For my birthday this year I received the Garmin Nuvi GPS, and I have to tell you that this portable GPS is the ultimate in mobile GPS systems! This small handheld GPS navigation unit can fit in your pocket or attach to a beanbag based stand (which molds to fit any place in your car or wherever else you want to put it), has the clearest screen of any I’ve seen, fantastic maps (3d or flat view), will instantly show you a list of all of the restaurants, gas stations, and such in the area wherever you are, and even will play audio books from Audible.com, and has a built in MP3 player! But the best part about the Garmin Nuvi GPS is that it’s spoken directions make sense! Now I understand why all the GPS reviews give this Garmin portable GPS system such high praise! The directions are given in exactly the way that I have always wished that a GPS unit would given them: with spoken street names (“turn right on Main Street” rather than just “turn right in 500 feet”) and it tells you what you’ll be doing next at the same time! “Turn right on Main Street” is followed by what you’ll be doing next so that you know to get in the left-hand lane, or prepare to get on the highway, or whatever!
You get your choice of many, many languages, as well as choice of voices, all built right in, and the Garmin Nuvi comes preloaded with about a bazillion restaurants, gas stations, hotels, and points of interest in every area! And because it has built-in rechargable batteries (car charger and wall charger included) you can put it in your pocket when you get out of the car! Hungry? Let the Nuvi help you find the closest restaurant of your choice – by cuisine! Traveling and tired? The Nuvi will steer you to any one of dozens of nearby hotels!
And, of course, the main reason for having the GPS – just type in an address on it’s incrediby easy to use touchscreen keyboard, and it will instantly guide you there, with that clear, easy to follow voice, giving useful directions. Oh, and it even has a “detour” button, so if you find that there is an accident or unanticipated construction in the route suggested, it will instantly route you a different way!
Finally – check this out – you can type in the names of establishments and it will find them for you! By name! Even if miles away! It even had my mechanic in there – I typed in the name of the mechanic’s (I mean, who remembers their mechanic’s address?) and it found it, filled in the address, and off we went! It also found our favourite Inn of all time, which is 3+ hours away from here! Wow!
Curious to know what others were saying about my new gift, I did a little reading of some other reviews before I struck out on the road with it:
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“My wife and I took our new friend Nuvi on a recent cross-country trip of about 1000 miles. We let Nuvi lead us all the way, including several short-cuts we wouldn’t have noticed otherwise. A restaurant we were looking for in one city was in Nuvi’s database, and our little friend took us right to it. We hadn’t made hotel reservations in that city, so Nuvi gave us the name and phone number of several nearby motels. We called ahead, found one that had room for us, and Nuvi took us right there. It’s a great little machine,” says one reviewer (and they just wrote this yesterday, on my birthday! How auspicious!)
“Simply wonderful. It has all the characteristics that I was looking for: 1) VERY compact — easily able to fit in a breast pocket 2) Text-to-Speech — announces proper street names, not just “turn left in 500 feet”; radically reduces how much you need to look at the screen to figure out the real instructions; wouldn’t own a GPS unit wihtout this 3) Bright Screen — readable in virtually every situation AND Faster location of the GPS satellites. This turns out to be quite important in day-to-day use. In the other systems, it wasn’t unusual that we could be driving for a couple minutes before it located the satellites and could give us directions. With this unit, the satellites are located almost as quickly as the unit fully starts up.”
But perhaps my favourite review was this one:
“I love my Garmin Nuvi. I refer to it as my new boyfriend, although I have a husband of 21 years, he does not give good directions. It is easy to use for technologically challenged people like myself, easy to see and easy to hear.”
And she’s right. It’s so incredibly easy to set up that I was up and running in under two minutes. Seriously!
You can check out the Garmin Nuvi here. I tried hard not to look at the price (because it was a gift) while reading the reviews, but I couldn’t help but notice that there is a fantastic sale on it right now at Amazon.
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Hi, I dont know if this is the place to leave a posting of this type, but I live in the uk, and I want to buy my husband the sexiest, best handheld gps there is out there…but Im confused there are so many! His priority would be all the techy stuff (because hes a gps programmer for ships…so knows lots about it all) rather than the way it looks, but on the other hand hes also an avid canoe-er, so it probably needs to be waterproof and rugged too. There are just so many to choose from. Weve always had garmins in the past – dont now if that makes a difference with software etc? Arghghghg – help!