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Garmin
nüvi 350 3.5-Inch Portable GPS
Navigator
Garmin
nüvi 350 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator
 No need to argue over which direction to
take, or try and convince him to stop and ask for
directions ('I know EXACTLY where I am...!). With the
Garmin nuvi 350 Portable GPS Navigator,
so will he whether in the U.S. or Canada. Travel safely
without hassle or fear of getting lost.
The Garmin nuvi 350 3.5 Inch Portable GPS
Navigator is a useful fella: it will offer travel
tips, store your favorite tunes and photos, provide translation
assistance, and much more - can you live without it?
A great gift idea this
Christmas, but be sure to order today -
top Xmas gifts always sell
out in the run up to Christmas.
Garmin nüvi 350 3.5-Inch Portable GPS
Navigator will sure fly off shelves. Best
Price, now 55% Savings at
Amazon, eligible for FREE Super
Saver Shipping.
Garmin nüvi
350 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator -
Features
- Compact 700 MB GPS navigator with bundled MP3/audiobook
player, photo viewer, and world travel clock
- Small enough to fit in a pocket or purse; mounts on
vehicle windshield with included suction cup
- Preloaded with City Navigator NT maps of U.S., Canada,
and Puerto Rico
- Turn-by-turn directions, automatic routing, and 320 x
240 color touchscreen display
- Secure Digital (SD) memory card slot; measures 3.87 x
2.91 x 0.87 inches (W x H x D); 1-year warranty
Compare ...
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Garmin nüvi 350
3.5-Inch Screen
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Garmin nüvi 760
4.3-Inch Screen
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Garmin
nüvi 760 4.3-Inch Widescreen Bluetooth
Portable GPS Automobile
Navigator Garmin's nüvi
760
Portable GPS Automobile
Navigator series brings two
exciting new features -- multi-destination routing and, "Where
am I?/Where's my car?" -- to its popular
pocket-sized GPS
navigator lineup. As with all nüvis, you get
Garmin reliability, the fast satellite lock of an integrated
high-sensitivity receiver, a slim, pocket-sized design with a
gorgeous display, an easy, intuitive interface, and detailed
NAVTEQ maps for the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico with
more than 6 million name-searchable points of interest.
The nüvi 760 adds integrated traffic
receivers and Bluetooth capability for
hands-free calling. Upgrade to the nüvi 770
and add maps for Europe.
A great gift idea this
Christmas, but be sure to order today -
top Xmas gifts always sell
out in the run up to Christmas.
Garmin nüvi 760 4.3-Inch Portable GPS
Navigator will sure fly off shelves.
Best Price, now 58% Savings at
Amazon, eligible for FREE Super
Saver Shipping.
Garmin nüvi
760 4.3-Inch Portable GPS Navigator
Don't know where you are or where you left your car? No
problem, just touch your Garmin nuvi 760 screen and find out,
as part of the extra features of the Garmin nuvi 760:
- a Wider 4.3-inch screen lets you see more of what's
around, with 70% more actual screen area than a 3.5-inch
screen - see for yourself
- the 700 series offers multi-destination routing and
lets you know where you are and, perhaps more importantly,
where you car got itself to
- Bluetooth(R) Wireless Technology For Hands-Free
Calling
- integrated FM traffic receiver to get alerted of
traffic tie-ups and road construction
- JPEG picture viewer, MP3 player, world travel clock
with time zones, currency converter, measurement converter,
calculator and more
- customizable for all your travel needs with optional
content plug-ins, plus customized car-shaped icons for a
personal touch
Loaded and wide, nüvi 760 has it all for peace of mind on
the go.
Garmin nüvi
350 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator -
Reviews
Garmin is the best for GPS
"I spent a lot of time
trying out GPS units, and have compared Garmin, Tom Tom,
Magellan, and several factory GPS units. All of these GPS units
tell you how to get somewhere and will re-route if you make a
wrong turn. However, Garmin is my absolute favorite, and here's
why:
1. The most important thing about Garmin units is the user
interface. It is simple to understand and easy to use.
2. The Garmin unit uses a built in database of sunrise and
sunset times (based upon your location) to automatically change
from daylight mode to night-time mode. This is important
because the daylight screen is much too bright for use at
night. With the Tom Tom, you must make this change
manually.
