Garmin nüvi 360 3.5-Inch Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator with Text-To-Speech
by Garmin
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Garmin nüvi 360 3.5-Inch Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator with Text-To-Speech
Customer Review: Excellent, small, portable GPS; updates too expensive
Summary: 5 Stars
I've had this Nuvi 360 since Dec, 2006. It really works well. I carried it with me to DC. Even on foot it was terrific. It knew where all the restaurants and points of interest were and faithfully navigated us around the ancient horse paths of the Virginia/DC area. Believe me, when you pop out of an underground Metro station in the middle of the night and have no idea where you are or which direction to head off in, the ol' Garmin was there.
It's so small it easily fits in a pocket. The built-in battery lasts reasonably long. In the car, the 12-Volt adapter allows the unit to stay on indefinitely. You can select which accent and which gender you want the voice prompts to speak. Australian "Bruce," American "Jill" and a host of other combinations. All very fun. The voice prompts are the best. You really don't need to look at the thing while driving because it's uncanny in telling you what to do when you need to do it. It is amazingly accurate: something like 20 feet. It takes you right to the destination driveway.
It acquires the sats quickly and doesn't get flustered if you violate its recommendation and go in a different route. It just says, "recalculating" and finds another route for you. None of this "make a U-turn, bonehead!" It gives you enough time to make the turns, too. Also, it displays how far it is until the next turn. Very nice. No need to worry if you've missed it.
If you are planning on going to Europe, buy the unit that comes preloaded with both US and Europe maps as purchasing the Europe maps after the fact will really jump the cost unnecessarily.
I haven't used the Bluetooth capability yet but might later...after I get a Bluetooth phone.
The display is quite viewable in daylight and very bright at night, though it can be set to auto-dim at sundown so it's not too bright at night. You can touch the screen and scroll the map under your finger much like Google Maps can, to preview your route if desired. It shows coordinates and you can save them as destinations if desired, even if the location doesn't have an official street address. It is an MP3 player and can display photos and play Audible books on tape. When you are using the MP3 or Audible features, it pauses the file playing back to announce directions, then returns to the file without losing any of the MP3 file or book info. Very nice.
At extra cost, it has the ability to add foreign language dictionaries which can verbally speak phrases and words to you. You can also add Travel Guides and other software via the SD chip slot.
Overall, I'm very pleased with this device. It's accurate, fast, functional and small.
The one thing that doesn't work is the windshield suction mount. It broke before I even used it once. The plastic loops on the suction cup that receive the ball arm's hinge pin are too thin and fragile and broke with just a little normal hinge adjustment.
I recommend the model 010-10908-00 friction mount that looks like a bean bag with a ball arm sticking up. I made something similar by taking an unneeded 1/4" thick mousepad and epoxying a couple of small 1" x 1" angle brackets to the pad to hold the ball arm that I salvaged from the broken suction cup mount.
A friction mount is interchangeable with multiple vehicles, doesn't slide around on the dash and allows complete and rapid removal and/or hiding to avoid theft. Plus, you don't have to glue a disk to the dash for the suction cup to attach to.
UPDATE 10-22-07:
The 360 works well enough; better than most. It should: Five point three bills should deliver one heck of a map!
I've had it since Dec 2006...less than one year. Today I get an offer from Garmin to update my North American map software for a mere point seven bills. That's AFTER the five point three bills I already sunk into this little electronic gizmo.
I heard Garmin has a one year free map update policy, but their website won't let me do it. Not cool. The cost of the unit has already fallen significantly from what I originally paid and now they want more to get it current, within a year of purchase. Not cool at all. Also, impossible to contact by email. Garmin website is in a permanent loop back to itself when clicking on the "contact by email" option. Otherwise, it's call and wait on hold between certain times. Not cool again.
Then a friend says how well his Verizon GPS works on his wireless phone. I look into that. Verizon offers a full time GPS cost and a single use option for under three bucks per use.
For what I have wasted on this Garmin--over five bills and counting upward forever with their unfriendly updates--that's a whole heck of a lot of one-time Verizon uses with what will be the most updated, most accurate database. After all, no one's going to beat the phone company with accurate phone numbers and addresses.
