CNET Editor's rating: 8.3 out of 10
Reviewed by
John R. Delaney
Review date: 02/22/06
Release date: 09/12/05
The good: The compact Garmin Nüvi 350 has a strong GPS receiver and includes lots of travel-friendly features.
The bad: The Garmin Nüvi 350 is expensive, and the traffic receiver and the travel-guide programs cost extra. The Nüvi also lacks an external volume control.
The bottom line: No bigger than a deck of cards, the Garmin Nüvi 350 is more than just another voice-guided GPS device, packing in travel tools, entertainment features, and good performance; just be prepared to pay a price.
Veteran navigation manufacturer Garmin International breaks new ground with its Garmin Nüvi 350. This ultraportable device aims to be the ultimate travel companion, acting as a GPS navigator, a personal traveling assistant, and a digital entertainment center. Unfortunately, you'll pay a premium for all these features. Its retail price of $969 may be more than you're willing to spend on a pocket-size GPS system, and if you want to take advantage of any of the travel tools, such as the language translator, you'll have to shell out even more money. That said, if you crave the latest technology and a big wow factor, the high-performance Garmin Nüvi 350 should be at the top of your list.
10 out of 10 - Perfect Best GPS I've ever used
I've already owned a car with a factory GPS in it and after getting rid of it, I purchased ...
I've already owned a car with a factory GPS in it and after getting rid of it, I purchased the StreetPilot 2720, which I kept for 2 days.
The sheer size of that device was a huge turnoff for me. Sometimes I am forced to leave my car in a less than desireable spot and the NUVI fits right in my shirt pocket. Whereas the 2720 was about the size of a brick and impossible to stash anywhere.
Anyway, I took the NUVI on a 150 mile trip, through NYC, Long Island and back. The device performed flawlessly.. I was able to listen to a PodCast that I transfered to its internal memory and whenever the NAV needed to guide me, the podcast would mute and the voice prompts would guide me. When the voice prompts were finished, the audio volume would return to where it was.
The device is small enough to not obstruct your vision, but the display is more than large enough to provide the guidance that you need to navigate the cluster of highways that all seem to merge together on NY highways.
The speed at which the device calculates and responds is impressive, as is the POI's that are in the system. Not only does it list the common POI's within 25 miles(food, fuel, atm's), just to test it, I entered Compusa and the damn thing knew where all of those were too !
100 out of 104 users found this user opinion helpful.
9 out of 10 - Spectacular great gadget
Recently I decided to get a GPS. After much research and when I was almost decided on one, I came ...
Recently I decided to get a GPS. After much research and when I was almost decided on one, I came across the nuvi 350 in an article from Garmin around October (before it was available) and fell in love with it. I patiently waited for a review finally finding the one by Craig Ellison in PC Mag. It was a great review. I then started searching for prices, found it for $682 at Beach Audio and ordered one. Before placing the order, I called them and they said they had 14 in stock. The next day they cancelled my order and removed the item from their web site. When I contacted them, they told me they were out of stock and not going to get any more. I checked their website and they carry just about every Garmin product. I'm sure they decided they had made a mistake in the price and decided not to honor my order, the bastards. Today I decided to shell out the $899 everybody is asking for it and got one. I opened the box in the store's parking lot and after setting up the time zone and language, I entered my home address and was on my way home. I intentionally missed my turn a couple of times and it recalculated before I got to the next corner. It was very fast and accurate. When I got stock in traffic and slowed down, it added more time to my ?arrival time? and then took away a couple of minutes as I started to move faster. This is my first GPS but after riding around for a couple of hours with it I am finding that it was everything I expected and more. I just started to play around with the travel features. I speak two languages and when I tried the translation, it was very accurate. As I write this, I am uploading mp3?s and a couple of pictures into its extra memory.
78 out of 82 users found this user opinion helpful.
9 out of 10 - Spectacular Incredible. Simply Incredible.
This unit arrived yesterday 2/2/06 via UPS. I ordered it from that major electronics chain; you know, the ...
