Garmin GPS Review

A compact pocket sized travel assistant, with colorful clear wide screen, traffic allerts, and preloaded North American and Europe maps. On Nuvi 670 is also included with a ood database of hotels, restaurants, ATM, and more. With wireless bluetooth technoloagy, you can connect it with your phone so you can talk freely while you drive the car.

The Nuvi670 GPS Navigator and Personal Travel Assistant builds upon the best selling features of the Nuvi family while adding preloaded map coverage of North America and Europe. The Nuvi670 comes preloaded with highly detailed City Navigator NT road maps for North America and Europe. This map database features points of interest, including hotels, restaurants, gas stations, ATMs and attractions. The map data is provided by NAVTEQ, a world leader in premium quality mapping. Other features include a super-bright, 4.3-inch widescreen display for improved map viewing, POI lookup and MP3/audible book playback. The built-in FM transmitter allows the user to wirelessly transmit audio through the vehicle’s stereo. Nuvi670 also offers Bluetooth wireless technology for hands-free calling when paired with compatible phones. This Nuvi 670 is almost identically compared to Garmin Nuvi 660.

Garmin Nuvi 670 Features:

• 4.3-inch, touch-screen TFT LCD display with 480 x 272 pixels of resolution
• Voice announcements, alerts for traffic-related tie-ups, and maps for all of North America and Europe
• Bluetooth wireless technology for hands-free calling, and USB interface for loading data
• Includes MP3 player, picture viewer, world clock, currency and measurement converters, calculator and more
• Weighs 6.2 ounces and measures 4.9 x 2.9 x 0.9 inches (W x H x D)

Garmin Nuvi 670 Specifications:

• Model number: 010-00540-30
• Receiver: High-sensitivity WAAS-enabled GPS receiver
• Storage: Preprogrammed with City Navigator NT, providing street-level detail and addresses, plus listings of restaurants, hotels, ATMs, etc. throughout North America, Europe
• Interface: USB
• Mounting: Vehicle suction cup mount
• Locking: Garmin Lock, an anti-theft feature
• Battery: 3 to 7 hours of battery life depending on use
• Card Slot: SD card slot
• Multimedia: Built in Travel Kit includes MP3 player with sample MP3s, audio books, picture viewer, world clock, currency and measurement converters, calculator and more
• Voice: Voice announces streets by name
• Wireless: Bluetooth wireless technology for hands-free calling
• FM traffic receiver: 3-month free trial subscription included in North American version; lifetime subscription for UK and 3-month trial subscription for France included in European version
• Display size: 4.3 diagonal
• Display Type: Choose 2D or 3D maps
• Display resolution: 480 x 272 pixels
• Screen: Fingertip touch-screen
• Dimensions: 4.9 x 2.9 x 0.9 inches (WxHxD)
• Weight: 6.2 ounces
• In the Box: nuvi 370, Preloaded City Navigator NT North America, FM traffic receiver, vehicle suction cup mount, leather carrying case, USB interface cable, AC charger, dashboard disk, quick reference guide, owner’s manual on disk.

Customer Review: My First GPS Navigator
I picked Garmin because their web site gave better info on their products than other manufacturers. The size and shape of the Nuvi sold me over their PDA-based products. This 670 has a larger screen than the 370 and has the pre-loaded European maps which the 660 model lacks.

The unit has worked properly right out of the box and even acquired the GPS signals inside our house.

The maps display clearly in both 3D and 2D views, with detail appropriate to the level of zoom, which can vary from tens of meters out to showing the whole continent. Mounting the unit in the center of the windshield just under the mirror reduces the obstruction and places it where one is already used to looking. As expected, full sunshine compromises visibility even with backlighting set to 100%. At night, reducing the backlighting to 50% still gives a brighter image than the car’s instruments.

The pre-loaded maps include some fairly out-of-the-way restaurants and hotels that I’ve visited before. Searches for points of interest can start from other locations, so you can get directions to an out-of-town location that you haven’t already visited and saved.

Calculation of routes works well with the caveat that the the unit can’t know that I prefer to use a scenic route or to turn onto busy main streets at a light.

You can select from several voices. I first picked a classy British lady to read directions, and was quite happy with the result. However, her pronunciation of street names once we got to Quebec make me laugh. Picking the French voice cleared that up, but now I can’t wait to hear what that one will do to English place names.