If I hadn't already bought into the Garmin ripoff, I'd definitely go with Verizon's phone based GPS: the phone will always be with you when you need it instead of in the glove compartment in the other car.
And it most likely won't get stolen. It's a darned pain to have to put the Garmin away after each use so some cretin won't bash in a window to steal a very, very expensive toy that could just as easily fit inside a phone.
Go with the phone.
Customer Review: Room for improvement
Summary: 4 Stars
I tested the Nuvi 360, along with a separately purchased Europe NT SD card during a recent trip to Italy. A lot has been written about the positives and the technology in general is remarkable and should not be taken for granted. However, given the increasing competition and the many new GPS models introduced every year, as well as Nuvi's premium price, here is what I wish the Nuvi 360 had:
Hardware:
= A built-in FM transmitter to play audio through the car radio. It is strange that a $50 device such as Delphi's Roady XT XM radio has a great built-in FM transmitter, while the $700 Nuvi 360 does not. And it should not cost additional $200 to get it in the Nuvi 660. Otherwise the hardware was solid and to my knowledge the 350/360 remains the most portable device on the market. The device never lost satellite reception, including in many short tunnels.
Software issues:
= Very limited (inadequate) customization.
= While Jill did a good job with street names in the US, she failed miserably in Italy - her speech was useless as the spoken street names were completely unrecognizable - and soon the butchery of the Italian language became extremely annoying. Unfortunately, switching to the Italian lady did not help as she did not even try to pronounce the street names - she only instructed us to turn left or right in a given distance, without telling us the names of the streets.
= Another major software issue was the lack of color distinction in the display of the traveled vs. not-yet-traveled route - the identical purple path display was very confusing at ramps, complicated intersections, and u-turns - it was often impossible to tell which way to follow and we had to rely on street signs.
Less significant software issues included the following:
= Speed was not displayed on the main page while driving to a destination. Instead, the semi-static ETA display took the place of speed. I wish the ETA were displayed for a few seconds initally, and subsequently only for a few seconds whenever there was an ETA change or a route recalculation. The continuous ETA display should have been relegated to the secondary page, or at least the user should have been allowed to choose between speed and ETA display on the main page;
= The map display zoomed out automatically as the speed increased beyond a certain level ignoring the zoom level selected by the user. The auto zoom feature could not be disabled and was unpleasant. Apart from being more respectful of the user's preferences, without the autozoom the Nuvi would have been quite helpful in displaying the geometry of the next turn of the winding minor road in the hills of Tuscany. The auto zoom feature also meant that the points of interest (POIs) seized to be displayed at all at a certain speed, regardless of the wishes of the user;
= the Nuvi was of limited value when driving in Rome due to the following: 1) the street name pronunciation issue, 2) the delay in updating the display after a turn which presented a significant problem when driving along the short and narrow streets where turns came quickly and u-turns were often not a possibility, and 3) the strange routing in the city - on several occasions the GPS instructed us to make a detour of about a mile in order to get to the next point on the indicated route - only a block or so away from our current position and reachable in a perfectly legal manner;
= the Nuvi lacked an option to select a touchscreen keyboard layout - the built-in sequential keyboard (abcdef) was quite awkward to use given that every other portable device I have has a qwerty keyboard;
= it was impossible to choose to display POIs selectively by categories - for instance, when driving I would have liked to display restaurants I passed by - instead, the autozoom did meant that no POIs were displayed most of the time, or when waiting at a light all nearby POIs of all categories became displayed resulting in a crowded and useless map. In addition, I would have liked the POI display to show the POI's name and not only the category symbol;
= the simulated route was useless as currently implemented, as it needed to be `traveled' in real time - in the TomTom One the same feature allows high speed browsing of the route and thus the ability to review and influence the selection;
= there was no way to turn off the Bluetooth when not required - I assume that it consumed unnecessary power and shortened the battery life when the Nuvi was operating unplugged. In general, I found the Bluetooth quality lacking.
Before I left for Italy I downloaded Italian speed cameras POIs - this feature worked very well and may result in significant savings to drivers who may be mislead by the seemingly erratic driving in Italy and elsewhere in Europe (cars going 200 km/h and then suddenly breaking and barely moving for no apparent reason) - due to speed cameras known to the locals.
