Garmin nuvi 650 Car GPS Receiver

Right out of the box, the Nuvi 650 can get you going pretty much right away even without looking at the instructions.

BACKGROUND:
One of my cars has a built-in navigator, which usually costs a premium. We concluded that it would be nice to have a GPS system that is more portable...not confined to just one car. So our second navigator was a Garmin eTrex...a great tool for hikers...it also doubles as a street navigator, but the screen was too small to be ideal (and there were no voice prompts). I then bought a Palm TX PDA, which has a wonderfully large LCD screen...I thought it would be great to add a GPS receiver to take advantage of the screen...but then I would have to buy software. In addition, the speaker from a PDA is very quiet. So adding GPS to my PDA was not a practical option.
At this time, there were a lot of sub $200 all-in-one navigators hitting the market (like the Mio), with maps included. In short, I chose the Garmin Nuvi mainly because of the company's established reputation, and for its existing compatibility with the MapSource software, which came with the eTrex (it does not come with the Nuvi.)

EASE OF USE:
When I took the nuvi out of the box, I was delighted to see that the rechargeable battery was already charged (at 75%), so I was able to use it right away. It asked a few simple questions and pretty much acquired a satellite position fairly quickly (relative to the eTrex). If you have used a navigator before, you will find it fairly easy and intuitive to get to the necessary functions right away. There are usually only 3-4 buttons (touchscreen choices) on the screen so they have kept the design quite simple and amazingly fast to navigate. There is no qwerty keyboard style of text entry, but this did not slow me down. You can enter addresses manually, or by using their finders. In one case, I wanted to enter the address of an airport as a waypoint (or favorite). Since I knew the location, but didn't know the address, I opened up the map and pointed to the destination, where I immediately found a button to save the destination (with the correct address) to my favorites...simple and fast!

NAVIGATION
The Nuvi simplifies the process by having the user select a destination (from favorites or whatever), then click GO. Its default settings are what most of us would use, but the user can go into 'settings' to adjust the routing method if necessary (e.g. take the most direct route instead of the fastest route.) The navigation display can be toggled to 1) a flat bird's eye view, 2) a flat bird's eye view that is always showing North at the top, or 3) the default 3 dimensional view.
Satellite reception is quite good...I did not need to keep the antenna extended to maintain a good signal lock.

NAVIGATION VOICES
There is a wide selection of navigation languages and voice accents...please see the specs for a complete list. I prefer the female voices because their higher pitches tend to cut through road noise a lot better. The Australian female voice seems to sound the most natural. A feature of the nuvi is that street names will actually be pronounced (instead of something like "turn right at street ahead".) I only wished the audio can be louder..it cannot be heard well if you have your stereo on; however, there is a way to route the audio into your car's stereo system if your car has an audio jack in.

POWER CONSUMPTION
The product has a stated life of 7 hours; however, I suspect you would only see 7 hours if you have the highest powersave setting on (unit screen turns off when not in use, volume turned down, etc.) Practically, you probably cannot do a 4-hour drive on the battery alone, you will most likely depend on the car power adapter, which is included. I thought I saw it drop one 'bar' (i.e. ~25% in just one hour of test usage)...but this may not be a fair measurement.

WHAT'S IN THE BOX
The box contains the GPS unit, a USB adaptor for PC connectivity, a car power adapter, a suction mount kit (which is illegal to use in California), a simplified instruction guide, and some ads.

WHAT'S THE PURPOSE OF THE USB PC CONNECTION?
If the GPS unit comes loaded with map data, why would we need the USB PC connection? The most obvious need for the PC connection is for recharging (if you are not using the car power adapter to recharge). The secondary needs would be for software updates and for uploading/downloading to MapSource software (if you use this). In short, MapSource (a Garmin product) allows you to do all your trip planning on the PC, where you later download the plan to your navigator unit. Uploading is mainly for getting your completed trip data back onto your PC (i.e., to calculate your trip mileage for an expense report, etc.)

EXTRA FEATURES
I probably won't use most of the extra features such as the travel guide, picture viewer and book reader; however, there are some practical extras like a calculator and mp3 player (since I have a lot of music stored on SD cards.) I am presuming that when you route the mp3 music to your car audio, the navigation voice prompts will also route.

OPTIONAL CAPABILITIES:
FM Traffic...I think this is a separate module you would need to buy. FM Traffic modules enable your navigator to avoid problematic traffic conditions. Some of the more expensive Garmins will have this built in. If this is a must-have feature for you, I recommend you pay a little more for a more expensive Garmin unit with the FM Traffic module integrated in...I hate loose components.

The Nuvi 650 does not have bluetooth capability.