Garmin nüvi 670 4.3-Inch Widescreen Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator

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Good, but with some surprising old Garmin faults
I bought this to replace a Tomtom Navigator 5 system running on a Dell x51v with the external Tomtom Bluetooth receiver. The major issues with that were a terrible lack of POIs, terrible time and distance predictions, poor routing, no control of the map view and the receiver shutting off despite being on external power.

First thing I noticed on opening the box is that the mains charger comes with adapters for all the countries I regularly visit, so I clicked the US two pin adapter in place, plugged it in then plugged the lead into the 670. It came on immediately and said it was loading maps. A few seconds later it showed a map. It was already locked on! That's a huge advance from the old days when it took at least 4 minutes for my GPSIII+ to find the satellites. I am in the middle of the top floor of a large open plan building, the position shown was accurate.

Without looking at the manual I got rid of the touch beep, bound it to my bluetooth phone, set the timezone and voice and set it up to navigate to a restaurant for lunch. All in under 15 minutes with time out for work.

In the car I mounted the unit to the windshield and plugged in the power conenction, it immediately lit up green to show it was connected to the traffic system. I was expecting to have to register and sign up for a service agreement, instead it came up and showed it was already enabled with 3 months to run. A few minutes later I looked at the traffic detail map and saw it already showed the local problem areas. Very cool.

Apparently the 2.60+ firmware handles 4Gb SD cards so I ordered one and look forward to trying the MP3 player. (I have used three different 4Gb cards since I wrote this and they all work perfectly.)

I tested the POI list by looking for gas stations and particular stores in the area, it had everything I knew of and more, so I am very hopeful at this stage.

I'm looking forward to trying the hands free too, all we did so far is dial another cell phone in the car and laugh about the echo we got. Sound quality and volume seemed good. I'm going for a 1500 mile road trip to Utah this weekend, so I'll update after that.

1685 miles later...

Garmin certainly has accurate maps for CA, NV and UT, they seemed very up to date. The option to "avoid dirt roads" was especially welcome and saved me some nasty miles that the direct route would have taken on unpaved roads. Routing was mostly good, but could do with some more skepticism on the choice of rural state roads. I was happy to take route 88 into the Sierras from the bay area because I was on a road trip, but I80 is probably 50% faster.

The one significant bug is a holdover from previous Garmin products like the GPS V, it is also an issue it shares with Tomtom. While heading down an interstate, let's take I880 from Oakland to Fremont as an example, with many miles of straight ahead to go, the 670 will direct you off at a ramp, it likes to take the I238 ramp towards Livermore, and then immediately back on. This is amusing to a local, but it could be very confusing to a visitor. It did the same to me in 395 south through Reno last night, that did confuse me. This is a bug that should have been eradicated years ago.

Another issue with the GPS V is still present in the 670. When recalculating the map display is suspended, so right when you need to see what's going on you have a useless map. When routing resumes it gives the verbal instructions before repainting the map. Not good. In contrast the Tomtom always recalculates silently and just flashes up the new route. The Tomtom never leaves you with a dead screen. I don't like to be told every time the route is recalculated, when I go the wrong way, for whatever reason, there's no brownie points to be gained telling me off. At the very least there should be the option to disable this 'feature'.

POI selection is absolutely outstanding, at least compared to other things I have used. It makes the Tomtom implementation look like amateur night. You can select the POI by type, gas stations, shops and restaurants are my favorites, then either go straight to the list of hit SPELL and type in part of the name. It will match on any part of the name, so you can include partial names, even partial words, and it will still show the matches. Once you have your list you can select by address, direction and distance, or see the POI on a map. The direction changes from compass direction when stationary to relative direction when moving, so you don't have to waste your time looking at gas stations you passed twenty miles ago.

I did have one POI which can obviously never have been true, the Shell station near Lohi, UT has obviously always been a house. But mostly the POIs are very accurate.

It is disappointing that you can no longer select different on-screen data, I liked that with the old units and miss it. That's a big step backwards. I want to know time-to-next, time-to-go, course, altitude and other things that used to be offered.

There is a weird issue with map detail and zoom level, small roads appear and disappear as you zoom in and out. Let's be clear, a small road that is visible on a small scale (big area) disappears as you zoom in and then only reappears at some of the highest scales (most detailed) when you can't see any context, or even if it's actually the same road.

In general though, the automatic map scaling is very good, the 3-D view shifts to a track up view as it zooms out, this addresses my major gripe with Tomtom in that it allows you to keep your route in context and see how you are getting on in the big picture. As the view zooms in it adds a lot of street detail, much much better than Tomtom.

The time to destination predictions remain excellent. Outstanding. It was within minutes on the driving time over a distance of hundreds of miles on each occasion. Tomtom is often pessimistic by 50%, totally inadequate for planning purposes.