This unit arrived yesterday 2/2/06 via UPS. I ordered it from that major electronics chain; you know, the one with the big yellow price tag? Well, I will save my review of the ?worst buying? experience from that place for another post. For now, let's concentrate on the Nuvi350.
As I mentioned, I have had this unit for about 24 hours. I took it out of the box, connected the AC adapter to charge the battery, then took it outside and turned it on. In just about literally 90 seconds, it was connected, and registered. Really very quick. (if anyone read my post on Socket Navigator Software, you will understand my excitement)
I popped the windshield mount onto the back, and I was on my way in about 8 minutes from when I took it off the charger.
After powering the unit on, (see my "cons" about the Power Button) the main menu provides 3 simple choices. "Where to?" "View Map" and "Travel Kit" Although I am not impressed with the Travel Kit, I have to say this is the simplest way to start navigating around the country.
I have been using my PDA as a GPS, so the small form factor of this little guy is key for me. It is very small, and extremely light. It comes with its own carrying case, so when I parked the car, it was a quick disconnect from the windshield mount, and into my pocket safely. Very nice feature! I was impressed.
Entering an address, or POI is very simple via the touch screen. Each letter gives you a quick and significant on screen click when entering, and they are large enough so you don?t have to worry about doubling up a letter during entry. The POI's are chock full of restaurants, banks, entertainment, fuel stations, and the like. I will say scrolling through some of them was a bit of a pain. A small improvement to make this easier would be a simple way to filter them even more.
All the unit settings are done via the touch screen. So while you are using the GPS, and need to adjust a setting i.e. volume, brightness, language, you will need to tap the on screen menu and click through to the setting you need. I found this a bit unorthodox and cumbersome especially while driving. If the unit volume is too loud, and your phone rings, there is no easy access to the mute button, so you will need to get pretty quick with your index finger before answering the phone.
Other cons I found a bit frustrating for a $900.00 unit are the location of the power button. To power on the unit, you simply press and hold the power button. The same to turn it off. However, it is in the exact location of where you would hold the unit, to place it into the windshield mount, or to remove or place it into the carrying case. In the few hours I have been using the unit, I have mistakenly powered it on or off six times. This might have been resolved with either a different location, or a simple 'hold' switch on the side, next to a volume dial. (I know I already mentioned that one)
As far as the MP3 player, Image viewer, Audiobook player, and language translator (aka Travel Kit), I would rather see these items in separate devices, as it may bring the cost a bit lower. Better yet, simply make them as available upgrade options. I have not had the pleasure or displeasure of using any of these items yet, so I will refrain from reviewing the quality of the Travel Kit. I will only comment on their potential usefulness.
In summary, this unit receives my recommendation for a great all around GPS tool, with some bonus features. It's small size will encourage you to take it with you when leaving your car. The quick release windshield mount will amaze you (especially if you have ordered a mount from _rkon.com and found vibration to be a major problem) The simplicity of the UI, and on screen entry will make using the unit a joy. So far, I am very impressed and look forward to using it every day.
I will continue my review after about a month of using it, but right out of the box, it gets a 9 from me. Hope this helps - good luck with yours.
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by icecop (see profile) -
February 3, 2006
37 out of 39 users found this user opinion helpful.
8 out of 10 - Excellent Great, but still some quirks
I purchased my Nüvi about 2-3 weeks ago. I feel in love with it out of the box. Ill ...
I purchased my Nüvi about 2-3 weeks ago. I feel in love with it out of the box. Ill talk about the problems ive realized since nobody usually writes about them. Most People just say how awesome it is and etc. I agree to it being awesome, but I feel I should also talk about the problems most people leave out.
First of all, if i turn it off while driving and turn it back on in a different location, it takes forever to acquire the sattelites. Sometined you need to restart it a few times. Another problem is its guidance system, I mean, the path it selects for you. you have the option for chosing the fastest time, or shortest distance, however, sometimes it will chose a long way in fastest time mode, and I will have to switch over to shortest distance.
Another Issue I have is that the search function takes a while if you are searching for something by its name. I figure that it has to search the entire map of the USA, however its a bit frustrating when you are sitting in your car waiting for a listing for about 5 minutes.