I’ve had no use yet for the Bluetooth and FM TMC traffic features. Ditto the so-called “must have” features such as MP3 player, audio book player, JPEG picture viewer, currency and unit converters, and extra-cost SD cards. However, I do find the world clock feature, displaying up to five time-zones, useful. The MP3 player is just that; CDs ripped in .wma format won’t play.

Overall, I’m satisfied with the purchase. I rationalize the expense (maps only cost a few dollars) by noting that, although I can plot out a route on a map, a few minutes into the trip, I’ll have forgotten the directions. Write them on paper? What, and miss all this fun?

Customer Review: Good, but with some surprising old Garmin faults
This is a brief initial review, see lower down for more

I bought this to replace a Tomtom Navigator 5 system running on a Dell x51v with the external Tomtom Bluetooth receiver. The major issues with that were a terrible lack of POIs, terrible time and distance predictions, poor routing and no control of the map view.

First thing I noticed on opening the box is that the mains charger comes with adapters for all the countries I regularly visit, so I clicked the US two pin adapter in place, plugged it in then plugged the lead into the 670. It came on immediately and said it was loading maps. A few seconds later it showed a map. It was already locked on! That’s a huge advance from the old days when it took at least 4 minutes for my GPSIII+ to find the satellites. I am in the middle of the top floor of a large open plan building, the position shown was accurate.

Without looking at the manual I got rid of the touch beep, bound it to my bluetooth phone, set the timezone and voice and set it up to navigate to a restaurant for lunch. All in under 15 minutes with time out for work.

In the car I mounted the unit to the windshield and plugged in the power conenction, it immediately lit up green to show it was connected to the traffic system. I was expecting to have to register and sign up for a service agreement, instead it came up and showed it was already enabled with 3 months to run. A few minutes later I looked at the traffic detail map and saw it already showed the local problem areas. Very cool.

Apparently the 2.60+ firmware handles 4Gb SD cards so I ordered one and look forward to trying the MP3 player.

I tested the POI list by looking for gast stations and particular stores in the area, it had everything I knew of and more, so I am very hopeful at this stage.

I’m looking forward to trying the hands free too, all we did so far is dial another cell phone in the car and laugh about the echo we got. Sound quality and volume seemed good. I’m going for a 1500 mile road trip to Utah this weekend, so I’ll update after that.

1685 miles later…

Garmin certainly has accurate maps for CA, NV and UT, they seemed very up to date. The option to “avoid dirt roads” was especially welcome and saved me some nasty miles that the direct route would have taken on unpaved roads. Routing was mostly good, but could do with some more skepticism on the choice of rural state roads. I was happy to take route 88 into the Sierras from the bay area because I was on a road trip, but I80 is probably 50% faster.

The one significant bug is a holdover from previous Garmin products like the GPS V, it is also an issue it shares with Tomtom. While heading down an interstate, let’s take I880 from Oakland to Fremont as an example, with many miles of straight ahead to go, the 670 will direct you off at a ramp, it likes to take the I238 ramp towards Livermore, and then immediately back on. This is amusing to a local, but it could be very confusing to a visitor. It did the same to me in 395 south through Reno last night, that did confuse me. This is a bug that should have been eradicated years ago.

Another issue with the GPS V is still present in the 670. When recalculating the map display is suspended, so right when you need to see what’s going on you have a useless map. When routing resumes it gives the verbal instructions before repainting the map. Not good. In contrast the Tomtom always recalculates silently and just flashes up the new route. The Tomtom never leaves you with a dead screen. I don’t like to be told every time the route is recalculated, when I go the wrong way, for whatever reason, there’s no brownie points to be gained telling me off. At the very least there should be the option to disable this ‘feature’.

POI selection is absolutely outstanding, at least compared to other things I have used. It makes the Tomtom implementation look like amateur night. You can select the POI by type, gas stations, shops and restaurants are my favorites, then either go straight to the list of hit SPELL and type in part of the name. It will match on any part of the name, so you can include partial names, even partial words, and it will still show the matches. Once you have your list you can select by address, direction and distance, or see the POI on a map. The direction changes from compass direction when stationary to relative direction when moving, so you don’t have to waste your time looking at gas stations you passed twenty miles ago.

