Garmin nüvi 370 3.5-Inch Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator
by Garmin
|
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 |
|---|
Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Garmin nüvi 370 3.5-Inch Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator
Customer Review: Very disappointed
Summary: 1 Stars
I have been using a Mio C310x for two years and bought the Nuvi 370 for a recent trip to Germany and Italy--I needed a GPS with the European map and the text-to-speech feature and the Nuvi seemed to be a good fit. However, I am disappointed because of its inconvenience to use. It's a very BASIC GPS: if you want to go to a place, find it on the GPS and it will take you there. But if you want to do some more complicated planning or research, it's probably going to disappoint you. After using it, I can understand why it has been discontinued. I think the Nuvi 370 represents five-year old technology (if not ten).
Pros. OK--It DOES work. The signal was fine most of the time during my road trip of Frankfurt-Nurnberg-Munich-Florence. On several occasions I have to wait for 5-10 minutes to get a signal, but I think it's not uncommon for any GPS.
Cons. I find the following tasks either inconvenient or impossible to do with this GPS. (1) Incapable of planning a trip with multiple "via points". You cannot edit the trip by swapping or deleting a via point; you have to do it all over again from scratch (2) Planning a trip from A to B while you're at C--a very simple task but it's too much hassle than it should be on this GPS. (3) The points of interest you saved are all in one folder; you cannot create any sub-folders. (4) No QWERTY keyboard layout. (5) No cockpit mode, making it more difficult to find your way in the European roundabouts. (6) The external traffic receiver cannot be used in Europe because it needs additional power accessory. (7) When you find a point of interest, you have to save it before you hit the "go-to" button. Otherwise you will lose the chance to save it and have to start anew to find it.
I think the Mio C370 is only a BASIC GPS. However, compared to it, the Nuvi 370 is RAW and RUDIMENTARY in terms of functioning.
Customer Review: My time in Europe -- Meh
Summary: 4 Stars
i just spent 45 days in Europe with a car. we spent the first month in Italy and then traveled to Austria, Czech Republic, Amsterdam and down to France. for the vast majority of the time, the 370 provided very good directions. however, one time the GPS sent us down a hiking path in Austria to the back door of the hotel (i had to turn around in a field of tall grass on the side of a mountain). on the way to Cinque Terre, the GPS sent me through a small village and onto a street between buildings where i had about 2 inches clearance on either side of the car for about 70 meandering meters -- very, very, very slow driving. this was clearly not the main traveled highway to Cinque Terre (using the default settings of the GPS). in Milan, the GPS wanted me to go down a 1-way road the wrong way and i had difficulty getting it to redirect me as it kept trying to get me to go back around the round-about and down the road wrongly.
the GPS also uses some odd phrasings -- turn onto A3 sounds more like turn on 2A3. this really confused me for the first few days. "onto" should be 1 word.
the GPS does a poor job of pronouncing street names. now granted, i'd have trouble with these as well. but i even heard the GPS stutter once, which gave us all a chuckle.
i haven't used the GPS in the USA yet as it arrived a day before i left for Europe, so these comments only apply to using it in Europe . . . but that's largely why you'd get this model. if i was going back to Europe, I'd take this GPS with me again rather than look for a new GPS. i figure non of them are going to be perfect at the USA and Europe, but i also have learned more about its nuances that perplexed me at times over the first 2 weeks or so of using it. i still felt better having it than relying on maps. i'd honestly rate it a 3.5 if that was an option.