I was also impressed to find out that many unpaved roads were correctly shown on the GPS - I followed some and experienced more thanks to the device.
In conclusion, I am still debating whether to keep or return the unit. With GPS prices falling rapidly and competition intensifying, I very much hope that Garmin will make some significant changes to the software and make us feel good about having bought the best.
Customer Review: Really easy to use
Summary: 4 Stars
This is my first GPS and I love having a GPS. It's like when I first got my E-Z Pass: I wonder why I didn't get one sooner!
This is so easy to use, I have only read the manual to make sure I didn't forget anything when I hooked it up to my car. I was able to tell it to take me somewhere after powering it up for the first time and I was up and navigating. I did spend time later to find out more features and customizing it just by pressing things on the screen.
There are a whole lot of things I like about the nuvi. Since other reviewers have already talked about them (and you can find out even more about the features on Garmin's site), I'll just list my favorites: text-to-speech (TTS) saying street names, colored 3D view (water is blue, parks are green, etc), points of interest (POI) with address and phone numbers as well as direction and distance from current location, real-time driving statistics (avg MPH, ETA, time stopped, etc), one press operation for the next direction and it automatically goes back to the map, way point insertion via map.
I did wonder whether the bluetooth functionality was worth it since my phone already has a speaker phone function. But I am really glad I got the 360 instead of the 350. If nothing else, it's like having a heads-up caller ID. It also directly accesses my address book on my Blackberry 7105t. So I can receive and make calls without taking my phone out of its holster (which is sometimes a hassle with the seatbelt buckle/jacket/coat in the way). I have my nuvi connected to my stereo via a cassette adapter so I can clearly hear the caller. For privacy, the 360 allows you to send the call back to your phone but it requires three presses on the screen which is a bit inconvenient.
Now for the things I don't like so much:
* Many times, the person on the other side of the call has trouble hearing me. I've ordered the external microphone which will hopefully take care of this.
* The MP3 player works well, but my MP3 files are much louder than the navigation audio. This pretty much makes the MP3 player useless to me while navigating since I would either have to listen to the music much louder than I want or struggle to hear the navigation audio. I've sent Garmin a request to make this adjustable.
* The data is outdated even if "new". I guess this is not specific to Garmin and is the nature of the beast, but I've gotten wrong directions and been taken to places (POI) that no longer exist because the data is basically two years old. Even though they update once a year ($75 each update), by the time a consumer gets it, the data is already closer to two years old. For example, the newest data was released on April 2006 but it wasn't shipped until September 2006. And just because it was released on April 2006, I don't think it means everything was up to date at that time. But that's just conjecture on my part. What I do know is, it lists stores/restaurants in my area that I know were no longer in business way before April 2006. I think some of them even closed in 2005 but they are still listed in my nuvi.
* It's not perfect. It didn't know about a concrete barrier so it kept telling me to go through it. It was trying to get me to go through a private road once. Sometimes the route isn't the best.
Summary:
Even with its flaws, I am glad I bought the 360 as it has given me a greater sense of adventure and security that I will not get totally lost. Instead of spending minutes looking on the web for directions where to go, I just make sure I have the address before I walk to the car. In a 10-day period recently, I drove to a wedding in NJ, to a vacation in NC (Outer Banks) and back to a wedding locally in VA. The nuvi got me to all three places without getting lost once, while some of my friends got lost to some of those places (but they didn't have any GPS).
UPDATE:
Here's my thoughts after 6 months of use:
I still love it!
Garmin was generous and gave everyone who bought a nuvi by a cutoff date the 2008 update free. It was easy to upgrade although it did take a few hours to complete. Getting more up-to-date info is definitely a big plus. I wish they would update twice a year (at half the cost each time, of course).
Garmin said they cannot do anything about the MP3 problem I emailed them about. They're not even sure they will incorporate it in future models. It's a shame since it's not practical for me to use the MP3 function while navigating with the way it is now.
The external microphone helped but I think the real problem is me plugging in the Nuvi output to my tape player. Now, when someone calls, I make sure it's not playing through my tape player and I've gotten less complaints from callers about echoes or not being able to hear me.
