The GPS Equivalent of an iPod

I was shopping for a GPS unit for a family vacation to New York. We planned to rent a car in NYC and drive our way through upstate NY to Niagara Falls and Toronto, stopping at multiple cities and attractions along the way. After reading quite a bit and playing with the units in person, I decided to go with the Garmin Nuvi 350 despite the fact that is was the most expensive of all the units I was considering, which included the TomTom Go, the Alpine Blackbird, various Magellan units, Lowrance i-way, and the Sony.

Why? First of all, it is very compact and sleek. Aside from the Power button, there are no other buttons cluttering the outside. All the controls are handled with a touchscreen interface. The unit has a very nice, solid weight to it. And it fits in your shirt pocket inside a nice, black leather case, which is included. Second, the interface is so intuitive, you really don't need to read the manual to use it. It's amazing that you can take it right out of the box, plug it in, and start using it in the car; right there. Of course reading the manual will allow you to fully use and appreciate all of the other features of the Nuvi, like an MP3 player, an audio book player, a language translator (extra cost), a currency converter/calculators, a world clock, and picture viewer. Garmin calls the Nuvi a "travel assistant". Third, the Nuvi uses a newer, more sensitive, second generation satellite receiver technology called SiRF, which enables the unit to maintain a lock even when indoors or in places like an above ground parking garage where some receivers would have a difficult time.

But the "real world" test during our odyssey through New York revealed several strengths as well as some weaknesses in the unit. First, the Nuvi acquires satellites very rapidly. Usually, by the time the Nuvi finished its power up routine of displaying the Garmin splash screen and "map loading" message, about 30-40 seconds, it had locked onto the satellites and was ready to navigate. Occasionally, it took a bit longer. Once, I waited for almost 5 minutes for it to aqcuire a satellite signal before turning it off and back on. It then acquired the satellite signal in it's usual rapid fashion. The Nuvi also seems to take longer acquiring a satellite signal if you turn it on while the car is moving. The only time it really had trouble locking onto a satellite was when we had driven into Manhattan via the Holland tunnel on a very cloudy, rainy day. The satellite signal was lost while we were in the tunnel and when we came out, it couldn't re-acquire a signal until we crossed through Manhattan and over into New Jersey. I suspect that the very tall buildings combined with the bad weather had something to do with it. The GPS satellites are located in the southern sky, so a very tall building or mountain can obstruct the satellite signal if it's close by. For the remainder of the trip, however, the Nuvi had no problems locking onto satellites, even in the rain or on a completely overcast day.

When mounted on the windshield, the backlit LCD screen on the Nuvi is bright enough to use in bright sunlight IF you are not wearing sunglasses. However, I was wearing dark, polarized sunglasses while driving. This made the screen seem dim. Moreover, reflections off of the touch screen created some difficulty reading the screen at times. I often had to re-adjust the angle of the screen to make it more visible. For me, this is the Nuvi's only significant flaw. I wish Garmin would have made the screen a bit brighter and put some sort of anti-reflective layer or coating on it. But if you don't wear sunglasses while driving, the screen is plenty bright.

The windshield mount, like the Nuvi itself, is compact, lightweight, and sturdy. It attaches and releases quickly and easily. Most importantly, it held the Nuvi steady without allowing any noticeable vibration or motion. Some of the windshield mounts to other units I looked at seemed gargantuan in comparison or allowed too much motion, which could be a real problem when you are trying to read the screen in a moving vehicle. Another thoughtful design feature of the Nuvi mount is that the power adapter cord plugs into the back of it. So when you clip the Nuvi onto the mount, you don't have to plug in the power cord into the unit as a separate step. Alternatively, you can leave the power adapter completely off and just run the Nuvi off of the built-in battery while it's clipped onto the mount.

The built-in lithium ion battery was very good. Garmin says the unit can run 4-8 hrs off the battery and I found this to be a believable estimate. While I did not try to run the unit completely down to see how long it would last, I often ran the unit off of the battery for at least 3-4 hours and I was never caught with a dead battery. The built-in battery charge indicator seemed pretty accurate. It also has a power saving setting that allows you to specify when to automatically turn off the LCD backlight.

