Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 6-10 of 2787
 No such thing as a perfect GPS, but this one comes closest November 28, 2005
Oladapo Okupe (santa babrara, CALIFORNIA)
55 out of 57 found this review helpful
This GPS unit is simply beautiful, and has worked great so far. The display is comparable to the TomTom units when under ideal viewing conditions. However, when the angle changes, or in different lighting conditions, the Nuvi is leaps and bounds better than the TomTom units.
However, this unit is not perfect. The preloaded points of interest are quite antiquated. Alot of attractions, hospitals, and businesses that are included in the POIs (even HOSPITALS, and police stations) have changed name, relocated, or shut down. So I would strongly recommend against solely relying on the POIs when looking for things to do. It works great for large attractions that arent easily moved (ie theme parks, monuments, etc).
In terms of getting you from destination A to desination B, the unit works great. No lockup experiences yet. One selling point of this unit is that it uses SirfIII ultra sensitive signals. This is true, but please be aware that in certain circumstances, even though a signal is still acquired, the accuracy can be quite degraded (ie if you're in a tunnel for extended periods of time, etc etc). However, this is remedied as soon as you come into an area with unobstructed satellite view.
Stay tuned for periodic updates!
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*** UPDATE 1: Still VERY impressed, but have found a few bugs **
I've been roadtesting this unit for about 5 weeks now, and have noticed the following:
1) At times, this unit will "Recalculate" the route for no apparent reason. The new route it gives you is exactly the same as the one you were traveling on before, but the user will be distracted and puzzled about why the route was recalculated in the first place.
2) This unit will struggle a little in huge metro areas such as downtown LA. The unit occasionally showed me on an incorrect street but this fixes itself rather rapidly.
3) Relying solely on voice prompts can get you into trouble. For some cities, especially San Diego and Los Angeles, the voice prompts will not give you adequate warning on whether to stay to the left or the right. To avoid this problem just rely on the purple highlighted route which has a white arrow showing whether to turn left or right.
4) At times, the unit will take upwards of 45seconds to 1 minute to acquire a signal lock. Especially if you have been playing with the unit indoors w/ a poor signal.
5) The speaker is virtually worthless if you are playing your radio or cd player.
But overall I'm still impressed with this unit. The display works even at high noon, with blaring sun conditions. The few bugs noticed were rarely seen, and easy to work around. This is by far the best unit i've played with. With the map sent to "more" detail, you can see everything around you as you are driving.
The best part, when you park, and everyone is eyeing your new unit... you can just take it down, put it in your pocket, and not have to worry about theft!
********** Update 2 *************
Version 2.6 of the firmware fixed alot of the issues that were complained about previously. I've had this unit for a good amount of time now, and have tested it on the West and East Coasts. My overall recommendation is this: The only real problem with this unit is the fairly weak speaker. For the non-advanced GPS user, this unit is the best you can get, and the one I would recommend.
Go to Circuit City, Best Buy, Frys, etc and play with other units, then play with the Nuvi. You'll see that the other units look cheap, clunky, slow, and have dull screens compared to the Nuvi. If you're going to buy GPS, NUVI is the way to go. For constant travelers, the portability just can't be beat.
You'll never find the "perfect" GPS unit that meets all of your wants (note, wants, not NEEDS) to a tee, but this one surely comes close.
Garmin Nuvi vs. Garmin 2720 January 10, 2006
photogold (CA United States)
85 out of 91 found this review helpful
My wife travels to the homes of several new clients every week, so a GPS was the perfect gift for her. After much research, I chose the Garmin 2720 over the Magellan 760. But I didn't know about Garmin Nuvi until after I bought the 2720. I was torn after reading favorable reviews of the Nuvi, so I bought a Nuvi as well, with the understanding that we would test both and return one to the store.
First of all, it is hard to go wrong with either, both are great products, and I got them both for about the same price.
2720 Advantages:
--Heavy duty construction. Waterproof.
--Very sharp, bright screen that is more like a mini computer monitor.
--Advanced GPS features.
Nuvi Advantages:
--Ultra compact, light, and portable. A brilliant design.
--Reports of better receiver sensitivity.
--Reports that it draws better routes.
--extra non-GPS features: MP3, picture viewer, audio books, language translater.
--can run on batteries and has a built in speaker
2720 best suited for:
--A motorcycle (it's waterproof)
--Traveling salesmen that would enter many destinations and have the GPS choose the best route between all of them. The Nuvi can handle only 1 via point.
