Very tiny, very trick, very modern multifunction Navigator/MP3 player and more

Updated July 22, 2006 to reflect the impact of the latest firmware release.
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I am a gadget freak. So it's a good thing for my bank book that I have a friend who distributes Garmin products among other things (you can now buy Garmin from Costco in Canada - he supplies them). He got his initial shipment of these devices a couple of weeks ago - they sold out in 30 minutes. Since I was planning to write a review for Epinions, he told me I could borrow one from his next shipment - they came in the other day and he's sold out again, but I managed to snag one before they were all shipped.

The Nuvi is a small, handheld/mobile navigator that can guide you from wherever you are to wherever you want to go.

It knows the current location because it receives signals from the US Army’s constellation of GPS satellites. It knows how to get where you want to go because it has a full set of all of the road maps for the continental United States, Canada and Puerto Rico on board.

It also has millions of ‘Points of Interest’. These are things such as; restaurants; gas stations; libraries; museums; police stations; convenience stores and such. You can look them up by category (for example, you can find all Mexican Restaurants, sorted by distance) and not only will it guide you there, but it most often has the phone number so you can call ahead for reservations.

The first thing I'll say is WOW. This thing is TINY - about 4" wide by 3" high by about 7/8" deep. And it is LIGHT – 5.1 ounces.

Housed in a silver plastic case with a quick-release ball-and-socket mount that Garmin's been using on the lower end GPS units, this is NOT for use on a motorcycle because the mount isn't robust enough and the device is in no way waterproof. The mount uses a suction cup that really works -–and it has a quick-disconnect arrangement that not only fastens the unit to the base, but also provides the electrical connection to the charger, if you have one plugged in.

There's a battery built into the unit that can supposedly power this thing for between 4 and 8 hours. The battery is internal and seems not to be user changeable.

The display is a 2.8” W x 2.1” H (3.5” diag.), 320 x 240 pixels; bright, TFT display, 64K colors, with white backlight and touch screen.

There are two switches on the unit, one (on the upper right edge) for power and another (behind the fold out GPS antenna) to reset the device should it lock up. The battery is automatically charged whenever the unit is plugged into the supplied cigarette lighter plug, the supplied mains adapter or into a standard USB cable – USB 2.0 is supported.

Additionally, the unit is provided with a leather slipcase to protect it when you are transporting it around.

It has 2 gigs of memory built in and 'as new', out of the box it has about 830 megs free space. There is also a slot for memory expansion that uses SD cards, You can presumably add several Gigs of additional memory for music, photos and maps and to use as a USB memory drive.

But be warned, the MP3 player supports a maximum of 500 songs (now 1,000 with the latest 'beta' frmware release) at this time for some reason.

It can be used as a handheld. Good thing too, because in addition to being a navigator with all of the maps of North America on board (Nuvi 300 has European maps) it has the Oxford travel guide (phrase book - extra cost option), the Marco Polo travel guidebook (extra cost subscription) and an MP3 player. It also plays audible books, has measurement and currency conversion utilities, a photo viewer, a calculator and a world clock.

Unlike most Garmin automotive navigators, the speaker is IN the unit rather than in the lighter plug – the plug itself has a connector that fits on the supplied suction cup windshield mount. The speaker isn’t HiFi, but it is very decent for listening to Audible books and even if you want to demonstrate your latest MP3 project.

There is a headset jack (of course) to connect to your higher fidelity stereo headphones or to your car stereo.

Garmin also offers an optional external ‘traffic data receiver’ that plugs into the USB port on the side of the navigator. It can display the traffic conditions if your locale supports it. The data is sent on a local FM broadcast channel as a ‘subcarrier’. The information is used to identify trouble spots. The service is available by paid subscription.

According to the manual, if there’s an ‘event’ on your route it will display a yellow diamond indicator (and presumably make an announcement). You can then touch the display on the diamond and it will calculate a new route to avoid the problem. As well, it will show you ALL of the current traffic and you can get details on the item. However not every major city has the service. Mine doesn’t so I haven’t and can’t test it.

The GPS antenna is a fairly robust flip-up panel. There’s a rather dinky external antenna connector on the side of the antenna itself to allow you to plug in an auxiliary antenna if the unit can’t see the sky. But this thing is SENSITIVE. I set it up while sitting in my den (indoors, no direct sky view) on a rainy night! This must be because of the new SiRF chipset that Garmin used in this device.