Is it worth it? Is it as good as it should be? For me, no and no. For $850 I can get a decent laptop, that's a lot more hardware, so that's not where the money went. They are still not addressing their software issues, they have faulty algorithms that have been unmodified for years and inherited from old products. As a software engineer I am disappointed but not surprised. Near work it will still sometimes tell me to take three right turns instead of an entirely legal left.

But it is very good. Garmin's mechanical people have done a great job, this is obviously a class device. But the software and systems people aren't as good.

Overall? If I could edit the rating I'd drop at a point or two now. But I still haven't seen better. At these prices it's not like there are many people who are willing to try them all.

Contrasting my own companies attitude to software errors (we are one of the biggest suppliers in the cell phone, commercial radio, wireless networking and many other fields), we would not allow even a mildly irritating bug to remain in one of our products for years. So I am wondering if I should return this on principal. I'll try support first, in the past that didn't achieve much.

8,000 miles later

Yes, I do a lot of miles.

Lasting impressions: I almost always have the voice prompt switched off, the guidance is repeated too often on high speed roads and I hate to hear it continuously telling me that it is recalculating when I don't agree with the way it told me to go.

There have been too many instances of ridiculous routing, you need to zoom out and see of the route looks sensible. Most do. A good example of a bad one was in Yellowstone National Park, I was in Canyon Village and wanted to return to my hotel in West Yellowstone, about a 35 mile trip fairly well due west. The first part went OK but then I was directed north 60 miles on US89, 30 miles west on I90 then 60 miles south on US191. I ignored the advice and the continuous u-turn instructions and recalculation. As I arrived at the Wyoming/Montana border, about three miles down a straight road from my hotel, the Nuvi crashed. Screen controls didn't work. When I swiched it off and on again it discovered there was a three mile route to the hotel instead of the previous 170+ mile suggestion. Strange.

The traffic information has been a mixed blessing too. As traffic builds in the morning and evening rush hours it seems to be added in realtime, but it doesn't seem to be purged out when it is no longer present. So if I go in to work late at 10am the roads are running at the speed limit but the traffic information on the Nuvi still says they are at a crawl. On Friday night I went to dinner after work, when I left at 11pm the roads were quiet and most people were doing 15mph over the limit, but the Nuvi told me that I880 was jammed solid with a 30 minute delay for the next few miles. That had probably been true six hours earlier, but not in the last four. This isn't a fault with the unit, it's a fault with the traffic service, when switched on the unit gave the correct route. Bad traffic information also gives unreasonably pessimistic ETA estimates.

Would I buy it knowing what I do now? Still yes. I still think Garmin are the best of the current offerings, they just need to fix a few things and beat up their traffic information provider.

Does it work with SDHC Cards? Yes it does. I have tried the Transcend 4Gb card, which I use for music and audio books, and a SanDisk 4Gb card which came straight out of my Canon SD1000 and in to the Nuvi. A couple of seconds later it was showing a slide show of the pictures I took recently, so it can handle 2Mb jpeg files too.

Long term traffic issues: the traffic information is mostly for entertainment, the service quality is minimal, so you might get informed within half an hour of an incident, but they then might leave that on for another couple of hours. So by the time you multiply that by a few hundred incidents and road sensors it leaves you with a very unreliable picture of the world. It also misses some of the major daily bottlenecks, in the SF Bay Area good examples would be where south I880 narrows at Mission, and north I880 at Alvarado Niles, both places slow every day and can cost you 10 minutes and aren't reported reliably unless they spread out of their usual mile of clogged road. But again, this is the fault of the service, not the unit, but Garmin pays the fee and needs to lean on their information providers.

Good but needs more configuration options.
From an ergonomics and hardware perspective, the Nuvi is clearly the class leader. It does cost too much and the simplicty of the interface greatly limits flexibility.

Hardware. The Nuvi makes the TomTom and other units look downright bloated and clunky. The industrial design is not quite in the Apple league but is the best thing available at the moment. The SiRF chipset is far superior to those used in older GPS units (including some current Garmin StreetPilots). It locks signal quickly, the screen is bright, the voice to text is clear, etc.

I have owned many GPS units of all makes and types. Thus, unlike many 1st time GPS owners, I am no longer mesmerized by the fact that GPS can find my street address. The Garmin, like many other brands does a very good job at getting you from point A to point B. Garmin's maps and algorithms do seem slightly better than some others but it will still send you on some routes that a local driver would not use. the fact that the 670 is preloaded with maps of both Europe and the USA is a great feature IF, and only if, you have a need for this.

My biggest frustration with the Nuvi lineup is the limited configuration options. Garmin, in an effort to appeal to soccer Mom's, has really dumbed down the interface compared to years ago when you could configure just about everything including display of MGRS data. The Nuvi has even less flexibility than the StreetPilot series when it comes to configuration options.