The Detour function seems to help a lot when there's a big delay when you're in a major highway. It does a good job of getting you to a different way which has been avoiding the delay most of the time. Note: I do not have the traffic service so it's just re-directing you.
Customer Review: Excellent GPS
Summary: 4 Stars
Pros:
-Bluetooth: I debated whether or not to get this unit or one of the lower ones with no bluetooth, but for the price difference (from my research it was only around a $40 difference), I decided to go with the bluetooth. I had heard all kinds of things about pairing problems and address books not being sent, but it has worked flawlessly with my Blackberry (Pearl 8130). The unit's speaker is clear and loud enough for talking on it as your hands free unit, and it's so nice to be able to see who's calling without digging around in your pocket when your phone rings. Definitely worth it.
-Navigation: I don't have a lot of experience with other GPS units so I can't compare, but this gets me where I need to go pretty darn well. There seems to be an affinity with this (and all GPS/mapquest/navigation aids) with "county routes", I don't know about anyone else but in the tri-state area, CR's are incredibly easy to get lost on, and generally most people know county routes by other names (i.e. call it "Ringwood Ave", don't call it CR-511 I have no idea what that is). But this is ok because the screen is so clear on where you have to turn, and the text-to-speech does a wonderful job of making sure you know which way you're going to be turning. There was an area in North Jersey that is an absolute cluster [expletive deleted] of construction cones and roads diverted onto off ramps and god knows what else, and this did a flawless job of getting me through it painlessly. This unit also does a fantastically quick job of getting you on the right path again if you miss a turn. Obviously the most important factor in a GPS unit, and this does an A+ job.
Ease of use/utility: Plug it in, turn it on, type in an address and press go. Doesn't get easier than that! I also love the small size, fits right into my pocket. I can use it to find my way around, find restaurants or movie theaters locally, and then dial them right from the Garmin and make reservations or get show times! I love this feature. Navigation is the most important factor, but this little gem does that great, and more.
Cons:
Finding a satellite signal: Luckily, this hasn't been a problem when I really was relying on it to find where I was going, but a lot of times when I have it on driving around an area I know, when it's first starting up, it takes a long time to find a signal, even on perfectly sunny days. It's to the point where I'm driving for ten minutes and it says "trouble finding signal" and then asks me what day it is and whether or not I'm indoors or have moved 1,000 miles away since my last use. The times this doesn't happen, it finds a signal almost instantaneously, and sometimes it's not quite ten minutes, but this happens more often than I had expected given all the reviews I read about how quickly it finds a signal.
Windshield mount: After having it about a month, this has stopped working for the most part. The mount will stick, and then fall off after a little while. This is fairly annoying since it's the only mount I really feel like using (the suction one costs extra and is kind of unsightly, and the dashboard mount it comes with is more permanent).
Mixed:
Music player/speaker: The music player is pretty cool, I have an SD disk in there with about a half a gig worth of music. The problem is, out of the box, this is impossible to use as a music player. Unlike the bluetooth phone which only is hard to hear if you're going 70 with the windows open, this sound quality is so poor with the internal speaker you won't be using it instead of your ipod or your cd player any time soon. With that said, a lot of new cars have AUX inputs in their cars, so all you need is a 3.5mm wire and you plug it right into the headphone jack, and then you've music through your car's stereo system. Not only that, you also would then get your GPS and phone through your stereo system. Not bad. If you don't have an AUX in, but you have a custom stereo, you can just get some standard Audio cables, plug 'em into the back of your stereo and accomplish the same thing. It's also neat that if you're playing music and using it to navigate, it will pause the music to issue voice directions, then resume where you left off in the song. It also does a nice job of not completely screwing you up if you don't know where you're going and you get a phone call on it. Click Answer or Ignore and it goes right back to the map. Nice. BUT, if you don't have an easy way of getting this hooked through your car's stereo system, the music player is kind of useless.