The software has been upgraded since the unit was released. So the first thing I did was to download the update (all 17 megs of it) and reflash the unit. I didn’t know WHAT it fixed, but I was told that it had to be done. The details of the update can now be found by checking Garmin's support section. Suffice it to say that it corrected some significant issues. After updating, the unit did manage to lock up on me within an hour of starting it up, but it ‘came back’ by simply pressing the on-off button and kept on going with the current route.

The user interface is typical of Garmin’s latest products. It is equipped with their very intuitive 3D display, as well as the new ‘fattened up’ 2D display. In my opinion, the street display tends to seem rather ‘fuzzy’. The 2D is more to my personal taste, though perhaps that’s just because I have a lot of history with the previous generation devices.

It also has Garmin’s new Text To Speech (TTS) that announces street names, though you can also select voices that don’t speak street names – up here in the province of Quebec the unit can be quite funny in it’s pronunciation of the French names with it’s US accent. It also supports a number of other languages – German, French, Spanish, Italian, many of the ‘Central European’ languages – and there are Aussie and British variations of the English language as well. From what I’ve seen there may even be a way to define (as in hack) your own. How long can it be before they offer humorous extra-cost voices like TomTom does for their navigators?

With the latest firmware release Garmin has implemented their patented 'antitheft' system. It works like this: When you turn on the system, it will ask you for your PIN - simple enough. But what if you forgot your PIN? That's where the 'neat' factor comes into play;

You can define waypoints (locations) for this and almost any other navigator. They can be named and this makes it simple to quickly recall addresses you may need repeatedly. One of them can be named "Home" and there is a shortcut to allow you even more quickly tell the unit you want to go there.

Waypoints also figure into Garmin's security system, because if you've forgotten your PIN, the unit will unlock if you take it to the specified location - very neat, though if you are 1000 miles from that place it isn't going to be much use.

I'm not sure that that will keep the bad guys from breaking into my car and grabbing the unit, but it WILL make the unit useless to whomever winds up with it.

About the only place it falls down badly is in it’s support of PPOI (Proximity Points Of Interest) loading. These are waypoints about which you can define a circle and optionally a speed limit. When you get within the circle and if you are exceeding the speed limit the unit will warn you.

The feature is great for warning you about red light cameras, speed traps and other such items. However to load one you need to define it on a PC, then download it to the Nuvi. For some reason the automotive Garmin units that support PPOI require this PC to set them up. On my Garmin 276c you need only define the waypoint on the navigator and tell the unit what radius you want (though the 276c doesn't do the speed detection - and why not Garmin??). The 276c does the loading much better.

Additionally, the unit does not ship with a CD. There are no supplied external maps. It does not support PC-based routing. City Navigator NT V7 is the onboard map version at this time.

They sell maps of other areas preloaded onto SD cards - The SD card for Europe costs $407, but you can get individual countries for $182 each. Marco Polo travel guides are likewise distributed on SD cards and cost $75 per country (in Europe) or $160 for all of Europe, if I read the web site properly.

The language guide currently is priced at $75.

The Nuvi is one of Garmin’s ‘KISS’ (Keep It Simple, Stupid) GPS receivers (my term) that have recently been released. These include the C series and I series in addition to the Nuvi. They’ve removed some of the configurability and functionality from the basic unit and have jazzed up the feature set with the extras. But you are stuck with having fixed display functions – so you can’t show battery voltage or other niceties if you want. There’s no tracklog (a fatal flaw FOR MY PURPOSES - read any of my reviews of other GPS devices for more information), no altitude and some other functions are ‘simplified’.

On the other hand they’ve added in an ‘intersection finder’ so now you can type in “Fifth and Main” and it will guide you to the intersection.

I personally think it is a really neat device for those who need to travel and who like things simple. However the fact that Garmin doesn’t supply a set of maps for your PC, yet requires that you have one (a PC) to effectively use the PPOI function is something of a disappointment.

When I wrote the original review the software was still a bit tentative, though it now much more robust no longer seems to occasionally get hung up, based on my experience. These things are hugely complicated and the first couple of firmware upgrades were mandatory. Since they are 17 megs apiece, you may want to make sure you have access to a high speed connection – otherwise you’ll spend hours downloading them as they come available.

To Garmin's credit, you can register to be notified of any updates and they've got it set so that the process is fairly automated.

With a retail price today of $857.13 (Love those round numbers!! But available below $600 online today), it may seem like a lot of money – but if you travel, it can be a real lifesaver. I LOVE the idea of being able to rent a car anywhere and not have to resort to staring at maps, trying to puzzle out where I am and where I need to go. And the 3D display does help decipher complex interchanges.

I’m not going to trade in my 276c just yet. I prefer the flexibility and functionality and that’s my nature, but the Nuvi is a really neat package, especially for the technologically challenged.