Garmin Nuvi 350 Personal Travel Assistant Will Get You There

The Garmin Nuvi 350 Personal Travel Assistant is a compact and sleek Global Positioning System (GPS) device that comes preloaded with maps for North America. The Nuvi 350 GPS has a great receiver that quickly connects with the global satellites once the unit is turned on. The device provides voice directions in addition to the directions display on its screen.

The package includes the unit, preloaded City Navigator software that covers North America NT (full unlock), vehicle suction cup mount, AC charger, carrying case, vehicle power cable, dashboard disk, USB interface cable and quick reference guide. The Nuvi 350 also offers the optional FM traffic receiver that provides traffic services in select cities where the coverage is available. It has a slot for an optional SD storage card that allows you to store MP3 and JPEG files to use with the player and picture viewer. It comes with a rechargeable lithium-ion battery that will last up to 8 hours on a single charge. The unit has the ability to add additional maps.

The unit comes ready to go and operates right out the box. Once it is connected, mounted on the dashboard, and your destination entered, you will be greeted by a pleasant female voice called "Jill" that will give turn-by-turn instructions. The voice-enabled feature can be turned off if you choose. There are also several other voices in different languages that can be selected instead of "Jill." Users are presented with a touch screen that displays 3 choices: "Where to?", "View Map", and "Travel Kit". There are also two other selections on the right-hand side to change the settings and make adjustments to the screen.

Under the Where To menu bar, users have choices to select many of the preloaded choices for food, lodging, fuel, attractions, shopping, hospitals, and many other choices. You can also select cities and it will offer a list of nearby cities but you also have the option to touch the Spell button and spell out the name of your desired location.

A nice feature of the Spell screen is the ability to enter the first few letters of a place, hit the Done button and it will offer a list of cities that begin with those letters. One noticeable quirk to the list is that for places with duplicate names, it does not always display them alphabetically by state. For example, after listing several cities in different states with the name of Jackson, it listed Jackson, AL well after it listed several other Jackson's in TX, ID, and MT. However, this is a minor issue and it is easy to scroll through the list to find the desired city. The listing also displays the mileage from your current location to that city. The distance is "as the crow flies" and does not give the exact road distance. The route mileage is accomplished once you select your destination and the Nuvi 350 calculates the route.

On the View Map? screen, the Nuvi 350 shows the map in either 3-D or 2-D views. The view can be changed by selecting Map on the settings screen and choosing map detail. On this screen, you can choose 3-D view, Track Up, and North Up. The latter two choices will give you a 2-D view, with Track Up providing a view with the car indicator always moving upward despite the direction you are going; or the North Up view where the map will always be oriented with north being up.

The Map screen displays your directions across the top of the screen, your arrival time on the bottom left, and the distance to your next turn on the bottom right. If you tap the screen on the bottom left, it will display another screen that simulates your dashboard with driving information such as an odometer, current speed, average speed, maximum speed, moving and stopped time. All of these readings can be reset from this screen if desired. Going back to the map screen and tapping the screen on the bottom right will display the turn-by-turn directions with times and distances. There are controls on the Map screen to allow you to zoom in or out on the map. If you use your finger to move the screen, it will allow you to scroll the map to view adjacent areas.

The Travel Kit screen provides access to other features of the Nuvi 350 such as the Language Guide, Travel Guide, SaversGuide, MP3 Player, Audible Book Player, Picture Viewer, World Clock and Currency Converter. All of these features are fully functional except the Language Guide, Travel Guide, and SaversGuide. While the Language Guide offers some samples of word pronunciation, the full featured version of it and the Travel Guide and SaversGuide must be purchased via the Garmin website. The MP3 player has a few sample tracks and users can add their own to the unit by using the included USB cable and download songs via a PC. The Nuvi 350 plays only MP3 files and does not support iTunes M4A/M4P files. The Picture Viewer works with JPEG files. The unit comes with about 2 Gigs of storage space but only about 500 Mb are available. In order to get full usage of your music or picture collection, adding an SD storage card is essential.

As an avid traveler and geography buff, I have been very impressed with the Garmin Nuvi 350 GPS unit. I have used other Garmin GPS units and the Nuvi 350 is consistent with the quality and accuracy found in their other devices. I would highly recommend the unit and suggest comparing prices on the Internet to find the best deal.