Garmin StreetPilot c320 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator
by Garmin
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Garmin StreetPilot c320 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator
Customer Review: Very pleasantly surprised
Summary: 5 Stars
I tend to be quite critical when it comes to products, but I have to say, the C320 blew me away. This easily ranks as one of the best products I have ever bought. I have had it for several weeks now and it still brings a smile to my face when I use it.
First off, the touch screen is a MUST for this type of product. Initially I thought a button interface would be OK, but I was very wrong. There are many "hot spots" on the screen, and the device always seems to know what I want when I touch a certain location. This ease of use is simply unobtainable with buttons. Whatever you do, if you are in the market for an in-car navigation system, get a touch screen.
On to specifics. The unit is very well made and has a quality feel to it. Setup took some time - the desktop companion application was not as easy to use as the device itself - but I did manage to load up maps for Maine, Vermont, NH, Mass, Conn and RI in the provided 128MB card. NY would not fit in the remaining space. My biggest complaint so far is that the database is not up-to-date. We were looking for a highly regarded seafood restaurant which it had in its database. We blindly followed its directions and it led us to a vacant lot where the restaurant used to be. There have also been one or two times when it suddenly blurted "off route - recalculating" while we were traveling along a straightaway on a divided highway. Turns out the highways had been re-routed a little and the device was still tracking the old path. I went to the web to download updates for the maps but could not find any for the C320 (the one I found said excludes 320). I don't know why that would be, but I am hoping an update will be available soon (or, if already available, hopefully I will stumble across it ;-).
Aside from the occassional map discrepancies this product is perfect. The voice directions are excellent, clear and timely. I love how it gives you a heads up "keep right, exit right in 1.5 miles" and when you are approaching a fork in the road it always tells you well in advance to "keep left or keep right". The database is amazing. And I can't emphasize enough its ease of use. The windshield mount works well, but the provided dashboard mount is a permanent fixture. I have ordered a different dashboard mount (removable) for my other car so I can easily move the device between vehicles.
The smallish 128MB card is more than big enough to hold several states. There are several advantages that I can see to the solid state memory of the C320 vs the hard drive capacity of the C330. First, searches are faster because they are searching significantly less data. Second, battery life is better. Third, I expect the C320 to be more reliable than the C330. Lastly, it's hundreds cheaper! If capacity is a problem, 1GB cards are $60 on sale, and would presumably have enough space for at least half the country (6 states in 128MB, 1GB is 8 times larger).
If you are in the market for a nav system you cannot go wrong with this device. Highly recommended.
Customer Review: All the good stuff but.....
Summary: 3 Stars
I won't go over all the specs and positives, because others have gone through all of that and there is no need for repeating. The Garmin is everything great that other reviews are mentioning, but I'm just going to review the battery issue I have continued to have on this Garmin.... After having the GARMIN c320 for about 9 months or so, i had the problem of the battery not working on it's own (the unit would only work when sitting on the car charger mount. Even though at times it would say something like "charging the battery" in it's off setting, it was NOT charging the battery (since when taken off the mount it would not work at all). I procrastinated for about 3 months, because I didn't take the unit out of my car much so it wasn't such a big issue, but almost on the last day of warranty, I called and just had it replaced. Customer service for Garmin is great. There's no convincing or "did you plug the unit in" sort of questions.. they just took your word for what was happening and replaced the unit. I had the second unit for about 4 months or so before the same battery situation happened again. This time I was out of the 1 yr original warranty and the 90d warranty of the replacement... but customer service were more than willing to switch it out again.. (great customer service, very flexible).
With this 3rd unit, it didn't take more than a couple months for it to have the battery issue again. I've been too cheap to buy another unit, and there isn't really a reason, since this one does work when it's connected to the car charger mount.