I did have one POI which can obviously never have been true, the Shell station near Lohi, UT has obviously always been a house. But mostly the POIs are very accurate.

It is disappointing that you can no longer select different on-screen data, I liked that with the old units and miss it. That’s a big step backwards. I want to know time-to-next, time-to-go, course, altitude and other things that used to be offered.

There is a weird issue with map detail and zoom level, small roads appear and disappear as you zoom in and out. Let’s be clear, a small road that is visible on a small scale (big area) disappears as you zoom in and then only reappears at some of the highest scales (most detailed) when you can’t see any context, or even if it’s actually the same road.

In general though, the automatic map scaling is very good, the 3-D view shifts to a track up view as it zooms out, this addresses my major gripe with Tomtom in that it allows you to keep your route in context and see how you are getting on in the big picture. As the view zooms in it adds a lot of street detail, much much better than Tomtom.

The time to destination predictions remain excellent. Outstanding. It was within minutes on the driving time over a distance of hundreds of miles on each occasion. Tomtom is often pessimistic by 50%, totally inadequate for planning purposes.

Is it worth it? Is it as good as it should be? For me, no and no. For $850 I can get a decent laptop, that’s a lot more hardware, so that’s not where the money went. They are still not addressing their software issues, they have faulty algorithms that have been unmodified for years and inherited from old products. As a software engineer I am disappointed but not surprised. Near work it will still sometimes tell me to take three right turns instead of an entirely legal left.

But it is very good. Garmin’s mechanical people have done a great job, this is obviously a class device. But the software and systems people aren’t as good.

Overall? If I could edit the rating I’d drop at a point or two now. But I still haven’t seen better. At these prices it’s not like there are many people who are willing to try them all.

Contrasting my own companies attitude to software errors (we are one of the biggest suppliers in the cell phone, commercial radio, wireless networking and many other fields), we would not allow even a mildly irritating bug to remain in one of our products for years. So I am wondering if I should return this on principal. I’ll try support first, in the past that didn’t achieve much.

Compare Price for Nuvi 670 or Search for More GPS

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Tags: review, gps, shopping, electronic, gps review, garmin gps, garmin gps review, garmin

A compact pocket sized travel assistant, with colorful clear wide screen, traffic allerts, and preloaded North American and Europe maps. On Nuvi 670 is also included with a ood database of hotels, restaurants, ATM, and more. With wireless bluetooth technoloagy, you can connect it with your phone so you can talk freely while you drive the car.

The Nuvi670 GPS Navigator and Personal Travel Assistant builds upon the best selling features of the Nuvi family while adding preloaded map coverage of North America and Europe. The Nuvi670 comes preloaded with highly detailed City Navigator NT road maps for North America and Europe. This map database features points of interest, including hotels, restaurants, gas stations, ATMs and attractions. The map data is provided by NAVTEQ, a world leader in premium quality mapping. Other features include a super-bright, 4.3-inch widescreen display for improved map viewing, POI lookup and MP3/audible book playback. The built-in FM transmitter allows the user to wirelessly transmit audio through the vehicle’s stereo. Nuvi670 also offers Bluetooth wireless technology for hands-free calling when paired with compatible phones. This Nuvi 670 is almost identically compared to Garmin Nuvi 660.

Garmin Nuvi 670 Features:

• 4.3-inch, touch-screen TFT LCD display with 480 x 272 pixels of resolution
• Voice announcements, alerts for traffic-related tie-ups, and maps for all of North America and Europe
• Bluetooth wireless technology for hands-free calling, and USB interface for loading data
• Includes MP3 player, picture viewer, world clock, currency and measurement converters, calculator and more
• Weighs 6.2 ounces and measures 4.9 x 2.9 x 0.9 inches (W x H x D)

Garmin Nuvi 670 Specifications:

• Model number: 010-00540-30
• Receiver: High-sensitivity WAAS-enabled GPS receiver
• Storage: Preprogrammed with City Navigator NT, providing street-level detail and addresses, plus listings of restaurants, hotels, ATMs, etc. throughout North America, Europe
• Interface: USB
• Mounting: Vehicle suction cup mount
• Locking: Garmin Lock, an anti-theft feature
• Battery: 3 to 7 hours of battery life depending on use
• Card Slot: SD card slot
• Multimedia: Built in Travel Kit includes MP3 player with sample MP3s, audio books, picture viewer, world clock, currency and measurement converters, calculator and more
• Voice: Voice announces streets by name
• Wireless: Bluetooth wireless technology for hands-free calling
• FM traffic receiver: 3-month free trial subscription included in North American version; lifetime subscription for UK and 3-month trial subscription for France included in European version
• Display size: 4.3 diagonal
• Display Type: Choose 2D or 3D maps
• Display resolution: 480 x 272 pixels
• Screen: Fingertip touch-screen
• Dimensions: 4.9 x 2.9 x 0.9 inches (WxHxD)
• Weight: 6.2 ounces
• In the Box: nuvi 370, Preloaded City Navigator NT North America, FM traffic receiver, vehicle suction cup mount, leather carrying case, USB interface cable, AC charger, dashboard disk, quick reference guide, owner’s manual on disk.

Customer Review: My First GPS Navigator
I picked Garmin because their web site gave better info on their products than other manufacturers. The size and shape of the Nuvi sold me over their PDA-based products. This 670 has a larger screen than the 370 and has the pre-loaded European maps which the 660 model lacks.

The unit has worked properly right out of the box and even acquired the GPS signals inside our house.

The maps display clearly in both 3D and 2D views, with detail appropriate to the level of zoom, which can vary from tens of meters out to showing the whole continent. Mounting the unit in the center of the windshield just under the mirror reduces the obstruction and places it where one is already used to looking. As expected, full sunshine compromises visibility even with backlighting set to 100%. At night, reducing the backlighting to 50% still gives a brighter image than the car’s instruments.

The pre-loaded maps include some fairly out-of-the-way restaurants and hotels that I’ve visited before. Searches for points of interest can start from other locations, so you can get directions to an out-of-town location that you haven’t already visited and saved.

Calculation of routes works well with the caveat that the the unit can’t know that I prefer to use a scenic route or to turn onto busy main streets at a light.

You can select from several voices. I first picked a classy British lady to read directions, and was quite happy with the result. However, her pronunciation of street names once we got to Quebec make me laugh. Picking the French voice cleared that up, but now I can’t wait to hear what that one will do to English place names.

I’ve had no use yet for the Bluetooth and FM TMC traffic features. Ditto the so-called “must have” features such as MP3 player, audio book player, JPEG picture viewer, currency and unit converters, and extra-cost SD cards. However, I do find the world clock feature, displaying up to five time-zones, useful. The MP3 player is just that; CDs ripped in .wma format won’t play.

Overall, I’m satisfied with the purchase. I rationalize the expense (maps only cost a few dollars) by noting that, although I can plot out a route on a map, a few minutes into the trip, I’ll have forgotten the directions. Write them on paper? What, and miss all this fun?

Customer Review: Good, but with some surprising old Garmin faults
This is a brief initial review, see lower down for more

I bought this to replace a Tomtom Navigator 5 system running on a Dell x51v with the external Tomtom Bluetooth receiver. The major issues with that were a terrible lack of POIs, terrible time and distance predictions, poor routing and no control of the map view.

First thing I noticed on opening the box is that the mains charger comes with adapters for all the countries I regularly visit, so I clicked the US two pin adapter in place, plugged it in then plugged the lead into the 670. It came on immediately and said it was loading maps. A few seconds later it showed a map. It was already locked on! That’s a huge advance from the old days when it took at least 4 minutes for my GPSIII+ to find the satellites. I am in the middle of the top floor of a large open plan building, the position shown was accurate.

Without looking at the manual I got rid of the touch beep, bound it to my bluetooth phone, set the timezone and voice and set it up to navigate to a restaurant for lunch. All in under 15 minutes with time out for work.

In the car I mounted the unit to the windshield and plugged in the power conenction, it immediately lit up green to show it was connected to the traffic system. I was expecting to have to register and sign up for a service agreement, instead it came up and showed it was already enabled with 3 months to run. A few minutes later I looked at the traffic detail map and saw it already showed the local problem areas. Very cool.

Apparently the 2.60+ firmware handles 4Gb SD cards so I ordered one and look forward to trying the MP3 player.

I tested the POI list by looking for gast stations and particular stores in the area, it had everything I knew of and more, so I am very hopeful at this stage.

