Electronics : Garmin nüvi 350 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator with Text-to-Speech

Rating: - Love my Nuvi
This Nuvi is not as sexy as the newer models but it is the best value for money around! For $200 you cannot go wrong.

The accuracy is great. The Nuvi's voice is clear and simple to follow. My only complaint is that it is only audible on the highest volume setting.

To my surprise, the Nuvi is smart enough to continue to give directions even if satellite line-of-sight is broken. For example, when using the Nuvi in Boston, the Nuvi continues to navigate me through the underground/underwater tunnels. Very impressive.

Now, I am definitely an advocate for GPS navigation systems!

---

Rating: - garmin nuvi 350 3.5inch
I love this thing! A great travel buddy. The only thing is sometimes a takes a while to acquire satellite, up to 2 - 3 minutes.

---

Rating: - The best
This is possibly the best investment I have ever made. It has prevented me from gettin lost a few times now. I highly recommend it!

---

Rating: - What happens when it breaks?
I used this GPS for a bit over a year, around 15 months during which time I drove around 23,000 miles. During that time I thought it was one of the best purchases I had made. However, recently it randomly decided to stop logging onto the satellites. I am outdoors, using it in areas I have regularly used it and previously had no problems, I have not moved hundreds of miles since the last login but it still won't get a good connection. When it does it quickly goes away and says it has lost the satellite reception (usually within 5 minutes and considering it'll take hours to connect that's just unsatisfactory). I tried talking to Garmin and while they did give me generic "try this" none of it helped and they wanted me to shell out a couple hundred dollars for them to look at it even though it has only been in use for a little over a year. I am better off just buying a new gps system than repairing it! As such I am now looking for another brand as I'm unhappy with Garmin support. That being said here's what I thought of it while it worked:

Cons:
-If you put in multiple destinations it will not sort them by what would be the most logical order to stop at them, however you put them in, that's the order you are taken to them in (not uncommon among most gps's)
-When searching for restaurants or stores it'll regularly bring up locations that aren't there, 10 minutes later you'll drive by one on a different side of town that it doesn't know exists (somewhat expected but this happened much more regularly than I expected)
-Garmin support: I really felt as though they were trying to rip me off and just get money from me without knowing what was causing the problem or how they were even going to fix it
-Map updates: while it may be somewhat standard in the industry to charge customers for regular map updates I think companies like Navigon that charge one fee for 3 entire years of updates are serving customers more justly
-Inputting addresses: CR 528 can't be input the way it would be written on a letter, if it's not exact the 350 doesn't know what you're talking about
-Time estimation for destination arrival is usually aggressive, I'd prefer it to be more conservative so when I'm on an eight hour drive I know from the start I'm going to get there in 8 hours and not 7.

Pros:
-It will get you where you're going
-Before it initially broke, the time it took to get a satellite connection was relatively short
-Customizable icons and voices (although you can't record your own or someone else's to use)
-Several different route choices: fastest, shortest ect
-Ability to program it to avoid U-turns, toll roads, and ferry's (most gps's these days all have the last two characteristics)
-Routing is typically good and sensible although there are several spots in the US where it gets a little goofy


All in all, for the price it's at now it's probably worth it, I spent around $300 but don't be surprised if Garmin doesn't care about you or the product when it breaks. Hopefully yours won't break as soon or unexpectedly. Personally, I'm done using Garmin products.

---

Rating: - GARMIN NUVI 350
Very familiar with this item as I have a NUVI 360 for work. NUVI 350 is basically same but no Bluetooth. That's OK. Got it to go w/ my wife's new car. Simple, reliable, easy to use. Still rated top budget GPS on CONSUMERSEARCH.
Amazon price of $199 was the best deal I could find.