Garmin nüvi 670 4.3-Inch Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator
by Garmin
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List Price: Our Price: $70.00 You Save: $929.99 (93%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: GPS or Navigation System See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Garmin nüvi 670 4.3-Inch Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator
Customer Review: Lost in England
Summary: 1 Stars
Garmin nüvi 670 4.3-Inch Widescreen Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator
My nuvi 670 works beautifully in the USA but a nuvi 360 would work just as well for half the money. I purchased the 670 for a three-week vacation to England last summer. The 670 failed miserably.
As soon as I received the 670, I ordered the free update CD with European maps and loaded them on my Garmin. I thought I was all set.
Then I went to google maps and preloaded many locations, including hotels where we would be staying.
Our first dissapointments came during our arrival in London. Leaving our hotel on foot, I set the Garmin for walking and selected a destination that was nine-tenths of a mile away. The Garmin identified its location but did not show any streets. We got a taxi. I thought, oh well, it's not set for cities but will be ok on the highway.
I also had to reset Garmin's clock to local time. There are many European cities listed but none in the United Kingdom. There are a few in the continent, but London is not there. So my garmin was set an hour off.
We hired a car and set out for Braintree. The Garmin was confused right off the bat. It was no help, constantly "recalculating." We kept stopping and asking people for directions to the highway leading to Stansted where we found signs that led us to our destination.
At Braintree, we purchased a map.
To make a long story short, the nuvi 670 never worked. I had many destinations preloaded. The garmin would recognize the distance and direction, but was unable to show most roads. If we were on major highways like the M4, the road would appear on the garmin, but our car would look to be floating to the left or right of it, as though we were the Starship Enterprise. And then, as we drove, the voice would start . . . recalculating . . . recalculating . . . recalculating . . . driving us nuts, to the point that I would have to turn it off. My Garmin was bewildered. We were lost.
It is difficult to drive in England and I had such high hopes to make efficient use of my driving time. But no, we were often . . . Lost in England . . . and the Garmin was no help.
While the Garmin was helpless in giving directions, it was indespensible in an unexpected way. England is loaded with speed cameras. They are on major highways and in small villages. There are warning signs posted but it is easy to speed through before you realize it. The garmin was a lifesaver (or I should say, a money saver). Every time we approached a speed camera, the nuvi warned us. At $50 a speeding ticket, I'm sure it saved me hundreds of dollars. Some of you may be asking why I think I saved money because after leaving the country, how would the authorities get anyone to pay speeding fines. Well, I did not always have the garmin turned on . . . and you guessed it. I received a letter from Avis, informing me that my credit card would be charged $50+ for a speeding ticket. (It's in the rental agreement)
So if you want a GPS to warn you about speed cameras in England, get a Garmin. But if you want a GPS to provide directions, you'd better look at Tom Tom or some other brand. My experience suggests that Garmin does not have the mapping platform for the United Kingdon.
I'm not surprised that the nuvi 670 has been discontinued. It did not perform as it should. Perhaps it works better on the European continent, I don't know. But if you take a nuvi 670 to England, before you head out for your destination, I'd suggest that you purchase a good road map.
Customer Review: North America and Europe Maps: A good value for a discontinued model
Summary: 4 Stars
I had the Garmin 660 which was subsequently stolen out of my car in the DC Metro region. My advice is to use the Garmin Lock utilizing the PIN code. A minor inconvenience but if the unit is ever returned to Garmin, you might get it back.
The Garmin 670 is identical in form and function to the Garmin Nuvi 660. The 4.3" widescreen is helpful for improving visibility. Although the external antenna is cumbersome, the reception is good enough to operate the unit inside my house (with an open floor plan and large windows). The features include an MP3 player and Bluetooth capability. Projection of sound through the mono speaker is less than adequate for audiophiles but functional. Depending upon the density of radio stations in your area, the FM broadcast feature through your radio will be spotty in densely populated areas like Atlanta, DC, New York.
Voices for guidance can be adjusted to various languages, and include American male and female voices, Australian male and female voices and British male and female voices.
