Garmin nuvi 350 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator
by Garmin
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Our Price: $48.90 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: GPS or Navigation System See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Garmin nuvi 350 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator
Customer Review: Best on the market! Best price too!
Summary: 5 Stars
I purchased this when Amazon dropped the price to $390. This is the lowest price anywhere and free ship! Lower then any ebay auction.
Originally I was going to buy the Mio Digiwalker 310x from Circuit City for $150 after the TG holiday but they sold out.
However this did allow me to test the varios units and the Nuvi was the clear winner. So much so that I no longer wanted the Mio even though CC was selling the Nuvi for $600. Off sale, the Mio was $300 at CC. Half the price of the Nuvi! I asked the Circuit City rep what he thought of the two and the CC rep said you get what you pay for. So true! Keep in mind this Nuvi used to cost $1,000 when it was introduced.
Here are some important differences between the Nuvi and Mio.
-TOUCH SCREEN-no comparison here. Nuvi is far superior. The Mio was sloppy and often entered wrong info which I had to edit. Plus you had to push a little harder on the screen. The Garmin is perfect in this regard. I don't see how Garmin could improve on the data entry aspect of their GPS. The Nuvi is completly touch screen driven except the on/off button.
-MAPS-Nuvi uses Navteq. Mio uses Teleatlas. Do yourself a favor and stick with Navteq. I typed my home address and the Nuvi was dead-on accurate. Mio about 100 yards off. (I hear that everyone has complaints about Teleatlas. Nothing against them and maybe in the future they will be on par with their maps.) Keep in mind that map updates are expensive and you want a GPS with accurate maps to begin with.
So far the Nuvi and Navteq combination has been perfect map accuracy. And I mean perfect!
-SIZE & WEIGHT-Nuvi is smaller and lighter. You can fit the Nuvi in your shirt pocket, not so with the Mio.
-PRICE-Originally the Nuvi was twice as much. But the Nuvi price decreased since then. Now the Nuvi is about about 40% more and worth every penny.
-DESIGN, FIT & FINISH-Nuvi A++, Mio C+
The Nuvi suction cup was the best I've ever used. (I was used to my radar detector falling off the glass and was expecting the same but tis not the case with the Nuvi.)
Nuvi has a nice leather carry case. Mio-no case
-COMPANY-Garmin has been making GPS units for aircraft, cars, military, etc. for years. I don't know anything about the Mio company.
-Shortcomings-The Mio, plenty except for price.
The Nuvi, I wish had an altitude reading. Also I don't know if it was an oversite but I didn't get a user manual, just the quick guide. Had to look at the online manual to discover how to access the satellite view.(push the green bars-upper left corner)
I took the Garmin on a commercial plane ride and it was fun to see how fast we were going and maps of the towns below. It registered 650 mph cruising speed at one point. Very cool way to pass the time on a plane. Note: unit must be turned on before takeoff b\c moving GPS units have a difficult time locating satellites. Especially ones moving 650mph! Otherwise the Nuvi tracks quickly.
It saved the day driving around St. Louis, MO. It made getting places almost too easy.
Customer Review: Fantastic product!
Summary: 5 Stars
I've been VERY pleased with the nuvi 350 since I bought it! Garmin has been the choice for my family for many years and I'm again impressed by their product. The interface is very easy to learn and navigate, information is presented clearly and firmware updates are easy to obtain and install.
Satellite acquisition is extremely fast, even inside a vehicle. I'm also pleased that Garmin has retained the same plug-in style for their external antenna as in past models, since I've owned the Garmin external antenna from a previous device; it fits into a small hole in the side of the nuvi 350's flip-up antenna and adds even more accuracy.
The windshield mount is unobtrusive, fitting nicely into the high-left (roof at the A-post) corner in my car. I haven't tried the dashboard disc yet, but it felt too smooth to stay in place on my Honda Accord's sloped dash. It's easy to read and doesn't take too much focus off the road, and the screen's color scheme changes from day to night so as to not overpower/underpower the user in high or low ambient light.
The routing has been fairly accurate, though I have discovered some minor flaws. In one instance, I was directed from one rural state highway to another in favor of shortcuting on a corner on what turned out to be a dirt road over a closed bridge; the rerouting was around an intersection I knew to be very busy, but I had to return to the original route. Another error includes a stretch of highway near Allentown, Pa., which has been open not quite a year but isn't in the map yet.