Like any brand of GPS, the Garmin will often recommend a route that is simply absurd. This is where the interface falls down because the only place to select from shortest time, shortest distance, etc., is in the system configuration menus. Magellan, for example, asks you every time if you want "shortest time", "shortest distance", "least use of freeways", "most use of freeways", etc. If Magellan suggests a goofy route you simply go back one screen and pick an alternative. This also provides a quick and easy way to compare various routing suggestions. To do so on the Nuvi you have to return all the way back to the system settings and even then you only have shortest time or shortest distance. I do understand that many folks want to keep it as simple as possible but I also think Garmin should include an "advanced settings" menu for those who want more. Yes, the StreetPilots are more configurable but they are dinosaurs from a hardware perspective.

The TMC traffic service is a mixed bag. It is only useful in certain metropolitan areas. Likewise, the information is often not current. It is like listening to the traffic report telling you that Route XYZ is fine when you are sitting in bumper to bumper traffic on that very road. Quality of data really depends on the geographic area and the road itself. But yes, the way Garmin built the FM receiver into the power cord is a thing of engineering beauty.

Bluetooth may or may not work for you. When I try to pair my Nokia 9300 the Nokia sees the Garmin but the Garmin never sees the Nokia. If this feature is important to you then do check the Garmin site to see if your phone is listed as a compatible unit.

The graphics are good but nothing special. Again, about on par with everyone else.

I have not tried using the Nuvi as an MP3 player. I already own an iPod.

The big question becomes, is it worth the money? This is a tough call considering that some GPS units are now at the $200 mark. If you fly from city to city and want to take your GPS along then the Nuvi is a good choice. It is great to be in a strange city where you jump in a rental car, plug in an address, and away you go. If you want the basics or do not need the slim form factor there are much better deals from Magellan, TomTom, and even Garmin. The Nuvi is a better product but i do not think it is so much better that it justifies the huge price premium. I might feel differently if it had some amazing graphics engine or there were an "advanced configuration" menu that allowed me to tailor it to my own quirks and needs.

I did buy the 670 for the size and the USA/Europe maps. For those specific needs it is the best in class. I do love the Nuvi hardware but I still prefer the software and configuration options on my 4 year old Magellan Roadmate.

nuvi 670
The nuvi 670 is my third Garmin GPS. The first one was Street Pilot II, very hard to use. The second one was C330, very easy to use. I also have built-in GPS in two of my cars too. The new Garmins are all very easy to use. I bought the 670 for traveling in north America and Europe. Also bought the bean bag, what a waste! Within the first two miles I tried, it just flew off the dash board in a straight acceleration at a traffic light. I am sticking with the suction cup.

A couple interesting things: A street near where I live was built about three years ago and it wasn't in the nuvi still. I tried to look up some hotels and attractions in Venice, Italy and Geneva, Switzerland but the nuvi didn't even list the two citis (read on). I e-mailed Garmin tech support and was told I have to be near the cities to be able to find the POIs. What a bunch of BS. It worked when I searched POIs in Zurich, why not Geneva and Venice? Later I found out by myself that, if the spelling of an European city in its native language is not the same as its English spelling, the nuvi may not list it after you enter the city name in its English spelling. You need to enter the native spelling. For example, I entered "Geneva", it listed a bunch of Genevas in the U.S., but not THE Geneva in Switzerland, same thing with Venice. I found out the Geneva is Geneve and Venice is Venezia in native language. Once I typed Geneve and Venezia, it worked!

I guess you need to play with it a bit to learn the tricks but all in all it's a nice device.

About Garmin nüvi 670 4.3-Inch Widescreen Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator detail

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13806 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Garmin
• Model: 0100054030
• Platform: Not Machine Specific
• Dimensions: 3.00" h x 5.00" w x 1.00" l, .39 pounds
• Native resolution: 480 x 272
• Display size: 4.3

Features

• Pre-loaded with complete Navteq maps for all of North America and Europe
• 4.3-inch, touch-screen TFT LCD display with 480 x 272 pixels of resolution
• Bluetooth for hands-free calling; Integrated receiver for traffic data
• MP3 player, photo viewer, world clock, currency and measurement converters, calculator and more
• Weighs 6.2 ounces and measures 4.9 x 2.9 x 0.9 inches (W x H x D)

Product Description

portable GPS satellite navigation unit with flip-up antenna * includes car and home power adapters, USB cable, carrying case, and rechargeable battery with 4-8 hours of life * 4.3" color (480 x 272 pixels) touchscreen control * 6 million points of interest * integrated FM-TMC traffic-info receiver with free 3-month subscription to traffic-info service included (additional subscription required after trial period) * text-to-speech technology lets voice prompts announce road names over the built-in speaker * Bluetooth technology lets you make and receive hands-free phone calls * SD card slot (supports up to 4GB) *

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