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: Unit is excellent, BUT...
Summary: 4 Stars
Garmin nüvi 360 3.5-Inch Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator with Text-To-Speech
First, the BUT part. I ordered this under the impression it had the traffic enabled. IT DOES NOT. If you want the traffic reports, you need to buy an antenna ($125.00) The antenna comes with a 15 month subscription to the service. After that, you will have to pay for the service. (As of 2.4.09, you could purchase a lifetime subscription for $60.00 from Clearchannel). The ad I saw here on Amazon did not say anything about needing the extra antenna. Be aware of this if you need the traffic. Also note, that the Nuvi 370 comes with the antenna for $101.00 more. I ended up buying the antenna. That being said, when I contacted Amazon and complained, they gave me the option of a discount credited to my account, or returning the unit. I have nothing but praise for Amazon's customer service.
Now to the unit itself. The Bluetooth is GREAT! When I use it with my iPhone, it brings up my phone book. I can dial from the phone book, or call home, or any of the 6 million P.O.I.s, including food, hospitals, etc. I am able to hear clearly with the unit, and the people on the other end can even hear the passenger on the other side of the car. The P.O.I selection is very good, and the menus are quite intuitive. I do wish there was more customizaton of the display possible. For instance I would rather see my current speed than the time remaining to the destination. It's there, but if you have put in a route, you have to change away from the map display to another (neat) display with speed, total time, trip time, stopped time, etc. The display is easy to read, and easy to change on the fly. With the TomTom I had before, the touch screen was not as responsive or accurate. The GPS itself is excellent. It picks up the satellites quickly, and it holds the signal even when under a canopy, etc. I imagine this is due to the fold out GPS antenna. The text-to- speech is very good, even though she sounds a little annoyed when she says "recalculating" It does come with an MP3 player, and an SD card slot. I imagine this would be a nice feature if you use a lot of rental cars, or company cars where you don't have a nice stereo. I'm not really happy with the suction cup mount. It has been cold here lately, and it does NOT want to stay on the windsheild, a problem I never had with the RAM mount on the TomTom. While I'm on the subject of mounts, a couple of notes: The OEM mount has the power connector built in. This is not only convienient, but VERY important if you use the traffic antenna. The antenna plugs into the Mini-USB that you would use to charge the unit when not in it's cradle. The antenna will not work without external power (the GPS HAS to be plugged in, not running on batteries). RAM does not offer a cradle with the power built in, and there is no way to adapt the OEM cradle. If you don't need the traffic reports, this is not as much of a problem, but is slightly inonvienient since you have to plug the cable in instead of just putting the unit in the cradle. There are other mounts available that adapt to the Garmin cradle.
All in all I give the Unit a 4 out of 5, and several people I have told have bought one. To me the Bluetooth is almost worth the price of the GPS, and I have seen some
Bluetooth units that were installed aftermarket that don't work nearly as well. This one's a keeper.
UPDATE
I have had this unit about a month now and still love it. I have seen people complain about the Bluetooth, but mine has been great. I went into a Big Box store in the mall, with my car almost 100 feet away. I got a phone call, and my Iphone asked me if I wanted to use the phone or the bluetooth to answer the call. I have had to re-pair it one time. Other than that, I take the 360 with me and turn it off when I leave the car, and by the time it comes back up (1-2 mins) the bluetooth is connected, and it's tracking several satellites. I'm still lovin' it!
Customer Review: Almost perfect..
Summary: 4 Stars
I held off on a GPS for a long time because of the constant slide in prices and increase in features. Finally I could not pass up this 360 model when I saw it with its pricing. It has been everything I dreamed of, and more! Reasonably priced. Easy to navigate touch-screen. Small and portable to move between cars (a 2nd windshield mount would be best, but I suffer bravely). A great looking screen, which is very clear and doesn't smudge from fnger-prints. This nuvi allows you to zoom or pull back the map view, and automatically does this depending on your speed (higher level view at higher speeds). It also has your next turn on a banner across the top and counts down the distance. It gives estimated time of arrival in a corner so you know if you are running on schedule. Average speed, and current direction are on there too and you can change various views and displays.