Third, Garmin needs to update its maps. I Find that many street names, are wrong, many businesses arent showing up, and many addresses i look for arent there. Alsofor instance, if you are going to a location, like when I go to my school, it will guide you to the intersection and tell you which side it is on (very helpful), however, it wont tell you where exactly where it is, it just shows the waypoints on the street.
Next, i feel some of the features are useless, perhaps because i have a Ipod Video 60G, but I feel the picture viewer and the mp3 player are useless. The audio quality is just plain horrible. It is great in theory though, but I would rather have improved speed and tracking versus a picture viewer, mp3 player, coupon book, etc...
And Ultimately, I feel it is a bit high on the price scale. The size and simplicity are impressive, but Im not sure if they are worth the $700-900 price tag.
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by ReomeoFoEver (see profile) -
January 12, 2006
4 out of 10 - Mediocre Returned it to the shop after 14 days,
Nüvi 350 Europe, firmware 2.70 Jan/Feb 2006. I needed a god, very small and very portable GPS ...
Nüvi 350 Europe, firmware 2.70 Jan/Feb 2006. I needed a god, very small and very portable GPS to use in my own car. More importantly i wanted one to be used when I rent a car in foreign airports. I wanted a navigator with "All Europe" included, the SirfIII GPS chip and easy to use. I upgraded the software to version 2.70 This was absolutely needed, but also very easy to do.
The Nüvi 350 hardware has a very nice "look and feel" and its satellite tacking was very OK. I will look for a SirfIII chip in my next GPS too.
Routing: Within 700 meter of my house it routed me 3 times via "dead end" roads, and asked me to turn left or right at least 2 places where this was not allowed. One such place was a right turn into the local "Main street" I live about 12 km from the center of Copenhagen and all of the traffic restrictions has been in place for a least 5 years, some for more than 30 years.
When I entered a destination in the center of Copenhagen and it should have selected the main highway from north into the city, it selected a nearby street with lots of speed restrictions. This routing would have been OK 35 years ago before the highway was built. If I changed the routing parameter to fastest route, it selected the highway from northwest into the city - All wrong.
It must be said, that when I ignored its directions, the Nüvi was very fast in recalculating a new route.
The Nüvi supports one via point, but I had some problems getting the Nüvi to accept that it had passed the via point and it should move on to the destination.
The routing problems may well be a combination of less than perfect road information and the fact that on the Nüvi 350 you can only select shortest or fastest route. Maybe a route selection of "shortest, but not too slow" and "fastest, but not too long" is needed.
When you drive without a route the speed is shown in the lower left corner, but when you follow a route the arrival time and not the speed is shown. You have to press the menu bottom to read the speed. With the present strict speed limits and speed/radar cameras, I need the current speed displayed all of the time.
I entered a number of favorite destinations, home, work etc. and downloaded some POI's including speed limits and speed/radar camera positions ( www.radarfalle.de and a few Euros)
The menu system with just one "folder" for favorites and one for POI's, with limited grouping into subfolders made it very difficult to find the destination you wanted. Speed limit POI's are not real POI's and you will never search for them via the menu, but they sure make it difficult to find that real POI menu entry you are looking for.
The Nüvi 350 can simulate a route, when the antenna is closed, but I found no way to control the simulated speed.
After downloading POI's with speed/radar cameras I made a simulated route through a small town, and got a very nice warning 400 meters before reaching the camera, driving into the town. I was however also warned 400 meter before leaving town on the other side. I will bet the second camera is NOT pointed in my driving direction. Whether this is a problem with the Nüvi, with the downloaded POI's or both, I don't know.
If the navigator is shared by more drivers, I think some better system to organize the favorites into groups like work, private, ours, hers, mine and even by state, country or region is much needed.
I think it would be nice to be able to lock your private favorites with a pincode, if someone from work needs to borrow your car.
Loading and saving favorites from/to your PC seems possible, but I found no information about this in the manual.
