Garmin Nuvi 350 GPS review

General Introduction

Truly a life changing experience, if you choose the garmin nuvi 350 gps as your first such device, you will more then likely have a hard time imagining life without it, much like a cell phone or your first vehicle. The Nuvi 350 has consistently sat atop the best selling lists of electronics stores, retailers, and best rated top 10 lists of most of the credible large websites as well.

It has been an award winner and acquired huge buzz and popularity for all of 2005 and 2006, and in 2007 it remains a top notch travel assistant. Perhaps the market has a bit more competition now, but the price has dropped so dramatically on the garmin 350 since it was first introduced, that it still has insane appeal for the shoppers, and it seems like it will stay one of the best choices for at least another two years until the technology has aged some more.

If you are looking to buy the garmin nuvi 350 gps system, you are looking at a very solid, tried and true product, and as you read through my garmin nuvi 350 review, note that even though there are some newer models on the market, that none yet come close to Price-to-performance ration the Nuvi350 offers as of Early 2007!

Basic Setup – Mounting


Figure 1: The Garmin Nuvi 350 has a sleek and minimalist style design that makes it small, lightweight, portable and incredibly attractive no matter where you have it!	Figure 2: The included mount holds the Garmin 350 securely in place, while the clutter free outer shell, SD expansion slot and folding antenna keep it slim and stylish

Right out the box there isn’t much to your new gadget, the unit, the mount, the adapter’s and a few pieces of paper is all (note that no comprehensive user manual is included inbox – the good news? you WON’T need a manual )

You will first fully charge the unit’s battery and once that is done (couple of hours) you will proceed to powering it on and then doing the basic setup of your menu’s and functions to match your area, time, and personal preferences. A 4-5 second boot up from the power depression and your ultra bright 3.5′ touch screen is on for the first of many times; flip up the integral antenna neatly self folding away, and the satellites in orbit will lock into your powerful new gizmo. Depending on a few factors such as weather and surrounding shelter, the initial satellite lock on sequence may take a few moments, but once it has found them all, subsequent power on are acquired very quickly.

The software preinstalled on the unit should be fairly up to date at the time of purchase depending on the store you bought, but you can upgrade and download the software firmware version from garmin’s website for all the latest advancements.

The mount is easy to use, and the unit is well designed to clip into and out of the mounting very quickly (commonly overlooked feature if you are going to be doing a lot of short stops and remove the unit frequently) – one point to note is that many people will opt for an after market garmin nuvi 350 mount accessory – as the windshield mount isn’t preferable and illegal in some places such as California, check for the Garmin Portable Friction mount on amazon.com for a great mount accessory and at a good price if you don’t want windshield obstruction.

Getting Started:


Figure 5: The menus and functions of the Nuvi 350 are really intuitive and well laid out – from the basic menu screens you will be able to easily learn where all the functions exist and be using them all properly fairly quickly	Figure 6: The unit goes far beyond just simple navigational assistance, and as you become more familiar with your Garmin Nuvi 350 GPS, you will fall in love with all the advanced travel assistance it packs in a relatively cheap punch

Once you’re all mounted and ready to go, the initial learning curve is very user friendly – many very technically challenged people state in their own garmin nuvi 350 reviews that it was surprisingly simple for them.

The nuvi 350 is renowned for its intuitive setup and usage for the end user, and I quickly saw why as I fired it up my first time as well. You will be offered a menu of various ways to find your destination, and I was surprised at the enormity of ways and the database of locations pre-installed on the unit, and how simple it was to type in any address not already included in the unit. I’d say that if you are very technically challenged, that you will have figured out the entire process inside an hour, so reserve at least 60 minutes of time to play with your new favorite gizmo before heading out into untracked territory.

As you go about the initial navigation and route menu’s you will notice such things as custom vehicle icons, choices of day/night colors, 2d or 3d maps and more – the garmin nuvi 350 is again very user friendly, and there are boat loads of options that you will eventually custom choose for you absolute preferred experience – far to many for me to briefly cover in this nuvi 350 review.

