Just try to get lost! A cool gadget for the perpetual traveler.
daily driver, cost-conscious, practical, will pay for quality, married, a busy person, Every day computer user
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NOV
25
2007
Garmin - Nuvi 350 —
I purchased the Garmin Nuvi for my husband for his Christmas gift last year after comparing it to the Tom Tom and other personal travel assistants in the store. I was convinced to purchase it because it looked like the easiest to use out of the bunch and it had a lot of cool features, including restaurant, lodging and fuel guides. The red-vested retail service rep could not offer me much advice on which GPS assistant to choose, so I was lucky that I could try out each one in the store.With the Nuvi, I just push the icon for "Food," and a list of all the restaurants in the area appeared. Once on that list, all you have to do is push "Go," on your choice, and the Nuvi directs you to place of your choosing. If you want to filter by type of cuisine (Asian, BBQ, and so on), it does that for you too! Similarly, it has choices for lodging, fuel, intersections, attractions, shopping, parking, entertainment, recreation, community, cities, hospitals, transit, auto services and coordinates. Certainly, in unfamiliar places, you will always be able to find where you want to go at the touch of the screen with the Garmin Nuvi. Take it with you hiking too--the Nuvi is not just for use in the car.
The gadget is very easy to use, and the icons on the touch screen look cool and understandable. I highly recommend that if you are shopping for a GPS system, go to the store and try them out to see which one fits your style and consider how much you travel. You may not need all the bells and whistles.
And, by bells and whistles, I mean the Garmin Nuvi's Travel kit, which offers a ton of options to upload accessories to your personal travel assistant. For instance, you can purchase bilingual dictionaries from the Oxford University Press that will provide you with key phrases of most any language that you want to learn and use, and it will pronounce these phrases for you as well. There are some key phrases and words that come with the Nuvi 350 right out of the box. Just pick English to Spanish, then entertainment, then "Are children allowed in?" and the Garmin Nuvi converts the English to Spanish...Se Permite la entrada a los ninos? Cool!
You can buy Travel Guides by city, like for Chicago, and find reviews, typical prices and other information about restaurants, hotels and I am sure much more, once you purchase information about the full city. All accessories are available at www.garmin.com. There is also an MP3 player, audible book player, picture viewer, world clock currency converter, measurement converter and calculator.
Like I said, I purchased this gadget for my husband because he has to go to a new location practically every day for his job. In fact, I recommend a GPS system as pricey as this one for someone who has travel quite a bit in unfamiliar places. If you have a territory, or you only ride is to and from work, school or other local areas, you don't need the Garmin Nuvi, which was about $700 last year, after I purchased the store warranty.
Because these gadgets were fairly new last year, I was unsure of its durability, so I purchased the $200+ warranty. The only thing that broke on the Nuvi was its charger, but you can purchase one for it for about $20, so don't invest in the warranty.
Some other nifty things about the Nuvi are that you can pick the type of car that represents you. In our case, we choose the truck option, but there are sport cars, or even hybrid looking car icons. Sometimes, we like to listen to our directions in Australian English, which also is an option. You can set route preferences for faster time, shorter distance or off-road. I haven't even tried many of the endless options available on this gadget. Apparently, I can set driver alerts for speed zones and safety cameras. It supports FM TMC traffic alerts too.
You name it, the Garmin Nuvi has it, or offers it to you in the form of an accessory. However, it was very expensive, and I don't use half of what it offers. One thing is for sure, perpetual travelers will have a hard time getting lost in a new city with the Garmin Nuvi as a fellow traveler.
Garmin - Nuvi 350 is recommended by Jules4U
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