Garmin nüvi 370 3.5-Inch Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator
by Garmin
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List Price: Our Price: $80.00 You Save: $819.99 (91%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: GPS or Navigation System See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Garmin nüvi 370 3.5-Inch Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator
Customer Review: One of man's Best invention
Summary: 5 Stars
It works as advertised.
PRO:
1) Very good GPS reception. I can have signal even in building. This is very good if u are travelling on foot. you can go in and out of shop without loosing signals. (u need to change to pedestrain mode)
2) Very good for Europe travel, Maps are detail enough. U can plan your trip from this country to that country and every attractions in between. Call Garmin to request for a USA & Europe CD to be installed in your PC and then sync all the planning into the GPS
3) Always give me the fastest way to where I want to go. I have seen reviews that this thing sometimes recommend routes that are longer. Well I thought so too. Try and compare it on your PC by comparing your method and GPS recommended method. I will say u will loose most of the time.
4) Screen readable even in sunlight.
5) Design is slim and nice. Good for pocket travel on foot.
6) Eliminates lots of quarrel with your partner when u are lost :) - priceless.
CONS:
1) Time taken for it to receive a signal plus the loading of the USA and Europe is slow. However if u coming out from a underground carpark, I suggest u switch on only when u are out of the underground carpark. If you on while in Underground carpark, it takes forever to get a signal even after u are out in the open.
2) sound quality is not good enough. Forget about using this as MP3 player. Although the voice navigation is loud enough but the sound crack when u put to highest volume. It sound as if the speaker is bursting.
3) Pronunciation of street names is terrible, I bet any 10 year old can pronounce better than it. But its fun anyway to hear such an intelligent device cannot pronounce simple street name.
Summary
I highly highly recommend it. This is one of those device u will never say u never use it. But one thing u need to be careful. Your driving habit will change from using common sense to find the way to just conveniently looking at the screen.
Customer Review: Extremely Satisfied
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the first GPS I've owned so don't have anything to compare it to, but I didn't expect perfection. However, I was pleasantly surprised to discover the Garmin Nuvi 370 exceeded all my desires.
I registered it immediately as recommended by others. I turned it on. It downloaded the maps and I was up and running. The menus are easy to follow without a user guide. I feel it's really user friendly and doesn't require a lot of esoteric knowledge to use. The screen is suprisingly easy to see considering it's size, even in my car in the sunlight.
I had a lot of fun trying different settings like asking it to choose routes based on traffic or distance and seeing how they compared. When I deviated from a course it quickly recalculated and gave me new directions. Am I being overly sensitive or does the voice sound slightly disgusted when I passsed a recommended turn and it announced, "recalculating"? The American English voice was easy to understand. When I entered a brand new subdivision where roads were not available on the map the best it could tell me was to head east. However, that's better than any paper map can do.
I realize that I'm using it at home where I'm already familiar with the streets. I bought the Nuvi 370 because I travel to Europe a lot and can really use it there. I'll see how well it functions in a place I'm less familiar with in a few weeks. I love that it's so small and lightweight. I'll be able to carry it while walking without having some bulky piece of equipment weighing me down. However, I do see it as prime pickpocket target in Europe.
I think I found this item easier to use because I had no expectations based upon other GPS's owned and I did a lot of reading before the purchase. It certainly helped since I knew to go to the Garmin website and update the maps for free.
I don't expect the Nuvi 370 to meet every need I have, but I'm directionally challenged. After wandering around America and Europe for years anything has got to help. So far I'm extremely satisfied.
Customer Review: Not the best Garmin-refurb'ed bargain
Summary: 3 Stars
When thieves stole my faithful Garmin StreetPilot c320, I replaced it with a Garmin-refurb'ed c330 - essentially the 320 with pre-loaded maps. Amazon's price was VERY attractive. But I quickly realized there'd be a security advantage in a model I could easily slip into my pocket when leaving the car. So I opted for a second replacement, the slim and sexy Nuvi 370, again a Garmin-refurb'ed unit from Amazon at about 2.8x the price of the 330.