Acquisition of satellite signals can take up to a minute depending upon when and where you had your unit on last. Navigation is intuitive and various favorites, including home, can be set by address or POI.
The unit comes with North American Maps and European Maps. When you register, you can upgrade one or the other. I opted for the North American DVD ROM update given the duration of updating through the internet.
I bought this unit for my mother to travel in town and for the family when going to unfamiliar destinations. There is a wealth of Points of Interests (POIs) that this unit has. However, some of the big chain stores, like Staples, was not in the unit (How Strange).
For navigation, you can view the map in 3D, North up or Track up. From that same screen, you can get turn by turn guidance with map, a turn by turn summary, and even features like speedometer/altimeter/odometer/average speed.
The unit accepts an SD card for MP3s or for pictures.
Traffic information is only useful in major cities where the FM transmitter is available. If you are in a Non-metropolitan area, this feature is useless. Unfortunately, the traffic subscription counter starts when you start the unit and you have 90 days.
The unit is relatively easy to use and has some quirks but overall, this is a solid system for the current price.
The unit includes a leather case, dashboard mount, front window mount, AC and DC charger (separate cords), so for the money, it is hard to choose between the newer flashier units and a well equipped older model like this.
CONCLUSION
Aside from various drawbacks, I still recommend this product.
UPDATE:
I had an issue with the mounting bracket and emailed the company for customer support. They are sending me a replacement. This is just one of a few examples of the excellent customer service that I have received from the Garmin Corporation. This is a solid product with a company that stands behind their product 100%. I highly recommend this product and the company.
Customer Review: Excellent navigator, room for improvement
Summary: 4 Stars
Took the Nuvi 670 to Sweden, Denmark, and down to central Germany. Also, did a trip from southern Maine to eastern PA. GPS reception was always good, maps were very good, and no major routing problems. The fastest route setting does sometimes send you on a slower route (one time it took us off the main road through winding slow roads back to the main road, and there were no traffic alerts). The traffic receiver worked in the congested areas of both our Europe & USA trips. When there is traffic info, an icon silently appears on the screen (several times we hit traffic delays only to see that the nuvi knew about it but didn't warn us). You only get an audible traffic delay alert (and automatic recalculate announcement) when a fixed excessive delay ahead value is exceeded (you can't set that value). Also, the traffic display map is separate from the navigation display maps... and that traffic map is rather primitive.
Signed up to one of the safety-camera POI services linked from the Garmin site and downloaded the locations of European speed & traffic-light cameras. The POI alert function on the nuvi worked great.
The photo viewer is dreadfully slow. Photos aren't always displayed full screen, even when they have enough resolution. There is no way to easily locate a photo... you have to painfully go through the thumbnails in sequence.
I'm not so sure the extra price for the wide screen nuvi is worth it. I sprung for it thinking the picture viewer would be great with my camera... most of the photos had black bands to the side, so the smaller screen would have been about the same. During on-the-road navigation you tend to only look at the map area at the center of the screen, so the sides are not quite as important. The wide screen is useful when finding something when you are at a roadside rest.
The MP3 player is great... patched the Nuvi to the radio aux input and enjoyed what we loaded on an SD card. The FM transmitter works well until your radio picks up a weak station at the frequency you pick.
Bluetooth hands-free works well.
The Webupdater works well, and you'll want to update the software to the latest version.
Some suggested improvements for Garmin to consider in a future software update:
- give an audible alert when traffic info changes on the calculated route
- integrate the traffic display info into the navigation maps.
- improve the fastest route calculation algorithm... add time for each turn, sharp curve, and crossroad/congested-area.
- expand on ways to customize the route... for example, it would be nice to tap several road segments and mark each as route-via or do-not-use (and an option to save do-not-use segments for future trips).
- add a way to quickly locate photos in the photo viewer application (every Nth thumbnail option)
- speed up the photo thumbnail display
- have the photo viewer show photos as full screen (unless the photo's resolution is so low it would be too fuzzy)
Customer Review: Garmin Nüvi 670
Summary: 4 Stars
The unit was bought for a holiday in Massachusetts in April 2007 and I'm glad I did. It made driving around so much easier.
