Introduction to Garmin’s Nuvi 350!
The Nuvi 350 from Garmin is a strong travel assistant unit fairly well designed. This is one of the most popular models known for reliability, speed, and value. The navigation software is superb here, it works perfectly for daily use or strictly for longer trips. The best part is that it won’t tear a hole in your wallet while still maintaining the high quality navigating capabilities – something that original garmin nuvi 350 reviews weren’t saying as the price used to be enormously high compared to 2007’s best prices. This is a wonderful piece of technology that can save incredible amounts of time or money now with the high cost of your time and the ever increasing confusion, anxiety and gasoline prices factored into our daily travel experiences.
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| Figure 1: The Garmin Nuvi 350 is the popular well rounded navigational unit that makes travel fun and easy. |
Design of the Garmin 350
The 350 is perfectly built. It feels quite solid, yet it’s light enough to be taken with you wherever you go, only around 5 ounces in fact. This also makes taking the unit itself to recharge with ease. The battery life is one of the best parts on this model, the rechargeable lithium-ion battery can run for up to a hefty 8 hours. The screen itself also one of the defining features of all the nuvi’s. With a bright and vivid display, that also doubles as a touch screen, it makes viewing maps and all the functions easy on the eyes and convenient to use. Compared to other available GPS devices on the market, the nuvi’s do have the most appealing build and look.
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| Figure 2: The design is meant to be handheld and compact. The small and slim design makes portability possible. | Figure 3: The Nuvi 350 is unintrusive and sleek. It can be mounted in any type of vehicle. |
The Nuvi 350’s interface
Just like the exterior aspect of the Nuvi 300, the software itself is quite attractive itself. Everything is colorful and sharp, particularly the maps are. The interface itself is quite easy to use, with a simple press on the touch screen, a selection can be made with minimal effort. The menu’s and typing interface are all nice and large buttons. Having the responsive touch screen paired with this user-friendly software is a wonderful harmony of design.
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| Figure 4: Selections can be easily made with large and simple buttons. The user gets to their choices quickly and effectively. | Figure 5: Entering text is fast with a simple input interface. |
Navigation
This is the main feature on this device. Garmin has defined navigation with their Nuvi handhelds as they can provide some of the best routes for time or for distance. Using the typing interface makes entering addresses and other information a quick task. The best part is the next part – you’re ready to go. Routes are calculated fast and quite efficiently. The navigational system helps direct you every bit of the way to your destination with speech and the map. The map itself is very easy to understand, especially with the GPS tracking exactly where you are on the map itself in real time. Every turn is announced in advance for you so you have the time to prepare, making each trip the most direct. Should you even happen to have to take another path or make that unexpected detour due to any traffic situation, the Nuvi will do its job quickly in tracking your current position and recalculating a new route for you to reflect that. This is very easy to use and the convenience of knowing you’re going the right way at the best routes is the best benefit you can get from your GPS navigator.
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| Figure 7: The Nuvi 350 will not let you down as all upcoming turns are notified to the user before the turn and during the turn. | Figure 8: After defining your location, a simple press of a button will begin your route calculation. |
Other Features
The Nuvi 350 does not have some of the luxurious features of its higher model cousin, the 360, but it does have features that you do expect that any travel assistant to have. The favorite for many is the ability to play mp3s straight from the Nuvi with your music loaded onto a SD memory card. One of the most powerful convenience feature is the points of interest database that the 350 contains. With this you can select from countless amounts of useful places in the area, such as ATM’s, hotels, restaurants, and so much more. It even takes custom points of interests, so you can define your own points on the maps. As the higher end models have the FM traffic receiver, the 350 is capable of adding on this feature seperately. This is another powerful feature that can bring further convenience or enjoyment from your trips. With the receiver you can be capable of receiving up to date traffic reports, thus you can be notified of accidents or any other road constructions ahead of time. This could save you countless time and frustrations of getting stuck in congested areas in the first place. Like all other models, the Nuvi 350 has all the travel essentials that anyone would need, such as calculators, currency and measurement converters, and world clock.
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| Figure 9: A variety of tools and functions are available by default or by optional addons. | Figure 10: Vital statistics and data of your trip can be easily displayed with a touch of a button. |
Conclusion
The Garmin Nuvi 350 is certainly one of the most popular models of all Nuvi’s available, thanks to a fair wealth of features and the best weighing price tag. It’s built solid and strong yet it looks subtle and sleek. The software was made well as any user will testify how user friendly it really is. It does work well in navigating and will most definitely become a trusted travel companion as the user gets used to it. Garmin has some of the best reliable products available and the 350 is one of those products. Updating software is one of the easiest tasks with the Nuvi’s. Utilizing USB ports, you can have all updates done from a PC or a Mac in only a short moment. This is one GPS model you don’t want to miss if you’re in the market for one. It is the best well rounded model, with performance just about as good as the highest end ones, and a bundle of features that you would actually use. A highly rated product.