The main inconveniences of this battery not working is that it seems to lose it's satelites since it's a dead unit when the car isn't on. It seemed before that with the battery working, the unit connects immediately to the satellites and maps your way very quickly. When I turn my car on now.. the unit will be show the time when I had turned the car off and will take anywhere from 3 minutes to 15 minutes to connect to satellites. There have been times that i've had to turn it off and on (usually around the 10 minute mark) to see if maybe it was "frozen" or something.....
BTW, I'm sure the locating satellites delay issues is a problem with the unit, since I'm in a very urban city (Los Angeles) and it did not have these problems prior to the battery issue.
Oh, one other issue, in downtown Los Angeles, it gets very confused...(maybe due to streets with freeway overpasses; though this happens when i'm not near the freeway too)....so even when it has mapped a nice set of directions and I'm following them, out of nowhere it'll recalculate and ask me to make some turns when the location is straight ahead...
Also, there are several locations where it will tell me to take an inconvenient onramp to a freeway where there is a perfectly good one, one block ahead on my right (make sense?).
I've still had the unit for 3 years or so... so I'm not entirely unhappy with it,...
Customer Review: A great machine for the geographically challenged, at a decent price.
Summary: 4 Stars
Pro's:
*Quick, accurate real-time directions.
*Accurate, constantly updated Estimated Arrival Time (Very handy!)
*Clear, multi-lingual voice commands and graphics.
*Quick re-calculations when driver diverges from course.
*If you buy a 1GB SD card (separately), you can load all of North America, still for less total cost than the next model up (c330), which comes with North America pre-loaded. Fly to the other side of the country, hop in a rental car, and start navigating like a native! (I'm not sure, but it seems you could buy and load CD maps for Europe or other places, too.)
*Lots of "Points of Interest," so you can always find a nearby restaurant, parking lot, gas station, motel, etc. (Great for long road trips in unfamiliar territory.)
Cons:
*Not Mac-compatible; you need (or need to borrow, as we did) a PC, with a DVD drive, in order to load the maps onto the SD card, and it took several hours to load all of North America. (We took our friends out to dinner while we highjacked their computer. It was just finishing up when we returned.) All the more reason to get a 1GB card. You don't want to have to do this every time you travel to a new region.
*This model doesn't have the capability to take into account real-time traffic conditions.
*Some touch-screen menus (e.g. finding a specific type of cuisine nearby) take some time and concentration to navigate through, so you should either pull over or have your co-pilot do the button-pushing.
Ever since I was a kid, I've fantasized about a map that would show where I was at any given moment. (This was long before Harry Potter's "Marauder's Map.") I've never been very good with directions, and I've spent a good portion of my driving life wandering aimlessly and making poor directional choices. The advent of Mapquest was a great leap forward, but once I'd made a wrong turn, the printed-out turn-by-turn directions were rendered useless. Enter the Garmin Street Pilot! Now, I still miss turns, but that's generally my fault for paying attention to the radio, instead of the machine's clearly spoken instructions--e.g. "[Bing!] In 200 feet, exit right.....[Bing!] Exit right," or the map's clearly drawn, constantly updated 3D map. The difference is that this little miracle patiently, and quickly, recalculates a new route based on my current bearings. This is also the case if I intentionally take a different route than "she" tells me. For a while, she'll encourage me to "Make a U-turn when possible," until she calculates a quicker way to go in the current direction. (You can always turn the volume down with the manual volume knob if you don't want to be badgered any more.)
I've been thrilled with the Garmin StreetPilot c320. It's easy to use, and does everything I want it to. The only thing keeping it from 5 stars is its incompatability with Mac.
Customer Review: Stellar performer. Competes robustly with built-in navi.
Summary: 5 Stars
I love this unit. Like everyone else, bought the 1G card so that I could load all maps. It worked fine.
I then had the opporunity to get a 150x 512M OCZ card for $8, so I bought it to see if 150x made a difference. I DO think it's faster although I haven't actually conducted time trials. Note that the speed increase may also result from using a smaller card (less data through which to search, especially for points of interest).