And it seemed like a better idea compared to buying a US map for my Garmin iQue 3600 (European version).
Likes
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Ease of use. You don't need to consult the manual much.
The size of the display.
The speaker is loud enough.
USB interface to pc: with Windows XP the unit and the SD card in it are assigned drive letters and you can transfer pictures or mp3 files by "drag and drop". Lovely.
You don't have to select a specific postcode/city when looking for an address. You can make do with streetname and number, and then search the lot. A friend of mine has a unit (different brand) that forces a postcode/city selection, it really bugs him and I see why.
Bluetooth interface: Connected easily to my mobilephone (Motorola K1).
FM transmitter: I think I like it even though you have to choose GPS or radio, you can't have both.
It pauses the mp3-player when giving directions and it doesn't interrupt when you are on the phone (via Bluetooth, of course). Neat.
TMC: I like it and the equipment for it is not bulky.
Missing features
Routes: I don't always agree on the suggested route. So give us routes or at least a few more via points (instead of just the one avaiable).
An example, with the iQue 3600 you can make a route and have it suggest the best order.
Track log: I miss the track log I have in my iQue 3600.
I want current speed on the map display. Speeding fines are up, authorities are less lenient (at least in DK) and my speedometer is very inaccurate.
It would be useful if you could customise the map display.
Configurability, overall: There is not enough. You can't make the unit individual to suit your taste.
Dislikes
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Danish letters: You never know beforehand when a name or word is spelled correctly or the Danish letters have been substituted for the two-letter equivalent. Fix that, please, Garmin.
Maps: Ran into problems around Logan Intl Airport, Boston, when I was pressed for time and later also in Denmark. (Tracklog might have helped a bit).
I don't think that map updates coming out once a year is often enough.
Gallery: "Slideshow" shows the pictures in the order you transferred them to the unit. You should have more choice here, e.g. order, size, date and random. Also, you should be able to control the interval between pictures.
Customer Review: Nice GPS, but ...
Summary: 4 Stars
I bought my nuvi 670 before my Austria trip. One of the main reason I took this one was the built-in map of Europe. It works well in cities like Vienna as it supposed to. So it is a good product.
This is my second GPS. Compared to my old Mio Digiwalk, I don't think the software of nuvi 670 is designed well. The following is a list of blunders:
1. The list of "favorites" is short and easily run-out, same as "recently found"
2. When you go to "favorites" and touch a place you stored, there is only two options: either "back" or "go". If you want to "set location" and search things arround, you have to go all the way back and start from "view map" and painstakingly drag the map to that location. This is one of the most stupid blunders.
3. While driving, my Mio always provides a sign of the next move (turn left, right, etc), and Nuvi doesn't until getting near the turing point. I would certainly like to know that earlier.
4. Garmin wasted the big screen by providing so little information on it. My Mio has a 2.7" screen and shows a lot more, such as battery meter, speed limit, distance to destination, and next turn, all missing in nuvi. For example, when I want to check battery while walking in Vienna, I had to go back to "home" screen to see it.
5. It appears that there is no place to store a list of contacts. I can put my friends info in my Mio, but not on nuvi.
6. The travel kit misses an extremely important feature: alarm clock. My Mio always reliably wakes me up when I am on trip. How can the Garmin engineers forget this one in their travel kit?
7. When I play MP3 music on my Mio, it automatically turn-off the screen to save battery and turn it on when it is needed. Whoever designed nuvi 670 MP3 player needs to be demoted for missing this simple battery saving feature.
8. It is nice to have FM transmiter. But the quality of music broadcast from nuvi is lousy. My suspision is that the transmitter is too weak.
9. The flip-up antenna is a bad feature in pedestrian mode. I like Mio that hides the antenna. Also, Mio provides a wrist band to make it easier to walk with it. However, you have to hold your nuvi with the stupid antenna sticking up while walking.
To be fair, nuvi offers some better features than Mio, such as text-to-voice that tells you the street name and the building is "on right". The Euro map is important for inter-continental travelers. So I'd like to give it a four-star rating. It could be easily a 5-star if only the Garmin hired smarter software engineers. Those people wasted a fine hardware.