3. If you have the Garmin unit plugged into your car power,
when you turn off the car (and the cigarette lighter power goes
off), the Garmin unit will detect that and automatically turn
itself off (it gives you 30 seconds to override and keep the
unit on).
4. When you start your car again, the Garmin unit will detect
that too and automatically power up. If you were in the middle
of a trip, the Garmin unit will pick up where you left off, and
you won't have to tell it where you were going again.
5. Unlike most factory GPS units, Garmin will allow you to
select your route and make changes while you are moving.
6. The Garmin units have an extensive database of locations and
the excellent interface makes it easy to search the database to
find what you want. Do you want food or gas? Just click three
buttons and a list of locations (sorted by distance) will
appear. If you know the name of the place you want, you can
type it in on the on-screen keypad and Garmin will find it for
you. You can even add your own locations using the favorites
feature. I first started using this when I was out of town, but
its amazing what you'll find near you when you look.
7. While you are driving, the Garmin unit will both prompt you
to turn and give you a written explanation of the turn
(including the street or highway name and direction) at the top
of the screen. The Garmin unit also shows an estimated arrival
time (usually a few minutes earlier than you'll actually
arrive) and the distance to your next turn. A separate screen
gives you detailed trip information, including how far and how
long you've been driving and your maximum speed. I used mine on
an airplane once (yes, it is allowed - read the back of the
airplane magazine), and it now says that by maximum speed was
590 miles per hour.
8. I often use the Garmin even when driving locally, becase it
often finds better, faster ways to get there then the way that
I usually use.
9. Garmin offers a variety of installation options and
accessories. My favorite is the friction based dashboard mount
(three weights connected to a center stand) which is much more
convenient than the supplied mounting system.
10. If you turn off the GPS receiver (see settings) and then
look up another location, you will get the option to set this
new location as your present location. This will allow you to
use search Garmin's points of interest for the new location.
This is a great feature when planning trips, because Garmin's
points of interest database is quite extensive and includes all
of the typical tourist attractions, plus food, shopping, gas,
banking, etc."
Formerly expensive, but now just
fabulous
"After trying other Garmin units, this is the one I kept.
Simply wonderful. I bought it when it was more than triple its
current price and thought it was good deal then. It's a great
deal now.
It has all the characteristics that I was looking for:
1) VERY compact -- easily able to fit in a breast pocket
2) Text-to-Speech -- announces proper street names, not just
"turn left in 500 feet"; radically reduces how much you need to
look at the screen to figure out the real instructions;
wouldn't own a GPS unit wihtout this
3) Bright Screen -- readable in virtually every situation
AND
Faster location of the GPS satellites. This turns out to be
quite important in day-to-day use. In the other systems, it
wasn't unusual that we could be driving for a couple minutes
before it located the satellites and could give us directions.
With this unit, the satellites are located almost as quickly as
the unit fully starts up.
One comment on how we use this: We don't mount it on the dash
board or on the window (which is technically illegal here in
California). Instead we just lay this on the center console in
our van or car. The antenna system is plenty sensitive to work
just like this and we've never lost the satellite signals
except in tunnels.
We also like all the potential of the traveling features
(clock, calculator, etc.), but this is the one to own even if
you just use it for the basic GPS features.
Very impressed.
[July 2006 Update]
How Its Ease-of-Use Enhanced Our Vacation: We were recently on
a vacation combined with a business conference. While I was at
the conference, my family had the confidence to explore the
city without ever getting lost. Even our kids were able to help
enter addreses and find locations.
Factoring In Added Cost: Just a warning about upgrade costs.
Although Garmin does a good job of releasing updates to their
system software that either fixes bugs or adds enhancements,
the cost to update the built-in maps is extra. And they issue
updates about once a year."
My wife is in LOVE!!!
" And it took an electronic device. LOL.
OK, here is the deal. This product is as good as any GPS I have
ever used or seen. It is small and easily carried with you
wherever you go (something most of them can't do at all). It
can be used in any vehile (caveat, you do not get multiple
mounts, but extra mounts can be purchased for $25), and even
has pedestrian and bicycle modes. ABOVE ALL it is easy to use,
thanks to good software and an excellent touch screen, although
a getting started manual would have helped me enormously.