There are many options/settings, like choosing if you are in a car, or walking, if you want it to use u-turns to redirect you or dirt roads, etc.. I was in a rural area of ND driving around some farm country and it had everything on its map.
I could hardly believe all the info packed in with the locations. Nearby parking lots, restaurants, hospitals, etc.. -With phone numbers! And if linked to your phone with Bluetooth, just hit the button on the screen to dial.
The battery lasts a long time, compared to many other electronics I have. You also have the option of having the screen dim during time between instructions to save on the battery life.
The voices are really well done, and while I loved the British Emily at first, I now spend all my time with Jill. The female voices are easier for me to hear, and with other noises and distractions, I found it easier to have an American accent for me to catch the directions over the radio and other voices in the car.
The Bluetooth works great! I have a blackberry (a couple years old)and the addresses loaded with no trouble once I changed a Bluetooth option on the BB device to show the synced nuvi as 'trusted'.
The idea mentioned earlier of connecting to the stereo aux port is appealing, but I have not had the determination for that. I did get a 2gig card, and started to load some songs. Then it dawned on me that converting my iTunes-purchased songs to mp3, does not remove the copy protection which prevents transfer to another device. I know Apple is slowly changing that with their iTunes plus. Not Garmin's fault, and not why I bought the nuvi anyway.
Subscribing to the silent FM signal (broadcast by clearchannel in many areas) with live traffic updates to the nuvi was not worth it for me, plus I don't need an antenna strung up in my car. A cool idea though, and I would have bit if I was in a free-service area.
My few and very minor grievances were that photos were slow, the GPS twice got confused by frontage roads parallel to a main road, and twice had to be reset after I started driving before it had its satellite bearings. Until recently my biggest complaint was that I didn't get enough opportunity to go places I was not familiar with. If someone blurted the whereabouts of an unknown location I was travelling to, I berated them to tears, or wanted to anyway. GPS joy thieves is what they are.
Anyhoo, the missing star. I live in the Twin Cities, and the 35w bridge over the Mississippi went down. I don't use it regularly, so it was over a month before I connected my nuvi to my PC thinking I would update my maps hoping Garmin had made the change. As another reviewer noted, you cannot tell the device to avoid or prefer a route. I also have a trip coming up and wanted the latest entries to use this in my rental car. Turns out the mapping software is now updated to the 2008 version, and I am fresh out of luck on updating my 2007 mapping software I got less than 6-months earlier. The update is 80 bucks and they want to ship me cd-rom via a tortoise or something. Ah well, nothing is perfect.
Customer Review: This IS your father's GPS device
Summary: 3 Stars
I did a lot of research before I bought my Garmin nuvi 360, and I'm pretty sure that it's the best portable, GPS-dedicated device on the market at this price point. I like it. It's small, light, bright, sufficiently loud, easy to learn, and it's never gotten me stuck on the wrong end of a dark and dangerous blind alley at midnight. It even does fairly well in San Francisco, where streets are more like tiny, curvy capillaries than big veins or arteries. If you're determined to buy a portable GPS come heck or high water, stop reading, buy this one, and rest easy that you've made a sensible decision.
Having said that, I think that the reviews here are a smidge on the happy-happy side. I'm really glad that people love their Garmins, but I have to wonder...compared to what? If the comparison is with being lost, I give it 5 stars. If the comparison is with with Rand McNally, a hastily-printed Mapquest map, or your friend's distracted phone directions("Uh, you'll see a red building on the corner...no, no...it's white but it has a red ROOF, yeah...you'll know it when you see it, really"), ditto. If the comparison is with other portable GPS devices, then I say four stars, three cheers, and happy driving.
