Home > Consumer Reviews > Garmin Nuvi 350 GPS Navigation System With European Mapping

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.

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

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.

Very good GPS unit,aligible for those who travel by car, or by foot. Although pretty acurate and quick GPS functions, it is advisable that you download the latest firmware upgrade from Garmin. Good memory of 700 mb.The only problem is the battery.By foot, with its original battery, it stands up to 2-3 hours, wich is very little for a good walk.

This Little GPS from Garmin in more than just a very reliable route finder/navigator , it comes with a specially coated 3.5" anti-glare screen with crisp, clear easy to read mapping,directions and function buttons. This unit has a rechargable lithium ion batteries which without external power will last at least 5 hours.Great for finding Places of Intrest any were in Europe. A great feature as you can sit in the comfort of your own home view the country you are thinking of traveling to on holiday and locate all nearby attractions,hotels,restaurants etc. Once you have chosen your accomidation and booked your holiday It will literaly show you its exact location and answer (visualy) some of the questions the travel agent may avoid. Is in near a main road ? is it near anything ? in fact you can virtualy find all attractions it is near and when in that country it will direct you turn by turn to your destination.
The Nuvi 350 takes 4 hours max to charge but also works directly from a 12/24volt socket in your car via the supplyed cable (the mains charger cable is also supplyed with the Nuvi 350 but not the Nuvi 310).
The 350 will speak both directions(ie turn left in 300 meters) and the road/street names (turn right into Hill street)allowing you to keep full concentration on the road. Voices are changable Male/Female
One of the first things I tryed was to confuse it. I planed a route from my house some 3 miles to a point that I knew I could get to using 3 or 4 different methods. On the journey I purposely ignored a request to turn right knowing there was another 300mts further down the road. The Nuvi 350 announced recalculating once and the told me to take the next right into Ballyblack Road. I was extremly impressed with the speed of the calulation. Again later in the journey I took a wrong turn and again the nuvi came up trumps, this time it got me back on track via 3 additional roads. Alough this was a slightly longer route it got me to my destination. This is a real confidence booster for the times you really do miss a turn in an unfamiliar area.
On that point, at any time during your travels you come across heavy traffic,roadworks or any other form of delay all you need do is hit detour and the unit calculates quickly ( within 5 seconds) altrnate roads to avoid the promlem and returns you to you originl route as soon as it can, Amazing and very usful.
From the comfort of your home you can serch any location covered in Europe, zoom in & out and pan using your finger by touching the map and draging it. The alphabetical search itself is siplicity as well. Just start typing a street,town,country and when the unit has enough information (usually 3 to 4 letters)it displays all candidates for you to scroll through an choose from.
The Nuvi 350 is quite slim Around 20mm and this is were it beats the TomTom One Europe (which wold be its direct compaison) Hands down.The nuvi make the TomTom look like it needs a crash diet pronto. Alough the two units are much the same size in the hieght and width stakes the TomTom is over twice the depth at it widest point and is not something you can simplly slip in you shirt pocket or indeed your average handbag.
The Nuvi 350 covers all the basis such as full postcode search , search by entering country,town,street & house number & serch via entering text for example to finding a place of intrest.
The Nuvi 350 also has a very extensive list of Points of Intrest (POI) covering anyting from Hotels,guesthouses,airports,ports,train stations (including undergrounds),cinemas,thaters,hospitals,atm's,petrol stations,car parks,Theme parks,zoos,arenas,Landmarks,bars,nightclubs,golf courses,fitness centres,leasure centres,shopping by catagory the list just keeps going. This list includes both address's & phone numbers for all the stored POI's and this list is updatable via the Garmin website.
For me this unit is worth the asking price for tis alone. It really is like a personal assistant.
Other features include an MP3 player that via a computer you can download your favourie mp3's alough I will say that the units speaker is fine with voice instructions during navigation its not great for mp3. It also has a jpeg picture viewer which you can also drag & drop photos directly from your computer to its internal memory or onto an SD card that you can insert into the unit itself. there is also a currency converter,world clock with up to 5 viewable times on a single screen, a calculator, an audio book reader and a bilingual dictionary.
Finally you can add favourites from any of your searches, from the POI's or simplly by going to favourites and using the store facility at an point. You the can then go to favourites select the one you want and hit Go,the Nuvi 350 will direct you right there. Home has a location all of its own in favourites so no mater where you are hit home, 10 seconds later the unit anounces your first direction to take you there from anywhere in the UK or Ireland. Its that simple. Its nearly worth actualy getting lost for !