I used to think these things were worthless... BEFORE I got one. I always asked, "why do I need a navigation system when I have a Thomas Guide in my car and Mapquest/ Expedia/ Yahoo maps on my computer?" I then bought the stock navigation system in a 2006 Acura TL (made by Alpine) because I wanted the integrated touch screen for the radio and bluetooth. This purchase changed my mind about navigation units.
Realizing just how valuable navigation systems are made me buy one for my second car, which didn't have one built-in. The unit I chose to purchase was the c320, which is of course the subject of this review.
On both my stock Acura navigation, as well as this c320, you can look up businesses, which is much like using the white or yellow pages. These listings also contain the phone numbers if you want to call ahead to make reservations, check wait times or check inventory. You can look up a name specifically OR find the closest business of its type to your present location.
This is great because say, for example, I am in an unfamiliar city, but want to get a carmel macchiato, then get my oil changed, and then buy some blank CD's... I can see where the closest Starbucks, Radio Shack and Jiffy Lube are, lock them in as upcoming destinations, and the unit will find the most efficient path. If, say, I want the coffee first, I can set that as the first destination, and then the unit will calculate the most efficient route to the next two destinations. Plus, you don't get reamed in charges for using directory assistance.
The beauty of the c320 is that it's cheap (sub-$300)compared to the Acura nav, which costs around $2,000, and does pretty much the same thing. So far, the only things I've noticed that are better about my Acura nav are that (1) the screen on the Acura nav is an 8" LCD, (2) you can look up a business by its phone number on the Acura nav, which you can't do on the c320, and (3) the Acura navi turns down the volume on your sound system when it speaks its directions.
(1) and (3) are not really fair comparison criteria because the Acura navi is integrated into the car, whereas the c320 can go WITH YOU from car to car.
Oh, by the way, I've also used the Garmin i5. While the i5 lets you use batteries (I think AA size) and is smaller, I prefer the c320 because of the touch screen. That scroll wheel on the i5 is, in my opinion, much more difficult to use.
Customer Review: Look no further this is a great portable navigator
Summary: 5 Stars
I've had this for a few months. I didn't get it from Amazon and when it arrived it was DOA. I called Garmin tech support (I did have to wait a while) and they were extremely helpful. I was concerned that since I didn't buy it from an authorized dealer, I would have some problems. But I didn't. I didn't even have to pay for shipping. They sent me a shipping label and I had the unit back within a week. I bought the 512mb card and could load quite a bit of of the mapquest. It did not take too long and is probably calculates more quickly than the hard drive of the 330.
I've had no problems with the window mount. It's been there for over a month and not loose at all. I put a screen protector on it to avoid any scratching. One thing with the screen, if you wear polarized sunglasses, the screen can be difficult to see, so when something important is coming up, I'll take off the sunglasses and the screen is very visible even during a bright sunny day.
I love the 3D mode. I think it is easier to see how far ahead a turn is going to happen, especially when dealing with a bunch of ramps.
The software is quite good too. I commute to Philadelphia and I have learned some shortcuts with the 320 which was especially helpful during the transit strike. It was also great when driving to Newark, NJ airport. It had the different terminals listed and the directions were right on. It recalculates when you go off route quite quickly. One time I had it set for shorter distance rather than faster route and I was not going the way Darla (my anthropomorphic name for the 320) told me to and there were quite a few exits close together that she was trying to get me to go on plus there were roads above me too. She was having a nervous breakdown and kept saying "recalculating, recalculating, recalculating..." Finally I just turned it off to give her a break. When I turned it on again, I changed the mode and there were no more problems and it worked just fine.
I recently got a new car and was debating on getting an onboard navigator but decided against spending close to $2000 for it when I had the 320. I can move the 320 to other vehicles with no problem.
Unfortunately you can't put in waypoints and save routes. For the waypoints I use my GPS for geocaching.
If you're looking for a car navigation system, look no further. This one is great. I used to use my GarminV which just beeped when a turn was about to happen and it was harder to tell where the turn was especially if there were a couple of exits close to one another. Darla talks to you and she speaks quite a few different languages or with a British accent.