If the comparison is with what OUGHT to be, however (As in, if you visited Amazon review pages to see if it's worth buying a Garmin GPS at all, not whether you should buy a Garmin GIVEN THAT you've already decided to buy a GPS device), I have to knock one big star down and point out some areas of improvement for the good, hardworking folks at Garmin:
First, I'm not convinced that a dedicated-GPS device should take 10 minutes to find a satellite. If my cell phone can pinpoint my location in 5 seconds, shouldn't the Garmin be able to compete within an order of magnitude....or even two? All too frequently, however, I have to "trick" the Garmin into finding my location by plugging it in (if it's not already plugged in), unplugging it (if it is), or rebooting it entirely. Second, the ABCD alphabetic keyboard is far less convenient than a QWERTY keyboard, and I don't see an option to switch. Third, the feature that allows one to type in the name of a shop or restaurant and be directed directly toward it without going through the intermediate step of entering the address has worked for me approximately 1 out of 10 times. Ten percent isn't a great hit rate, and when I got to 10 I just stopped trying. I'm sure this is one of the more difficult features, as shop names change frequently and cities have a high density of urban retailers. But basically, unless my goal is to track down the nearest Big Mac or bucket o' Colonel's special recipe (infrequent), then this feature isn't helping me get to my dinner any faster. :) Fifth (am I really up to 5 already?), I have to point out that the design of the Garmin is nice, but underwhelming. Yes, it's small and light and silver, but...? Has anyone seen the iPhone lately? I'm not suggesting that the Garmin match Apple's gorgeous design standards or that they hire a designer from Herman Miller, a Koolhaus apprentice, a MOMA artist, or that guy who designs cool stuff for Target, but I bet they could do better if they tried. The Garmin is to what portable GPS devices could be as your mother's first home computer was to today's sleek designs. Lastly, the windshield mount that it comes with is pretty cheesy. Mine falls off a lot, and I've had to order a new mounting to avoid holding this in my lap while I drive.
In all, not a bad product and I'd buy it again, but it came out of the box feeling like Old Technology. It's only truly impressive if you don't have other options, and with iPhone and Google maps (and who knows what else) sighting down the personal navigation market, I have an uncomfortable feeling that my 250 dollar Garmin will be donated to Goodwill before the decade is out.
Customer Review: The 360 has been a good first GPS Navigator
Summary: 4 Stars
This was the first GPS navigator that I've owned, I've had it for about 18 months now and I'll probably use it for another 4-5 years before I upgrade. I researched this a lot before I bought, comparing it to TomTom and Magellen's offerings. At the time they just didn't seem to have the feature set or map capabilities that Nuvi 360 had. That may have changed.
I keep discovering more nice operational features every time I take it on a long trip. Mostly by accident, although I've surfed some GPS forums and found a few nice bits of info.
Pros:
1. Very good display, but my next will be bigger. Still I'd want the replacement to fit in my shirt pocket nearly as nicely as Nuvi does.
2. Works very well with BlueTooth on my Blackberry Curve AFTER Garmin released the bug fix for it. No distortion. I use this a lot more than I thought I would.
3. MP3 player is nice, but I've only used it on one trip where I was trying to reduce the amount of individual devices I was taking.
4. Locking suction cup window mount works the best of any I've ever used. Only fallen off the windshield twice in over 12,000 highway miles.
5. Touch screen works well, even with my "fat fingers".
6. I like that it's smart enough to know what time the sun rises and sets and changes the display colors from day to night, although it's not smart enough to know when it's crossed timezones and reset the clock or arrival time.
7. I like being able to download free "points of interest" from POI-factory.com and install them using Garmin's free downloadable software.
8. The ability to plug in an SD card to expand the memory has come in handy more than once. My SD card currently has a half dozen family photos and some MP3's.
9. Relatively inexpensive map updates. Two hundred for the very expensive Alpine OEM Navi that came in my 2005 Honda Pilot. I'll never update the Pilot!
Cons:
1. All text-to-speech navigators have this problem, it has no etiquette when it comes to announcing directions! :) She just blurts them out no matter what else is going on at the time and tries to talk over the human beings in the car. This is typically met with the rowdier passengers asking "What's the b***** saying now???" And I haven't found any quick way to get her to repeat what she just said.
2. Some maps are badly out of date. In 1983 a huge mudslide wiped out part of Highway 6 near Thistle, Utah. Twenty-five years later (!) Nuvi still thinks it's there and recalculates over and over as you drive the "new" two mile stretch. Also, there was supposed to be an Arby's in a very empty field near Cheyenne, Wyoming.
