Garmin Nuvi 350 GPS Review
Walter Mossberg is well known for his tech reviews every Thursday in the Wall St. Journal covering all sorts of tech goodies. Well he just reviewed the Garmin Nuvi 350 travelers assistant. It's the size of a Palm handheld, includes standard personal organizer functions as well as a fully functional GPS. The GPS hardware includes the SiRF star III chipset, which is highly sensitive and draws low power. The Nuvi also has built in translation functions which helps it pass for a travelers assistant. (See our article on the launch of the Nuvi 350)
Overall Walter Mossberg thought the Nuvi was not worth its steep price of $900 (street), as it had a few shortcomings in his eyes. He may be right, but I think that he's a bit to critical in some areas.
UPDATE: The Garmin Nuvi 350 is selling at a steep discount at Amazon.com to its $900 list price. This must be in an effort to move out more Nuvi 350's in preparation for the new Garmin Nuvi 360. The new Nuvi 360 has Bluetooth hands free calling capability that allows it to work with your Bluetooth phone, as well as a few other improvements. The Bluetooth is a major one though. If you don't need this, the Garmin Nuvi 350 is definitely worth a look. The Nuvi 350 was also rated highest recently by a very popular consumer reporting magazine - I think you can guess who.
Mossberg says, "The makers of the gadgets have been trying to move them into the mainstream. GPS navigation has shown up in cellphones, personal digital assistants and fitness gear. But these new incarnations have failed to make GPS navigation a big hit with average people....On the plus side, it's really well designed and has a good, simple user interface. It does what it promises for the most part, and requires no setup or technical knowledge." This is what I have found with the recently launched Garmin devices that I have used. The automotive devices are very much targeted at the mainstream, and even the non-techies that have seen the Garmin products that I have used find them well designed and easy to use. It boils down to 3 critical areas, ease of use for the interface, accuracy of programing so that the directions are easy to follow and accurate, and finally the accuracy of the basemap. I think that Garmin does well in all three areas.
Mossberg's criticism comes from some direction sets that drew him onto the highway at rush hour to travel a few miles that would have been more easily traveled on the surface roads. He cites that the Nuvi should have known that rush hour brings terrible traffic on the highways and that they should be avoided.
"Like every other navigation system I've tested, Nuvi gave me routes that were technically accurate, but usually suboptimal, often seriously so. My favorite example was when it tried to put me on the notorious Washington Beltway, and then a second freeway, at rush hour to get me to a point I could have reached in five minutes via a local street that was maybe 200 yards past the freeway entrance.
I was able to change these instructions by selecting an option instructing Nuvi to avoid freeways, but then it would have ignored them even when they were the best option. The Nuvi includes a clock. So, why doesn't it, at the very least, have the brains to keep you off urban freeways during rush hour?"
I think he's too critical. I think that it's a long time before a handheld GPS device is going to out navigate a seasoned local for finding the very best routes around your own home town. In my experience, these occasions are few and far between when you get grossly sub-optimal directions out a unit from someone like Garmin.
As far as the rush hour issue that he brings up, I think that he may have a point here for the technology impatient folks around here. Do I want up to date traffic feeds to all GPS units? Sure I do. I think that is exactly where the industry is headed. Most units do a great job of getting you from point A to point B with accuracy and trust. A few of the high end units are starting to roll in the traffic feeds that can help get you around traffic, but at this point he technology is new and will take some time to get it highly detailed, accurate and easily usable by all.
So read his article, and make up your own mind. I don't want to spend $900 on a Nuvi either, but then again I am not a jet-setting traveler who needs one either.
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Posted by Scott Martin at December 23, 2005 8:29 AM
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