Overall:
Really, this is a great little unit. It does it's main function extremely well, and even though the speaker isn't the greatest, there are ways around that and there is real integration here with music, navigation and phone in one. If it weren't for some problems with sometimes getting a signal, and if the windshield mount wasn't largely dysfunctional, this would be an easy 5 star product. But even with those negative, this is an easy recommendation, it's more than worth the money now that the price has come down so much.
Customer Review: Great product overall. Some tweaks to make 5 stars
Summary: 4 Stars
Purchased this 360 unit in December 2007, used it in NY and then took it on a trip to Florida.
Purchase Process
Purchased from Digitech Deals. No sooner had I purchased it (and before I received it) TomTom started selling their "One" for $150 down from $250 for the holiday rush. Garmin knocked about $50-$100 off their range. After several emails I was able to work a 'deal' with Digitech for a credit. Amazon is possibly better when it comes to "price protection" when you buy from them but you may have to pay a little more. Probably a good investment. So bottom line...cost was $325 plus shipping. Much better than retail.
Garmin or TomTom?
The TomTom One does not have the text to voice feature (does not speak street names. Instead says turn lefy in 1 mile)and that's one reason I went for the Garmin. The second is that TomTom shipped a bunch of faulty units around the holidays (see feedback from TOmTOm users in December)and did not recall them from stores, preferring to wait until we consumers received them. While by all accounts they did an admirable job of replacing those units once reported by the customers, they really should have recalled them direct from the retail stores in the first place and not make consumers troubleshoot the issue and go through the hassle of return authorizations and all that entails. Especially since a lot of people purchased them for a Christmas present for their loved one. Imagine their faces when they got the "screen of death". Perhaps it was corporate greed to pad the numbers for the year end at the consumers expense. Who knows. Call me a cynic. Either way they lost a lot of their goodwill. Shame since they have a cool product.
Nuvi Unit Pros
1. It works. It works right out of the box. Easy to use. User guide not needed. I won't comment on its accuracy as it comes down to the maps and chipset each company uses. Clearly they all make mistakes from time to time but I don't think any vendor has a clear advantage or their competition would be out of business.
2. It speaks the street name. There is some debate as to how important that feature is. I think its important when you're driving in an area where there are several turns close together. It also means you don't have to concentrate as much.
3. The Points of Interest feature is fantastic. En route simply ask it for directions to the nearest restaurant, bar, tourist attraction, entertainment venue, etc. It will show you the closest and the direction from your current position. Pick the one that does not take you too far out of your way and it will insert it as a "way point", take you there first, and then continue on to your final destination. Zoom out and it shows you a map of the new route compared to the previous direct route so you can confirm you're not going way off track. I was driving from Fort Lauderdale to Fort Myers and had time to kill before my flight so I asked it to direct me to the nearest Casino. I proceeded to win the cost of the unit playing Texas Holdem'. So it paid for itself in a way. Now if I had lost or missed my flight that would be another story!
4. Bluetooth feature lets you synch up your phone address book and make/take calls on the road. A really neat feature is if you decide to go to a new restaurant you can select it and start driving. The Nuvi shows lets you call them and make a reservation without having to know the address or the phone number.
5. A key feature of all these devices is how they attach to the windscreen. This one works perfectly. Great design. To anyone who has difficulty I suggest you clean the screen as per instructions (this is the only part of the user guide you really need!). Then it sticks like glue (and is actually not easy to remove!) p.s. If the window is freezing it will fall off but that's just physics 101.
6. Really portable and comes with a nice case.
7. Easily zoom in and out the view and then holds the setting you selected without reverting to default and some others do.
9. Option to check upcoming turns.
9. Shows your ETA so you can tell your friends when you will arrive!
....and the few Cons
1. Should have an option "Make most use of highways" since it sometimes takes the shortest route via smaller roads which is not always the fastest
2. Sound volume needs to be at or close to max to listen to directions when driving at speeds which create normal road sound(unless you're driving a Rolls Royce). Then if someone calls you have to reduce the volume to avoid sound distortion, and then turn it back up again when the call is over. Garmin needs to invest in this as it takes away from an otherwise very nice Bluetooth feature.
3. Need to add a QWERTY keyboard layout option to speed up data entry
There are some other features like calculators, currency converters, and the like that will probably never be used. All in all this unit is great value. Go for it!