--Mounted in a mini van/SUV for family vacations in rural areas. The 2720 gives you more control to plan your whole route. But the Nuvi would not be bad either.
--The Techie who will use the advanced GPS features.
Nuvi best suited for:
--Your wife. I'm sorry, but a woman will choose the Nuvi over the 2720 almost every time. It fits easily in their purse.
--Traveling by plane and using in a rental car. The Nuvi's ultra compact design makes this the obvious choice.
--People who would use the MP3 player, picture viewer, other Non-GPS features.
--People who travel in downtown areas, it will have fewer dropouts than the 2720.
We chose the Nuvi. The 2720 was nice, but when my wife took one look at the Nuvi her mind was made up. She wouldn't use the advanced GPS features on the 2720, but she liked the MP3 player, etc. on the Nuvi. She loved the compact size, and the ability to run it on batteries in her car without the power cable. The screen is not as bright as the 2720, but it's still very readable.
To see very detailed and technical reviews of all GPS receivers, see gpsinformation.net
UPDATED December 2007:
We've had this unit for almost two years now, and it still works great. In fact we bought a new Lexus with a built in Nav, and we still like the Nuvi better. It has better directions, an easier menu, and text to speech capability.
One thing to note, the touch screen on the NUVI will not scratch easily. Many people are concerned that they need to buy a screen protector. This is not necessary. We've never used a screen protector, and I can't find any noticable scratches on the screen. And I can't count all the times that we've dropped it, or it fell off the dashboard. It still looks almost new.
Pretty cool... but a little spooky June 24, 2006
Dr. Edward Dow (Pewaukee, WI USA)
37 out of 37 found this review helpful
I'm not Stefanie, but her husband Ed,
Okay, I like techy things, but the Garmin Nuvi 350 is really neat. I am currently on a trip across the US. I have now traveled over 1700 miles and the thing has yet to give me bad directions. I have traveled in town, freeways, rural roads with no signs, and into the mountains. I have lost signal twice, both times happened when I went into mountain tunnels, more on this in a minute.
Setup:
Out of the box it took about 2 minutes before I was up and running. The window attachement is quite good and I don't think it's coming off my window without help. The interanl battery is good for about 5 hours...the DC adapter has a long cord so you can use it in a secondary DC plug-in.
Small in size it doesn't obstruct the view.
The screen is quite bright.
The speaker and volume are quite good.
Use:
Type in address and go. Pretty simple. It held the tracking signal even in mountain canyons, as I was driving I started thinking about how hard that had to be. Anyway, the maps were great as they let me see the turns up ahead before I got there. The voice prompts were absolutely on target. At one point, Nuvi told me to take a named road, but there were no signs. So I ignored the voice prompt. Nuvi recalculated the route in about 5 seconds and got me back on track. Oh, by-the-way, I should have listened as Nuvi was correct.
Nuvi can also provide a list hotels, food places, and gas stations in your vicinity with phone numbers. This was quite handy.
The only thing that I would recommend to Garmin is that when you cross time zones that it should update the time of arrival in the time of the new zone.
This has a been a very good purchase. Oh, and my wife likes it too.
Amazing, much better than Hertz Neverlost (Magellan) July 4, 2006
World Traveller (CT USA)
33 out of 33 found this review helpful
I did tons of research and read all user reviews before settling on the Garmin Nuvi. It was sent to me on vacation and I used it immediately in New Mexico. Wow. It is a much better product than the Magellan-based systems I use in rental cars. 1) it instantly locates itself when turned on, due to a brand new chip. others will soon catch up to this technology, no doubt, but Nuvi is about the only one with it as of July 2006. 2) it knew all the little dirt roads and even private roads in state forest property. I was absolutely amazed. Very up to date. It never steered me wrong. 3) it's simple to figure out all features without the manual. 4) You can easily set a current location as "home," such as a hotel or even a parking spot, and then go off and explore in the car or on foot, and use the navigation to steer you back. 5) a fun thing is how it tracks statistics, such as your average speed, top speed, total stopped time, etc. I enjoyed playing with this when taking it for a hike or when we hit a traffic jam. 6) it is easy to put in a pocket or hide in glove compartment if you want to take it with you or keep it out of sight. 7) the spoken turn-by-turn directions work great, and you can choose the Australian accent for fun. You should hear the female voice try to pronounce "Ojo Caliente" phonetically in Australian.
You will not be disappointed with it. It's one of those technology products that makes your life better, and you just fall in love with it, to your own embarrassment. We've named it Shiela. I haven't had any problems with it at all ,and we've used it heavily for over a month.