I’m looking forward to trying the hands free too, all we did so far is dial another cell phone in the car and laugh about the echo we got. Sound quality and volume seemed good. I’m going for a 1500 mile road trip to Utah this weekend, so I’ll update after that.

1685 miles later…

Garmin certainly has accurate maps for CA, NV and UT, they seemed very up to date. The option to “avoid dirt roads” was especially welcome and saved me some nasty miles that the direct route would have taken on unpaved roads. Routing was mostly good, but could do with some more skepticism on the choice of rural state roads. I was happy to take route 88 into the Sierras from the bay area because I was on a road trip, but I80 is probably 50% faster.

The one significant bug is a holdover from previous Garmin products like the GPS V, it is also an issue it shares with Tomtom. While heading down an interstate, let’s take I880 from Oakland to Fremont as an example, with many miles of straight ahead to go, the 670 will direct you off at a ramp, it likes to take the I238 ramp towards Livermore, and then immediately back on. This is amusing to a local, but it could be very confusing to a visitor. It did the same to me in 395 south through Reno last night, that did confuse me. This is a bug that should have been eradicated years ago.

Another issue with the GPS V is still present in the 670. When recalculating the map display is suspended, so right when you need to see what’s going on you have a useless map. When routing resumes it gives the verbal instructions before repainting the map. Not good. In contrast the Tomtom always recalculates silently and just flashes up the new route. The Tomtom never leaves you with a dead screen. I don’t like to be told every time the route is recalculated, when I go the wrong way, for whatever reason, there’s no brownie points to be gained telling me off. At the very least there should be the option to disable this ‘feature’.

POI selection is absolutely outstanding, at least compared to other things I have used. It makes the Tomtom implementation look like amateur night. You can select the POI by type, gas stations, shops and restaurants are my favorites, then either go straight to the list of hit SPELL and type in part of the name. It will match on any part of the name, so you can include partial names, even partial words, and it will still show the matches. Once you have your list you can select by address, direction and distance, or see the POI on a map. The direction changes from compass direction when stationary to relative direction when moving, so you don’t have to waste your time looking at gas stations you passed twenty miles ago.

I did have one POI which can obviously never have been true, the Shell station near Lohi, UT has obviously always been a house. But mostly the POIs are very accurate.

It is disappointing that you can no longer select different on-screen data, I liked that with the old units and miss it. That’s a big step backwards. I want to know time-to-next, time-to-go, course, altitude and other things that used to be offered.

There is a weird issue with map detail and zoom level, small roads appear and disappear as you zoom in and out. Let’s be clear, a small road that is visible on a small scale (big area) disappears as you zoom in and then only reappears at some of the highest scales (most detailed) when you can’t see any context, or even if it’s actually the same road.

In general though, the automatic map scaling is very good, the 3-D view shifts to a track up view as it zooms out, this addresses my major gripe with Tomtom in that it allows you to keep your route in context and see how you are getting on in the big picture. As the view zooms in it adds a lot of street detail, much much better than Tomtom.

The time to destination predictions remain excellent. Outstanding. It was within minutes on the driving time over a distance of hundreds of miles on each occasion. Tomtom is often pessimistic by 50%, totally inadequate for planning purposes.

Is it worth it? Is it as good as it should be? For me, no and no. For $850 I can get a decent laptop, that’s a lot more hardware, so that’s not where the money went. They are still not addressing their software issues, they have faulty algorithms that have been unmodified for years and inherited from old products. As a software engineer I am disappointed but not surprised. Near work it will still sometimes tell me to take three right turns instead of an entirely legal left.

But it is very good. Garmin’s mechanical people have done a great job, this is obviously a class device. But the software and systems people aren’t as good.

Overall? If I could edit the rating I’d drop at a point or two now. But I still haven’t seen better. At these prices it’s not like there are many people who are willing to try them all.

Contrasting my own companies attitude to software errors (we are one of the biggest suppliers in the cell phone, commercial radio, wireless networking and many other fields), we would not allow even a mildly irritating bug to remain in one of our products for years. So I am wondering if I should return this on principal. I’ll try support first, in the past that didn’t achieve much.

Compare Price for Nuvi 670 or Search for More GPS

Bookmark to:

Tags: review, gps, shopping, electronic, gps review, garmin gps, garmin gps review, garmin