Accuracy of Maps / Satellite:

At the heart of the unit, its main process is navigation, and as such it’s almost entirely essential that the unit has very strong satellite chipsets and appropriate, accurate and well updated mapping. The nuvi350 uses maps by NAVTEQ – which is the same used by Google Maps and most credible map resources in the world – due to their overwhelming supremacy over other mapping entities.

The Nuvi contains one of the most powerful and ultra sensitive satellite chipsets available today and presumably for the near future in the SiRFIII chip. This may be above the average reader’s or consumers head and I won’t go into great detail – but it’s a very important aspect and a major contribution to the vast popularity and success of the newer GPS systems.

Reception and accuracy to the GPS satellites is very strong and I haven’t had it fail or loose signal yet, which says allot about this little piece of technology where I have returned or trashed many a gadgets in the past for failing to accurately, timely and strongly hold satellite reception through various environments and shelters.


Figure 3: Satellites lock on quickly and you would have a hard time loosing signal once they are even if you tried – says allot about the quality of the Nuvi 350 chipset when you compare to driving under a bridge causing inferior units to mess up	Figure 4: Allow a little while for the initial lock on of satellites – note the nuvi 350 uses NAVTEQ mapping data and a SiRFIII chipset – both industry leading qualities that make the Nuvi 350 one of the best units available today.

General Navigational Assistance:

There are various voice and animated instructions to help you navigate your path with the garmin nuvi 350, and most people will mix and match there favorite views that are best suited for how they want to handle the assistance from the unit.


Figure 7: From this simple menu you will select from various ways to find a destination and allow the quick routing engine to calculate your new turn-by-turn instructions for the trip ahead	Figure 8: This main navigational screen is clean and simple yet very informative, zoom in and out with the icons, get next maneuver instructions with the top bar, detailed trip information by touching the bottom left, or incredibly detailed next move instructions by tapping the bottom right.

The main screen shown during normal navigation contains a wealth of info – at the top of the screen in a green background you see your current next turn (i.e.: Milk Rd to Cow Ave. Right), slightly underneath you find the plus and minus icons which will zoom in and out the depth of the map to better match your preferred viewing range. In the middle is animated sequence of your vehicle along the road with the surrounding territory details, which can be set to 2D, 3D, Night, and day viewing modes to match your preference as well.

Bottom left you find your estimate Arrival time assuming the current route is taken, and the bottom right will display your next and how long it will be until you turn, which will help take any guess work or anxiety out of when you need to change direction or roads.


Figure 9: Tap the bottom left arrival information box to bring up a detailed view of your entire trips information – compare this with your paper map navigational statistics and see how the nuvi 350 saves you time, money and frustration!	Figure 10: Tap the bottom right next turn information box to bring up a comprehensive next turn analysis – approaching a very complex intersection? use this screen to get through it without any anxiety of which exit or entry you must turn to

Tapping the Bottom left arrival icon information box will bring up a detailed view of your entire trips statistics, while touching the bottom right next turn info box will bring up an even more detailed next turn screen – which will help you follow your next maneuver easily, even in the most confusing or congested of twisted road designs.

Also note the Garmin Nuvi 350 Text-to-speech capability, which will guide you seamlessly with voice instructions “Turn left on Cow Avenue” whereas older and less advanced system would give you more generic “left in 500 feet” type of instructions and gave many people problems and confusion. The voice on the Nuvi 350 GPS is really great, and much more natural and precise then other text to speech programs I have used, and although it sometimes will garble a really hard to pronounce street name, it’s of a very superior quality then most other GPS systems on the market today

Also the entire display is color coded and makes it really easy and simple to understand – purple will show your entire chosen route, while other colors along the way represent different things.

