalculating". On the fourth "off route" it figures out you are serious about not going back to the original route and does a complete recalculate which on a local (25 mile) route usually takes just a few seconds. (SP-III ver 2.50 is using this same algorithm and it seems to be confusing some folks, but I personally like the speed so much I am willing to put up with the first three reroutes not necessarily taking you the optimum route. If you do not like the "partial reroute" offered, you can always press the ROUTE key and then press "recalculate".)
The NuVi does not permit the download of ROUTES from MapSource to the GPS for execution. You CANNOT download a series of waypoints and then integrate these into a route since only ONE VIA is permitted. Frankly, using the PC is not the thing you will USUALLY want to do as the NuVi is much easier and more convenient to use as compared with generating routes on the PC and then having to download routes to the GPS navigator. The NuVi uses a USB connection for user map and data loading for music, talking books, images, etc
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