The thing is great at telling you what to do and where to go.
There are no second guesses. It says take a right, it
highlights the turn graphically and it even tells you the road
or route you are turning onto verbally, something most GPS's
are missing. Instead of "turn right in .02 miles", you get
"turn on to Vista Drive in .02 miles". It even has some
landmarks that comfort you along the way.
On of the best features is something my wife experienced on a
trip to NY. She is not familiar at all with the roads here on
the east coast and was taking a rather long drive to NY to a
hotel we had never stayed at. Along the way, she managed to
mess up and miss one turn. For her, that could have been a
major hassle. I mean, you know what it is like. I have spent as
much as an hour getting back on track when I was lucky. Even
more time was lost when I wasn't lucky because of detours or
road work. One detour in California took me over two hours to
recover from on what was originally a 1/2 hour trip. Other GPSs
do this too, but this one seems incredibly adept and efficient
at it.
When she missed her turn, the system immediately recognized it
and redirected her. She lost about five minutes for her goof
and didn't have to ask directions or even pause in her travels.
In NY, she used it repeatedly in pedestrian mode to find where
she was going. And it worked like a charm even in the confines
of all the buildings in NY.
OK, my complaints are why it doesn't get a 5 star rating. Read
them closely, because there are ways around a couple of them,
but that said, I don't think ANY GPS would get 5 stars from me.
1. There is no "getting started" manual, although it is
referenced by Garmin in one of their manuals, it doesn't exist
in the package or on the website. All such a manual (which
could be one page long) has to say is how to get it working the
first time. I will tell you after this how to work around it,
but I think it results in a number of these devices being
returned in frustration.
2. It does sometimes get confused about the best route. Don't
get me wrong, it will get you there and will show you exactly
where you are. But when I use it on roads I know, it often
isn't optimal. For example, it wanted me to take a road I knew
had 10 traffic lights instead of an open freeway in one
instance. Or it told me to drive a half a mile out of my way
when the left turn onto the highway I wanted was right in front
of me.
3. Detour mode is great if there really is a detour. But I
accidentally hit this once and there does not appear to be a
way to turn it off. I found this incredibly annoying on one
trip because I knew it was the best route, but needed details
at the end of the trip and the GPS was trying to send me every
way but the right way because I accidentally clicked a button.
:-(
4. It has an emulation mude allowing it to pre-navigate a trip
for you. I thought this would be an INCREDIBLY useful feature.
You could practice a complex route before you actually took the
trip. But it works at real speed. So emulating a four hour trip
would indeed take, well, four hours. Silly indeed. Great for
sales demos, but useless for the customer. If someone knows a
way around this, it would be a great thing to tell folks.
5. The battery is not customer replacable.
OK, so how do you work around 1? You charge the battery, you go
outside to use it the first time under an open sky, and you
give it at least five minutes to acquire the satellite
positions. It won't work on your couch in the living room
unless you are very lucky. It needs at least 3-4 satellites to
triangulate your position, and I couldn't get more than one
indoors. Outside, it picks up more than enough satellites to
get the job done. Oh, and dont' forget to open the antenna. :-)
How about working around 2? Live with it, it is a factor of the
mapping software. It ain't perfect, but it is great when you
get lost. That one wrong turn is easily corrected. When you are
in an unfamiliar area, it really doesn't matter if you use the
perfect route anyway in most cases, just that you got there
safely. And add to that you always know where you are, and you
have something worth every penny. It truly kills the stress
factor of driving in an unfamiliar area.
Now 3 is a problem. Don't use the detour feature unless you are
absolutely sure you need to take an actual detour. It takes you
literally that the route is detoured, and the only way I could
find to work around it was to restart the entire trip over from
your current location. Something annoying while driving on the
highway if you don't have another person in the car to reset
it.
For 4, there is no workaround I have found. It makes this mode
useless for only the shortest of trips.
For 5, again, you have no workaround. You will have to take it
in for service if the battery wears out. IPODs have a similar
issue though, so I am used to that. Battery life appears to be
4-6 hours. So when I use it around town or on short trips, I
don't even bother to use the cigarette ligher adapter.
Conclusion: Awesome unit. Wins every comparative review I have
found. Works great. And gives you peace of mind for you and
your family in your travels."
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