After using the two units side-by-side for a couple of weeks my observation is that the 330 is the better value. Yes, I like the 370's ability to announce the street name ("Turn left at Main Street") rather than the 330's more generic "Turn left in 500 feet". Yes, it's fun having a unit that plays music I've downloaded to it, but that's superfluous because I already have an iPod and the 370's sound is gratingly tinny. The 370 also offers slide-shows of my transferred JPEG images, a feature I'd hate to defend to my insurance company after an accident.
Worse, my 370 is flawed. (Is yours too?)
* It randomly disregards my finger-tap-entered character, flashing the on-screen key to acknowledge my entry but then failing to show the character on the data-entry line.
* The 370's screen is less legible than the 330's because it displays smaller characters but is comparably subject to wash-out in sunlight.
* The battery life is about half the 330's.
* After several hours the 370's mounting bracket loses its suction grip on either the windscreen or the dash-affixed metal plate despite my having lovingly prepared the components according to the directions.
* And most egregiously for a Mac fancier, the 370 refuses to acknowledge the full deletion of the SD card's files; instead it insists on displaying (and playing if requested) the Mac-deleted MP3 files. I have to erase files by using my obsolete Toshiba laptop running Windows XP-SP1.
But the 370 surely does fit neatly in my pocket.
Customer Review: Great purchase but the 350 would have been a more fiscally intelligent purchase
Summary: 4 Stars
My first foray into GPS navigation. It is amazing the amount of capability that is packed into a small package. I was not expecting to actually use the Bluetooth but I do, the only problem is my wife complains about echo when she is on the other end of the call. Navigating your phone book and placing the call is best done from your handset itself.
As good as it is it's not without problems. The databases are not perfect, telling me to exit the highway to the left where no exit exists, and the business finder is about 2 years old. Also many of the advanced features either require additional purchases or subscriptions. These can be expensive. Somehow I haven't quite figured out how to resume navigation if I get out of the map. It offers you the option to Stop or Detour, but not Resume. What am I missing???? (Duhh, I have since figured this out,not difficult but not necessarily intuitive either)
Finally I would recommend that anyone who has doubts about the usefulness of the added features(European Database,Bluetooth) jump down to the 350 or 360. The 350 in particular packs a lot for the money and is likely enough for most people. The Bluetooth(360&370)function does have issues with audio quality in my opinion and is more of a novelty for me at the moment. The European Database(standard on the 370)is of course useful only if you plan on traveling there, and can be added separately to the lesser models at a later date if you change your mind.
So the 370 is great but the 350 is probably the route I should have taken, no pun intended.
Update: I have had the unit now for over six months and I still like it although I have learned not to trust it completely. You should still use some common sense when going somewhere. It seems to struggle in New Jersey, but I guess everyone does. Also it has started to get slow when starting up, spending an unusually long time searching for satellites.
Customer Review: Map is old - Problem in getting upgrade
Summary: 3 Stars
Oct.27 - This is an update to my review earlier.
Garmin today told me that the DVD map update 2008 for North America is OUT OF STOCK. So, my 6 weeks of waiting for the map update is just the beginning !
Good:
It is portable and simple to use. For the most part, it will get you to where you want to go. POI search capability is better than other brands.
Bad:
- The routes suggested are usually not optimal, neither for faster time nor shorter distance. The route suggested can't be optimized in advance unless you force the unit to recalculate the new path by deliberately driving on the path that you know better. In general, if you know the area well you can do much better than what this unit offers.
- The prompt "turn in xxx" at the right bottom corner is not good enough. It should be supplemented with a graphic arrrow showing turn left or right so that the driver knows what lane to be in before the turn. The timing of audio prompt is too far or too close before the turn, especially on busy and complex highways. I missed the highway exits many times because of the wrong timing of the pronouncement.
*** The map version for North America shipped with the unit (bought from Amazon) is v8 and really old. Many old roads, business places have been long gone but they are still there according to the map. Many new areas and establishments in the recent years do not exist according to the unit ! I requested the free upgrade from Garmin for one month now and it still hasn't arrived yet! They said experiencing back orders and problems shipping internationally with free upgrades. My orders are still sitting in their warehouse as I checked with Garmin this morning.
My first impression of this unit was really good, but graduadlly turns to less and less so.