3. No way to teach it a shortcut.
4. I think some speed limits have been changed on I-90 in New York since Nuvi got updated. This summer I was traveling 5-10 mph faster than the posted 65 Mph speed limit and Nuvi kept adding time to my final arrival time. This didn't happen anywhere else. Usually my arrival time decreased.
5. It would be nice to be able to select what 6 things are displayed on the page that shows Overall Avg, Moving Avg, Max Speed, etc. I flip back and forth between it and the map page to see how much distance I have left vs projected arrival time.
6. I wish there was an option to show you just gas/food/lodging, etc. that are close to your projected forward path only, and not include the places you passed 2 miles back. Someday I might want to turn around and drive back 19 miles to a McDonalds, :) but mostly I want to know where the next one is coming up.
7. I wish the keyboard screen was QWERTY instead of ABCDE.
All in all it's been a good little helper and better than 98% of the time it gets us where we want to go in the most efficient manner.
[...].
Customer Review: Preferred over Escalade Nav
Summary: 4 Stars
With a 3rd child on the way I was somewhat forced to go from my Escalade to a Suburban since my wife needed a new vehicle to support our growing family. Her Trailblazer just wasn't up to the task of holding 3 car seats. So, I volunteered to let her take my Escalade and we traded the Trailblazer off on a Suburban (Escalade is the Tahoe sized version). Anyway, none of that matters really except that my Escalade had the factory navigation system in it and the Suburban did not, which led me to my search.
Background out of the way, my search landed me with the Garmin nuvi 350. Being a gadget guru I soon realized (even before it had arrived) that I made a mistake. Not because the 350 was a poor choice or inferior in quality, but because it was lacking Bluetooth technology. Having grown accustomed to this greatness I quickly purchased a 360 (only difference is Bluetooth capability) and put the 350 up for sale.
EDIT
I stand corrected, it seems there is one more difference. The nuvi 350 supports up to a 2GB SD card while the nuvi 360 supports up to a 4GB SD card.
I'm not a newcomer to GPS or even navigation systems, but I'm no expert either. What I've used in the past are devices such as paper maps, Garmin eTrex, Garmin 12, Lowrance iWay 350c, the factory nav of my Escalade and now the wonderful nuvi line. My thoughts on the nuvi versus anything I've used in the past are nothing but positive. Even on the rare occasion I think I find a flaw I soon realize why they did it that way and I'm in awe of it's mastery. One example I found when I was comparing side by side the nuvi to my factory navigation, I saw that the factory nav showed more street names when going down the highway I take to work daily. At first I was kind of bummed the nuvi wasn't up to this task, however what I realized is that the nuvi does show the street names at lower speeds. My personal preference soon changed to how the nuvi works. When going down the highway I don't need to know every street name which would quickly crowd my display, I only need to see the major exits which show up perfectly. It's small details like that which seem to separate the nuvi from anything else I've tried.
It just works.
Earlier I mentioned that I'm a gadget guru... well, part of this is having to mess with every feature and accessory. I haven't yet tried the traffic antenna as my area is not covered, however it's on my list anyway. What I have done however is hardwire the headphone jack to my Suburban's audio system and purchased the microphone (reviewed as well). This combination has greatly increased the value of my nuvi 360 to the point where I feel I have a solid hand free setup and golden navigation unit in one awesome package.
I'm 100% sold on this model, and if I needed another navigation unit tomorrow I wouldn't hesitate in the least to buy another.
Points of Interest database is excellent, using it is simple and efficient. Customization is minimal (other than the vehicles you can download), but I find I don't really want to customize it much. The only thing I wish it had was an option to set a default at startup, I always have to choose one of the options where it would be nice to just have it default to map view for example.
Why 4 stars?
It's rare that any product is 100% perfect, although the nuvi certainly comes close, and who knows... the more I use it the more I feel it may deserve a 5, I just know Garmin will amaze me with future releases and perhaps updated firmware that amaze me with an already unbeatable product at this level.
Recommend?
Most definitely.