The Nuvi comes pre-loaded with about 6 million points of interest. Some of the points of interest we tried to locate were outdated, like a Best Buy in Toronto that was no longer there, but most were accurate and up-to-date. We had no trouble finding hotels, restaurants, gas stations, attractions, parks, and even post-offices. The points of interest are grouped into categories such as Shopping, Fuel, Food, Recreation, and Community. Within each category, there are sub-catergories, like American, Chinese, Italian, and Mexican under Restaurants. As for road information, the Nuvi was up to date the vast majority of the time. One time, it didn't have the street we were looking for in a more rural part of New Jersey. The neighborhood was relatively new, but it was almost 2 years old. On the other hand, the road map data shows a new road in my own neighborhood that is less than 18 months old. Of course, there will always be a lag behind the real world with any road map data.

The text-to-speech feature of the Nuvi turned out to be a really key feature, since it allows you to keep your attention on the road and on signage, rather than constantly looking at the screen. "Turn left at Elm street in 100 feet" is far superior to "Turn left in 100 feet" or just a screen with an arrow pointing left on a map. Really. The Nuvi also gives you adequate warning before any turn or fork in the road, combining the spoken directions with a little chime. It was also fun playing with the different "voices" of the Nuvi. For example, there are 3 flavors of spoken English: US, British, and Australian. There are also male and female voices. For some reason, I was drawn to the female, Australian English voice. The pronunciations seemed more accurate, for some reason. The Nuvi can also speak in Spanish, Italian, German, French and others.

The speaker volume output was adequate. At it's highest setting, the speaker seems very loud if the car is not moving or if the car stereo is off. However, when the car is at speed with the stereo turned up, the sound volume can get drowned out.

Throughout the trip, I used the "Favorites" button quite a bit. This feature allows you to find an address or location, then save it for quick retrieval later. So before and during the trip, I would enter in all the addresses of the places we were planning to visit, like friends' houses, hotels, restaurants, attractions, etc. and save them all under Favorites. Then, I could rapidly retrieve them at any time during the trip without having to enter the whole address again. Extremely useful. The Nuvi also automatically saves all your recent destinations, so that you can browse back through and quickly access them.

The Nuvi's navigation and directions are generally very good. I base this on my own "tests" where I enter a known address in my hometown and see if the directions it comes up with are the same as what I would have taken. I would say that I agreed with the Nuvi 8-9 times out of 10. It does allow you to specify whether you want it to calculate the "fastest route" or "shortest distance". I usually left it on "fastest route". You can also specify if you want to avoid toll roads or highways or u-turns. It's also very interesting that you can specify what type of vehicle you're in, like a bus, taxi, "emergency vehicle", or just car/motorcyle. You can also specify if you're a pedestrian, for those occasions when you go walking around someplace with the Nuvi, which we did once.

Overall, I really enjoyed having the Nuvi 350 for our road trip. It was wonderful not having to constantly look at a paper roadmap or ask for directions. It really decreased my stress level while driving, as I came to trust and depend on this great little device to navigate me to my next destination. It also made the trip much less stressful for my wife, who before had the thankless job of being the navigator, having to put up with my often impatient questions like, "Where are we?", "Which way do I turn?!!", or "How much farther until the exit?!" With the Nuvi, she gladly relinquished that duty and relaxed as I drove.

Would I buy it again? Well... probably. The cost is really my only other hangup with the Nuvi 350. I bought my unit online for about $650, which was much less than the $799 price that most big online catalog stores were selling it for. Even then, it feels expensive to me. If the Nuvi cost less than, say $450, it would be a no-brainer for me. However, at the current pricing, it's not as clear. The compact size, portability, great performance, and ease of use do indeed justify a premium over other larger, bulkier units. And it certainly costs a heck of a lot less than a $2000 in-car GPS unit. I could also more easily justify the cost if I spent a lot of time on the road in unfamiliar places. Nonetheless, I would heartily recommend the Nuvi 350 to anyone who is considering buying a GPS unit for their car. I think it's definitely one of the best on the market.