Within the routing is an option to detour. This is different from auto-rerouting when you miss a turn in that you can detour ahead of something and the device will replot your route. I've been pleased by this, but it only detours around an immediate hazard (i.e. bypassing an accident, a known problem area, etc.). The detoured route puts you back onto the original route fairly quickly, which is tough when you're trying to avoid a long stretch of road, such as a highway with a long construction zone.
The speaker is very clear and easy to understand. I was very pleased with the street name software, which not only reads aloud that there is a turn ahead but onto what road (even local names are sufficiently accurate; I live in Upstate NY and Indian names are very close, if not right on). The UI also includes the ability to load mp3 files and Audible audiobooks for listening, and these are very clear for such as small speaker.
I would overall recommend this as high bang for the buck. It's very affordable (which is what eventually convinced me to purchase it), very feature-laden and very easy to use. Garmin is known to have stronger U.S. mapping than many competitors, such as TomTom, and with very few exceptions I've been thoroughly impressed. The screen may be smaller than some other comparable models, but it's never been a problem for me and the additional cost for the larger screen doesn't seem to be worth it.
Customer Review: More praise for Garmin, this time for their tech support
Summary: 5 Stars
My wife and I took a trip from Los Angeles to Stockton to see friends. We rented a Ford Taurus from Hertz which had a Magellan "NeverLost" GPS unit in it. This was our first experience with GPS, and we loved it! We would have gotten good and lost up in Monterey, but the unit knew every back alley and byway and got us back on track. We were so stoked about it that we decided to buy a Magellan of some sort through Amazon when we got back home.
Then we started looking at the NEGATIVE REVIEWS for Magellan tech support. Long story short, that was the deal breaker. So then we started doing research and discovered that Garmin has totally reliable tech support, just the opposite from Magellan. I'll not elaborate; there are plenty of horror stories here!
We've now had the personal experience to say: Garmin tech support is top-notch! They sent me a defective unit. I called them. LSS: I returned it, they mailed me another, no problems. Very helpful, stayed on the phone as long as necessary, never losing patience. My wife bought one (we both bought nuvi 350s). When she went to register it online she discovered that she'd mislaid the registration number that came with the unit. She called Garmin, and they gave her an easy workaround that allowed her to register it. Totally helpful, totally courteous and *speedy.* And, the product works great!
One thing: if you're in America, and especially in areas with a lot of Spanish street names, *don't* choose the British English voices, they MANGLE the names! :-)
EDIT: 2/13/08
A number of reviewers have complained about the simulation of a route, saying that it can only be done in real time, which makes the feature almost useless because of all the time wasted. This isn't exactly true. Here are the steps to speeding up the process:
1. Select a Favorite
2. WITH THE ANTENNA DOWN, tap "Go!"
3. Tap the YES icon
4. Tap the TURN IN icon in the lower right hand corner of the screen
5. Tap on the downscroll arrow in the lower right hand corner
6. Keep tapping through the turns until the destination is reached
You can get through the longest trip in just seconds.
EDIT: 8/27/09
A bad thing happened. With the latest firmware update, they deliberately REMOVED the ATTENTION TONE feature from the 350. Many people leave that feature turned off anyway (and some models don't have it to begin with), but my wife and I depend on it to alert us to the upcoming announcement of left or right turn. So if you have a nuvi 350 that still emits attention tones, do NOT update the firmware! (By the way if you have updated, you can NOT backdate!) If you are a person who uses attention tones and plan to get another unit, I recommend you contact Garmin to find a unit that (1) features attention tones and that (2) will not be REMOVED on some subsequent update. Not nice, Garmin, not nice! That cost you a star!
Customer Review: Very impressive personal travel assistant!
Summary: 5 Stars
I purchased the Garmin Nuvi 350 from Amazon (best price I could find on the net!) a few weeks ago. I have been driving with it around town to get a feel of how well it worked. However, this weekend, I put it to it's "full" test. It was our anniversary, and we had picked out a nice hotel in the middle of downtown Denver. I entered the address into my Nuvi and stored the location. Then, as we left Fort Collins, I told it to find our hotel. I had no backup plan (maps, google map directions, etc). I just drove and followed the directions the Nuvi gave me.
I was very impressed once we started getting closer to the middle of downtown Denver. Not only did it say, "Take Exit 123", but it also said things such as "...and merge left to take the downtown offramp". That was very handy when the highway would split off every-which-direction. I was impressed so far...