Customer Review: Great GPS and other utilities
Summary: 5 Stars
Last week we checked out our new Garmin nuvi 370 GPS for a 100-mile trip to a new destination and it worked amazingly well. We decided not to put the adhesive mount on the dashboard (came with warning that it is difficult to remove) until we found out if we liked it. So my wife just held it on her lap and it quickly and easily found the satellites and stayed locked on them even inside the car - so it doesn't really need to be mounted under the windshield. We already knew the best route to the general area and it took us there by that route and when we got to the general area it took us right to the desired location. While in the area we were able to search for closest and/or desired restaurants, gas stations, and shopping. The "text to voice" feature was worth the extra cost because it was helpful to know the street name of the next turn - spoken with at least 3 advance warnings. A required U-turn is called out as a left turn onto the same street that is being traveled on and it knows where U-turns are not allowed and takes us around the block with right turns. And, this little thing (smaller than a cigarette package) has many other travel features. I had already read through the instructions, but it's so simple that my wife figured it out as we were traveling without reading them and mostly without my prompts. This trans-Atlantic version will be extremely useful when we are traveling in Europe and the UK this summer.
Last night I easily linked up our cell phone to the Garmin muvi 370 using the Blue Tooth interface. It works great and displays the "calling list" to select a quick and easy dial-out number and even responds to the voice activated dialing better than the phone itself. This will be nice to have after July 1 when the new law will require "hands-free" calling on mobile phones while driving.
Customer Review: A "mature" GPS product -- with some of the problems solved
Summary: 4 Stars
Succinctly: it's got a great screen, bright and adjusts for day vs. night. You can change even the accent in which it speaks to you. It will get your there 98% of the time. (as time goes on, and road construction continues, the map gets progressively out of date, but you can buy an update yearly if you desire.) I buy it every other year.
Now this is not my first GPS. We own two cars with them built in, a Toyota Sierra van 2004 and a Lexus Hybrid 2006. The GPS systems are similar but the Lexus is a bit updated from the Sierra. We've also rented cars with GPS systems either internal or external.
Each will give you "mostly" the correct directions with an occasional odd error or weird routing. Sometimes because a very odd route is marginally shorter, it will send you around the mulberry bush to get somewhere you could get to straightaway. It does NOT know dangerous or sketchy neighborhoods. It is unaware of traffic unless you activate the traffic service (which after an initial period, you must pay for on a subscription basis). Its estimates of the ETA are based on your current speed or your average speed but are rarely accurate. This is true of all the GPS units we've tried and/or owned.
All of that said, this unit is small, light, portable, easy to program and has many extra features (most of which I find unimportant or redundant. I do NOT need a GPS to also be my iPod. I like those functions separate.
I have found this to be an extremely easy, reliable and usable unit. My experience with Garmin's tech support with a previous nuvi 360 unit was incredibly wonderful. They are simply great to work with and usually solve the problem forthwith. The best tech support still available on any product I own. This alone is worth the price of admission.
Customer Review: Obsolete for European use-Avoid
Summary: 1 Stars
I used to be a tremendous fan of this little unit. But I can only recommend it for U.S.A. use now. Because it's an older product, it's often available at a low price. It was a bargain for a European/US unit. I even let Garmin replace (for $150) my failing, first 370 with a reconditioned one. Now I'm sorry I spent the extra money.
If you're interested in European map coverage, be sure to search the Garmin website for the FAQ "Why are certain units not compatible with City Navigator Europe NT 2011.30 or newer mapping?". (This FAQ applies to the Nuvi 300 series, Nuvi 600 series, Nuvi 5000, StreetPilot c500, zumo 400 series, and zumo 500 series.)
Even though I paid, up front, for lifetime map updates for both US and European maps, Garmin couldn't be troubled to email me about this news. The last time I loaded a European update, there were no error messages. When I looked at a location in Belgium, I discovered there were no longer any maps of Europe on the unit. I can't believe the high-end GPS manufacturer, in effect, swept this failure under the rug for me.
It turns out that the European map updates are now too large for the factory memory on the Nuvi 370. The only workarounds are cumbersome utilities to put some of the European maps onto the flash card (optional) you can slip into the machine. (I believe this older flash card slot can't take the newer, high-capacity cards widely sold today. I have a 1 Gig card in mine.) Every time you do a map load on the 370, the previous maps on the same storage media are wiped out. So I've done my European loads three times. And I'm still not postitive that I have 100% of Eastern and far-Northern installed. (That's because the workaround utilities are graphic-based, and you can't even see precisely what you loaded after you're done.)