The Nüvi 350 do not support Lat/Lon coordinates ( except if you dump the favorites files on your PC) and I think that is a very bad design decision even for a "Car only" GPS product. In Europe where a lot of countries are not yet covered or only the main roads are included in the Nüvi maps, geographical coordinates can be very helpful. Likewise, reporting accidents is much safer and more accurate if you can easily read out Lat/Lon. This should be easy to include in a software update.
I am not much into the extras like the "Travel kit" stuff. I have loaded one jpg picture, one mp3 file and downloaded one book from Audible.com just to test it. It is OK, but for me it is of very limited value.
The audio quality is just OK for "reading" audio books, but for music the quality is not nearly as good as that of my car radio or an iPod. You may connect the Nüvi to the car radio, but that adds yet another cable to connect and disconnect when leaving the your car with your Nüvi.
The currency translator seems to convert everything via US$ and this is of limited use at least in Europe. If it was easy to keep the local EU exchange rates updated - maybe via the PC, I think it could be very useful indeed.
The picture viewer was rather slow when loading the thumbnail menus and you should test this if you plan to save more than a few menu pages of pictures. I can see cases where a saved picture could be useful - like a picture of your destination or of the person you are about to meet or of a scanned business card or .... But just about every mobile phone can do this these days.
The extras you have to buy separately -the Language Guide and Travel Guide - I just don't think so.
I have returned my Nüvi 350. Its is likely better than a lot of other GPS systems, but with a price of about US$ 1000, I found just to many points that was not "just right". In the end it was the routing problems that made me return it, and these routing problems may or may not exist in other areas. I did not think I wanted the accept them.
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by reslfj (see profile) -
February 2, 2006
8 out of 10 - Excellent Great! with one problem holding me
It is great but be aware that only you can have one stop enroute, which is pathetic, garmin which has ...
It is great but be aware that only you can have one stop enroute, which is pathetic, garmin which has taken this much pain to create this wonderful next generation gps missed this one ? and I don't see CNET has highlighted this(garmin has highlighted this in there website), because it will be a big downer in real use..hope garmin can update this feature with software...later
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by dpremsankar (see profile) -
February 24, 2006
26 out of 27 users found this user opinion helpful.
9 out of 10 - Spectacular The Garmin Nuvi 350 is a Work of Art!
I recently bought the Garmin Nuvi 350 right before my trip to New York for New Years Eve 2005. My ...
I recently bought the Garmin Nuvi 350 right before my trip to New York for New Years Eve 2005. My fiancé took it with her on her road trip from Kansas to New York while I flew and met her there two days later. She relied on the Nuvi's accuracy to get from point A to B and had absolutely no problems getting there. If she got off track the Nuvi automatically re-routed her and put her on course quickly and safely. Along the way she added various waypoints into her trip and no matter where she wanted to go the "where to" menu had an abundant number of options. While in New York we used the Nuvi to help navigate our way around the city. Unfortunately when I was downtown on 49th and Broadway I could only get the Nuvi to connect to two of the many satellites, so I was unable to use it while deep within the city amongst all the sky rise buildings. Not sure if that?s common across different GPS units but I managed without it.
Here?s a little information about the device itself:
Where To? -This option allows searching by: Address, Food, Lodging, Fuel, Spell Name, Intersections, Attractions, Shopping, Parking, Entertainment, Recreation, Community, Cities, Browse Map, Hospitals, Transit and even Auto Services. -The nice thing about it is you can select any of those options and since the Nuvi knows where you're at it finds the closets destination and allows you to scroll through the different destinations in seconds.
View Map -This options allows you to view your current location on a map whether in route or in a single location. There are three different modes you can view the map in (Track Up, North Up and 3D View). The amount of detail in the map is configurable and very accurate. Onscreen buttons allow you to easily zoom in and out for more or less detail. Another nice feature is the ability to drag n? drop the map to view parts of the map that are off screen. -While in route; another feature that truly amazed me, you can view your trip details by clicking on the speed indicator. Such details include: Direction, Speed, Distance Driven, Distance Remaining, Overall Average Speed, Moving Average Speed, Max Speed, Total Time in Route, Moving Time in Route and Stopped Time.