We then got onto the "side streets" of downtown denver and it led us right to the hotel. The only thing that went wrong was that as we drove down through the tall skyscrapers, the Nuvi lost a few of the satellites and thought we were half a block over. But, by then, we could see the sign for our hotel, so we still found it no problem.
Later in the day, my wife said, "I have always wanted to see the Molly Brown House. I wonder how far away it is from here..." So, I entered "Molly" into the Nuvi, and low-and-behold, the Molly Brown house was only 1.1 miles from our hotel! She was quite excited to hear this and I showed her where it was on the Nuvi map compared to where we were. It was so close, we decided to walk to it. We toured the Molly Brown house, and on the way back, she asked me, "What else can Ziggy do?" She nicknamed it "Ziggy" after the little device one of the characters in Quantum Leap uses. At first, I think she thought I spent a lot of money on a 'little toy', but after seeing how well it worked, and some of the benefits it has, she has welcomed it into our family by giving it a nick-name.
Some of the Pro's and Con's I have come up with it:
Pro's:
1. Finds satellites extremely quick! I was very impressed with this.
2. I love how it quickly recalculates the route if for some reason you miss your turn. This is a wonderful feature.
3. Small, fits in your pocket.
4. Ability to listen to MP3's on it, and it will pause the song, give you directions, then unpause the song.
5. I like the window mount. I think it is well designed.
Con's:
1. Takes awhile to "boot up". When You turn it on, it takes a minute or two to get to the main menu. This is somewhat of a nuisance if you want to turn it on to just use the calculator, MP3 player, etc.
2. Price. I think it is a tad pricey, but the price will probably come down in the next year or so.
Brad
Customer Review: Amazing for Road Trips! (and pretty damn good the rest of the time, too!)
Summary: 5 Stars
I just took a road trip last month. Couple of friends and I flew to Atlanta (from Philly), then drove a rental car through Talladega (Alabama), Birmingham, Tupelo (Miss.), Memphis (Tenn), Earle (Arkansas), St. Louis & KC (MO), and Olathe and Lawrence (KS).
The nuvi 350 was, in a word, spectacular. One of my friends is a cartography nut, I guess, for lack of a better term. He had printed out pages and pages of maps for every inter-city and intra-city part of the trip. By the second day, he was in love with the nuvi, and we didn't use any maps that he printed out for the remainder of the trip.
The device got us everywhere we need to go between cities, within cities, and on random explorations that would have been very difficult with paper maps. Virtually every attraction that we wanted to see was already programmed in as a point of interest (CNN headquarters, Turner Field, MLK Birthplace and Museum [Atlanta], Talladega Raceway, Vulcan Tower [Birmingham], Graceland, Sun Studio, Civil Rights Museum [all in Memphis],Busch Stadium, Gateway Arch, Anheuser-Busch factory [St. Louis], Kauffman Stadium, Truman Library [in KC], John Brown Museum, University of Kansas, and GARMIN headquarters (lol!) [all in Kansas]).
When not on road trips, I still am continually impressed with the 350: routing, display, size, voice prompts are all excellent. I strongly recommend it as a first GPS system. (The key feature [in my opinion] that differentiates it from the 200 series is text-to-speech. Basically, the 350 will say "make a left on Pine Street in 300 ft," while the 200 will just say "make a left in 300 feet"; the latter can be especially confusing in residential neighborhoods when blocks are very short and it's not clear where exactly you're supposed to turn.)
Last thing I'd recommend - look around for the best price. Checkout pricegrabber or shopping-dot-com.
A couple of minor gripes: (1) if the device is on battery power and you plug it into the car adaptor, it resets, which can be annoying if you're not prepared for it. (2) There is a simple way to input whether you would prefer higway vs. streets, and once your route is picked, you can choose a detour for a different route. Still, I wish there were a way when you first input a destination to specify, "avoid [for example] Whitestone Bridge." I don't know if any GPS has that feature, but it would be cool. (3)Another feature I'd like to see in the future is a setting to avoid, wherever possible, one-lane streets. Again I'm not sure if any GPS has such a setting, but it would be a good one in the future.
Bottom line - this product is terrific. It's one of those things that, once you have it, you won't believe how long you went without it. (And beware of lending it too often to friends. You'll miss it!)
Happy navigating!