Product Description

The nüvi 350 is a portable GPS navigator, traveler's reference, and digital entertainment system, all in one. The nüvi 350 contains full European mapping right off the shelf. It comes preprogrammed with highly detailed City Select® NT street data of major metropolitan areas throughout Western Europe. The database features nearly six million points of interestincluding hotels, restaurants, gas stations, and attractions. Thanks to the nüvi 350's text-to-speech functionality, the unit audibly announces the name of upcoming streetsletting drivers keep their eyes on the road while navigating through busy traffic and tricky roadways.The nüvi 350 also comes with an A/C charger and approximately 700 MBs of internal memory for storage of supplemental maps, MP3s, and audio books (available from Audible.co.uk).Package Includes: nüviTM 350 Vehicle suction cup mount Carrying case 12-24 volt adapter cable Dashboard disk USB interface cable Sample Language Guide content Sample MP3s Quick-reference guide

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #37458 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Garmin
• Model: Nuvi 350
• Released on: 2005-11-25
• Dimensions: .32 pounds

Manufacturer's Description
What if one device could help you navigate anywhere in the U.S. and Canada, while offering travel tips, storing your favorite tunes and photos, providing translation assistance, and more? That device is here, and it's not much bigger than a deck of cards. The Garmin nüvi 350 is set to revolutionize what we expect from a GPS navigation device, or from any device for that matter.

A simple touchscreen interface and voice guidance allow you to keep your eyes on the road. View larger.

Listen to an audio book or an MP3 while you're on the road. View larger.

The slim design integrates a USB port, a headphone jack, and an SD card slot. View larger.

Design
With a total weight of 5.1 ounces and slim measurements of 3.87 x 2.91 x 0.87 inches (WxHxD), the nüvi 350 is just right for the pocket or purse. A bright, 64,000-color display dominates the front of the device and a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels means that there's plenty of room for displaying map data and other elements of the device's interface. An SD memory card slot is provided for expansion software, such as a points of interest database, media files and electronic guides (see below). The flip-up antenna includes an MCX-type connector for connecting the unit to an external GPS antenna. Meanwhile, a powerful built-in speaker resides on the back of device. A built-in lithium ion battery will give you for to eight hours of battery life, depending on use. In addition to an AC charger, the unit also ships with a 12-volt power adapter for vehicle charging, as well as a windshield suction cup mount.

Detailed 3D map views, combined with voice turn-by-turn guidance, make navigation a breeze.

Fortunately, Garmin has made it easy to interface with the nüvi 350's 700 megabytes of onboard memory, thanks to "plug-and-play" USB mass storage support. Just plug the device into your computer's USB port and you've got instantaneous access to all the audio books, music, photos, supplemental maps and other data on the nüvi 350's internal and SD card memory.

Navigation
The nüvi 350 is first and foremost a personal GPS device. Wherever you go -- in your car or on foot-- the device offers extremely accurate position data, thanks to a high-sensitivity integrated GPS receiver by SiRF and WAAS-enabled, 12-satellite reception. The nüvi 350 provides automatic routing, turn-by-turn voice directions, and touchscreen control-- making it easy to find your way anywhere. Plus, the unique "text-to-speech" feature calls out turns by street name, and you can choose from either 2D or 3D mapping perspectives when you're viewing your route on the display. Additionally, the nüvi 350 is compatible with Garmin's GTM 10 FM TMC traffic receiver*, which allows users to avoid traffic tie-ups by simply pushing a button that will calculate a new route.

The nüvi 350 also allows you to load up your custom point of interest. Set up proximity alerts for school zones, safety cameras, and more using Garmin's free POI (points of interest) loader program (available from garmin.com).

Tools for the Journey
Navigation is just part of the journey, and the nüvi 350 is one of the first devices to recognize that. The built-in "Travel Kit" offers an MP3 player, an audio book player from Audible.com, a jpeg-format picture viewer, a world travel clock with time zones, a currency converter, a measurement converter, and a calculator.

In addition to the included travel tools, additional software add-ons are available, such as the Garmin Language Guide, with data provided by Oxford University Press. This software suite contains a multilingual word bank, phrase bank, and five bilingual dictionaries. The multilingual word bank and phrase bank supports nine languages and dialects, including American English, British English, French, German, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, European Portuguese, European Spanish, and Latin American Spanish. Now you can look up and translate more than 17,000 words or 20,000 phrases per language -- right in the palm of your hand. Through the unit's text-to-speech interface, users can get a spoken pronunciation of each entry in the word bank, along with gender and part of speech information.

Another useful add-on software package, the Garmin Travel Guide, is loaded with information provided by Marco Polo. These guides put in-depth travel information such as reviews and recommendations for restaurants, tourist attractions, and more at your fingertips. The software allows you to navigate to an address or search points of interest-- places like hotels, restaurants, shopping, and tourist attractions. The nüvi 350 automatically calculates the fastest route and provides voice-prompted turn-by-turn directions along the way. The unit also audibly announces the name of upcoming streets-- letting you keep your eyes on the road while navigating through busy traffic and tricky roadways. And if you stray off course, the nüvi 350 automatically calculates the quickest way to get back on track.

*Traffic services available only in select cities where RDS-TMC coverage exists. Requires the GTM 10 FM TMC traffic receiver and subscription fee to enable traffic capability.

Box Contents

Customer Reviews

80% there 20% I would change
Well I have been an extensive user of a TomTom in the past, one of the older models, and so seeing the sleek compact Nuvi was a surprise. It is tiny the size of a pack of cigarettes and very light so easy to carry around.

PLUS SIDES
The Nuvi 350 from Amazon comes with European maps and Safety Cameras loaded into it, it also speaks the road names which is a surprisingly useful feature. Routing and maps are first rate. You can upload custom Points Of Interest too for free. These are useful for navigating to the nearest supermarket or whatever.
Customisable images of cars, voices, backdrops. Plays mp3, stores photos, takes memory cards for new maps.
If upon hitting a road block/traffic jam you press the detour button and new route is planned.
Show's the next turn clearly and when its happening. The talking routing seems to be spot on, not too early or too late.


DOWN SIDES
The device can be a little slow at drawing maps when zooming out but the routing and maps are first rate. It doesn't have as many features to change as the Tom Tom, it only has 2 colour schemes, night or day, you cant easily plan a route from place to place, you have to find the start of the route first by hand.
Doesn't show your speed on the main screen.
You have to buy a Garmin GTM12 traffic receiver to receive traffic updates as extra, these are about £50 on ebay, £150 new.

All in all a nice item.

Nearly 5 Stars
Overall as good a SatNav as it gets, but still has a few minor blips which includes in my case a frequent need to be reset, in which case, when set up, the reset button would have been more accessible on the side of the unit, not tucked away at the back. Sometimes directions are abit inaccurate and illogical, the perfect SatNav has not arrived yet. but the Garmin Nuvi still heads the current list

Absolutely excellent
Just as good as I'd hoped. Easy to navigate with, easy to load data (Points Of Interest) which you can get from the net, comes with a database of safety cameras which you can keep up to date for about £40/year. Detailed and accurate maps of the whole of western Europe, and decent maps of the urban areas further East. Sat reception is very impressive, routefinding is quick. The British voices are fine, it's easy to understand what they want from you, and the pronunciation of road names is nearly perfect.

At this price, it's a no-brainer.