Travel Kit -This option provides many other available functions that make the trip a little more enjoyable. From a Language Guide, Travel Guide, Saver Guide* (new as of January 4, 2006), MP3 Player, Audible Book Player, Picture Viewer, World Clock, Currency Converter, Measurement Converter and Calculator.
*At the time of writing this review I just discovered the new option in the Travel Kit called Saver Guide. I purchased the Nuvi with Software Version 2.40 and Version 2.60 was released on January 4, 2006. Garmin continues to impress me with this device, even after having it for two weeks. Information on the Savers Guide can be found here: http://www.garmin.com/accessories/saversguide/.
The packaging contained everything needed to get me going with my new Garmin Nuvi. With the exception of the City Navigator NT v7 Software on DVD, according to tech support some of the Nuvi's did not come with this software. Garmin?s tech support was wonderful to work with and within a day I received the software in the mail. The City Navigator software allows you to create routes and mark waypoints. I asked them if there was any other software that would work with the Nuvi (i.e. Microsoft Streets and Trips). They commented that the Nuvi will only be able to accept waypoints; it does not use route information from the PC software. No third party software maps are able to be downloaded to the Nuvi. It?s highly unlikely but it?s ?possible? that the device may be able to communicate with an application like DeLORME Street Atlas but not sure at all.
The Nuvi also does not keep track of where you have traveled. So you are unable to download your trip information to a common format such as CSV or GPX.
With that all said, I wanted to share my experience with everyone with this wonderful GPS. It?s the first GPS I?ve owned so I?m a novice when it comes to using it or knowing how to compare it to others. I love it so much that it goes with me every where I go. I travel 100% of my time for business so for me I think it?s one of the best investments I?ve made in the world of technology in a long time. Just being able to use it in the car and take it with you in its carrying case is a bonus. It?s small enough to fit in your shirt pocket and big enough to view while driving 70+ miles/hour down the highway.
I HIGHLY recommend the Garmin Nuvi 350 to anyone that likes to travel for business or pleasure. Or even those that just like to show off new gadgets to their friends.
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by flavarite (see profile) -
January 8, 2006
8 out of 10 - Excellent Great GPS with everything you could want
This is my first GPS and I did a LOT of research (reading reviews, etc) before purchasing this one. I ...
This is my first GPS and I did a LOT of research (reading reviews, etc) before purchasing this one. I am very happy with my decision and would highly recommend this product. I have used it for several weeks, including for a drive from the East to the Mid-West. Besides for some minor flaws, this GPS works great.
PROBLEMS/NEGATIVES: First off, there were sometimes that it would give weird directions or go astray in its guidance. For instance, I was using it around my hometown, and twice the voice and text directions told me to turn when it was clear from my driving knowledge (and even the GPS map) that I should continue to go straight. It was not that going straight was maybe a shortcut, and it was just giving me a different way, it was giving me a totally irrational direction. If I had made the left it wanted me to, it probably would have told me to get right back on the road I had came from. In fact, one time, there wasn't even a right turn possible where it told me to go right. This only happened on limited occasions (twice in weeks of straight driving), and if you looked at the GPS map, it was clear that it was a mistake.
There were also several occasions were my location seemed to drift into some random place. The driving directions didn't change, but for a minute or so, it said my car was in between two roads and facing the other direction. A little bit weird.
As others have said, the speakers are very tinny. They cause voice directions to sometimes be unclear. It's not hard to distinguish right from left....but "bennet" street might not be completely distinguishable on first listen.
I noticed that all CVS Pharmacies are listed as CSV. Not a big deal, unless you are searching for CVS...cause you won't find anything. Hope other places aren't misspelled. Also, when searching...sometimes more is less. If you put McDonalds, you won't find anything. That is because it is listed as McDonald's (with an apostrophe). Just something you need to know. So typing McDon would be much better, cause then it would find them.
Lastly, like the point above, there is a learning curve. You should definitely read the manual first (online). I was trying to use it while walking, and didn't realize you need the antenna up for it to work at all. There are a ton of additional screens you can get to by touching on the map screen (i.e. by touching the "arrival" in the bottom left, the "turn in" on the bottom right or the text directions on top, they all bring up new screens) These are things that just take a little to figure out.
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