Again there is really too much to cover in regards to the various ways and options the Garmin 350 gives you to navigate your course, the above is just the basic main navigational features…


Figure 11: The Nuvi 350 utilitizes color coding to make understanding the wealth of data shown easy to understand – where customizable 2d, 3d and various views help you custom tailor your preferred viewing experience	Figure 12: The Garmin Nuvi 350 GPS will automatically adjust to day and night colors to help you through your long journeys and further take away the stress of navigating in the dark.

Third Party Tools / Menus:

Picture Viewer – I used this surprisingly large amount so far. I’d take lots of pictures the places I was traveling to, and it was nice to take the sd card out my digital camera and slide it into the garmin nuvi 350 to do a little demonstration, slideshow and show off pictures to my friends and family in the vehicle or on the device.

MP3 Player – Loaded hundreds upon hundreds of songs from my laptop onto a 4gb sd memory card and played them in my car on my trips – very nice to have 4000mb of space of any song you choose rather then a specific 700mb CD with only a few tracks you like; I guess it’s like having an iPod where you can choose all the specific songs you like rather then have to load in 1 cd that has those 2 songs you like 5-10x over, nice and clutter free with great sound quality!

Language Guide – Another feature I didn’t initially think I would use much, the kids love this as well for ‘cheating’ on Spanish and French homework, and the ability to find almost every common word and phrase and actually hear its pronunciation in many languages is amazing depending on where you intend to travel to.

Much More – There’s tons of little useful tools and utilities, from calculators to measurement converters, essentially any type of sticky situation you may come across on your travels may be solved with a glance through the various tool menus on your personal travel companion


Figure 13: Loaded with tons of extra tools and utilities that will come in handy eventually or further enhance your trips enjoyability	Figure 14: Entertainment features such as mp3 player (love the fact you can load 100’s of specific songs onto a cheap SD card) and picture viewer are bonus additions for those long and boring drives

Pro’s:

Incredibly easy to use – even for people unfamiliar with such gadgets
Incredibly cheap prices compared to similar brands and units
Great Company to deal with and fantastic and swift customer service if the need should arise
Very Solid product – Software and firmware well updated and bug / error free
Massive databases – locations / points of interest
Ultra Sensitive Chipset and GPS receiver
Very Bright and easy to read screen – great angles and better glare reduction then similar gps’s
Sleek and Minimalist design keeps your car looking clean and cool
Very quick and responsive – menus all load laser quick and changes are always real time without lag
Strong Text-To-Speech compared to others – voice sounds very clear and natural rather then robotic and error filled like most others
Routing engine very quick and responsive – near perfect routes chosen all the time, and more quickly then other brand will calculate them
The List Goes on, and on, and on….

Con’s:

Takes a while to fully power up
No route exclusion feature or easy way to remove certain undesired roads
Rare occasions may take moments to long to reroute when missing a turn
Saved Addresses sorted by closeness to current position with inability to sort by alphabetical
Route simulation slow with no fast forward functionality

Conclusion:

Well folks, hopefully this Garmin 250 Review was pretty detailed as compared to some of the other content published on the web, and I’d love to answer any question and concerns via email.

Although I did list an amount of Negative Con’s I did so out of the interest of being unbiased and very thorough – the truth of the matter is I’d rate this a perfect 5 out of 5 after vigorous use, with the cons listed being so neglible and tiny compared to the function and utility this unit brings to the table, that it almost pained me to talk bad about it knowing that it might scare someone off of this incredible little gadget.

Nothing is perfect, especially when it comes to pricey electronics, but this is certainly as close to it as I have seen yet and has truly revolutionized by day to day living much like the introduction of the telephone or cell-phone. I’ll give it a 4.99/5 and truly hope that future visitors and customers alike will be as overwhelming satisfied as I have been with the decision to buy Garmin’s Nuvi 350 GPS personal travel assistant

» Read All 1126+ Nuvi 350 Review HERE