Wonderful, with a few bugs May 7, 2006
karen0017 (Greenfield, MN United States)
53 out of 57 found this review helpful
We've owned the Garmin Nuvi 350 GPS system for about 3 months now, and used it in Minneapolis and Boston, the cross-country drive, and on several business trips. There are 3 primary users of the system. We spent a lot of time researching the tradeoffs among GPS systems. We selected this one because it seemed to meet our needs the best.
(Pros) In general we love this gadget. It finds the satellites quickly, has a good database of places to go, finds good routes, announces turns nicely, etc.
We love its form factor - it does fit in your pocket, just as the advertisements claim. The display is bright and large enough to see while driving. The antenna does a great job of maintaining satellite signal. The suction-cup mount works well most of the time, and transfers nicely from car-to-car. The interface is intuitive. When listening to a book/music, it pauses playback before announcing driving directions, & then rewinds a couple of seconds. I love being able to just put my finger on the screen and move the map around, and also to specify "go here" just by pointing to the place without needing the address. We really like the time estimates to your destination.
(Cons) I'm guessing that this list of cons will be true for any GPS system of this size, so take them as a list of suggestions for software enhancements. The fact that software updates are available online is nice; I look forward to seeing what gets fixed.
The biggest irritation is the automatic zoom. It *always* zooms out too far. I think the algorithm decides to zoom out to show the entire next segment (till the next turn). Often that means your car is displayed much, much larger than anything useful on the map. It doesn't seem to matter what distance you're travelling, the zoom-out is too far. For example, I've had a 400-mile segment displayed in a 2-inch wide window. Getting mile-long displays in a neighbourhood means you can't see the upcoming intersections. All of us will consistently hit the zoom-in button 3 or 5 times after every turn. We think the decision should probably be based on the density of roads/intersections.
Occasionally, when a highway splits in two directions, you get a reasonably long distance of them running in parallel before actually separating. The Nuvi algorithm seems to "prefer" to assume that you are on the correct path, and occasionally won't warn you that you are in the wrong lane before it's too late to make the correction. If the zoom factor were corrected, you'd be able to see these nuances in the route, and self-correct... but it would be better to relax the "magnet" factor in these cases. (This problem is much more serious in Boston than the other places we've driven.)
When searching for "where to", the system lists all the locations and approximate distance/direction from where you currently are. I would really like the map to be able to display these icons on the screen... for example, driving on a long highway route, I'd like to know which upcoming towns have gas stations. I don't want the planner to plan a route to these locations, I'd just like to be able to see ones that are "near" my future route.
When you go to "map explore" mode (moving the map around), it is sometimes too quick to assume that you wanted to go to that point (rather than drag the map). Up pops a yes/no window asking whether you want the point added as a waypoint. If you say "yes", then it adds a waypoint while leaving the final destination the same. If you say "no", it makes that point your final destination and recalculates the route. This menu desperately needs a "cancel" button.
I would LOVE to have an "avoid this place" menu item. This would be useful for intersections that you know are bad for traffic, or under (long term) construction. It's really irritating to have it generate the same route over and over again when you know you won't be able to follow it.
I would like to be able to add to (or correct) the main database. The only way to add to the database is to call something a favourite. However, sometimes a store is missing or the name spelled incorrectly, and you really don't want to "clutter" up your favourites list. (I also think that Garmin should use this information to update their maps; users could easily upload data.)
While the database of landmarks is large, the "search" for items is a little weak. For example, I would like it to grey out letters of invalid keys, i.e. I type "Q" and the only available letter is "U". As another example, I haven't found a way to search for wild cards. This is particularly irritating for places like "KMart" (or is it "K-Mart", or "K--Mart")? (There is a hyphen that doesn't match the dash.) You also get strange situations with numbered highways. I've also had a few times when someone said "the restaurant is just a few blocks down, at the corner of Main and Broadway;" I assume (incorrectly) that it's in the same town, and Nuvi can't find it. I'd like it to suggest the "nearby" options.
The estimate of time to destination is extremely accurate for highway driving, but the algorithm isn't too bright about predicting red lights. (We've learned to "round up" appropriately.)
Finally, it doesn't have the bicycle routes in its database. This feature would be a huge bonus.
===========UPDATE============
After 6 months of use, the "on/off" switch stopped working: that meant we couldn't adjust volume or use it without the car's electric system. BestBuy replaced it without question under their extended warranty plan.
The software has been updated since we originally bought the unit. The most significant change that it shows your current lat/long. However, not one of my complaints has been addressed! Rather disappointing.
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