Worth Reading?
As someone who regularly makes journeys with a Garmin Nuvi 300 sucker-cupped to his windscreen, I’m half-pleased and half-dismayed to see this new, sexy widescreen Nuvi 660. It’s dripping with features my old model just wishes it had; Bluetooth 2.0 to act as a hands-free kit with your cellphone; an FM transmitter to enable wire-free connections to any radio… all of a sudden the mp3 functionality sounds like it might actually get used.
What’s the same is the ridiculously straightforward interface, that makes picking out and storing addresses easy as a particularly easy pie, a bumper collection of Points of Interest (POIs) accessed through chunky, finger-jabbable icons, a sizeable chunk of free on-board memory for your own use and SD expansion. I also know for a fact that Garmin regularly release firmware upgrades adding functionality and tweaking usability, plus they’re very responsive to customer suggestions and queries.
Would I recommend the 660? For an estimated $1000 you’d have to really really have trouble finding your way around and want those extra features.
Garmin Nuvi 660 at GPS Passion [via CrunchGear]
For $1,000 you can get a really nice PDA (Palm or Windows Mobile), add TomTom’s Navigator 6 pack to it, and get almost the same functionality as the Nuvi with full PDA functionality and a huge chunk of change left over to boot. Sure it uses a separate bluetooth GPS receiver (about the size of a stack of business cards) but that gives you the added advantage of being able to place the PDA wherever you want in your vehicle without having to worry about reception.
http://www.tomtom.com/products.....Language=4
Yep! It’s a steep price for finding your way around. I have GPS integrated into my 2005 4Runner which I rarely use.