Garmin Vehicle Power Cable for nüvi Portable GPS Navigators (010-10723-06)

Garmin Vehicle Power Cable for nüvi Portable GPS Navigators (010-10723-06)

With the Garmin 010-10723-06 Cigarette Lighter for the Nuvi 300/350/310/360 you can save your battery. Just plug it into any standard cigarette lighter receptacle to power or recharge the internal battery of your Garmin Nuvi 300, 350, 310 and 360.

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5-Star Feedbacks

This accessory is part of the original package when you buy the Garmin Nuvi navigator. You also get the windshield mount, a leather envelope for the unit, and an AC charger. Don't buy any accessories at the time of purchasing the unit. I bought this knowing I wanted and needed it and ended up with two and had to pay for return postage when I returned it because it was "My Fault" I couldn't use it. You only need this if your original one wears out or if you want to have multiple vehicles completely equipped. The product itself is excellent and keeps the navigation unit power from being depleted while using in the car.

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Garmin nüvi 750 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator

Garmin nüvi 750 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator

Sleek and wide, nüvi 750 leads the way with advanced navigation features, a colorful widescreen display, preloaded maps, an FM transmitter, a travel kit and more. Like the rest of the wide nüvi 700-series, its premium navigation capabilities, like route planning and a handy locator, give you peace of mind on the go.

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5-Star Feedbacks

I previously had a nuvi 660 and left the unit in a rental car in Iowa. I waited to replace it until the 750 shipped at the end of last month. While I was waiting, I tried a Tom Tom and Magellon. The 750 far exceeds all of the other units. The earlier reviews give a pretty good run down on what is good about it. There are a couple of things that were not mentioned that I really like over the 660.
1. I like the feel of it better than the 660. It doesn't have the flip up antenna and seems more streamline and fits into my shirt pocket better. 2. The mounting unit is FAR superior than the one on the 660. I have rented cars 140 times so far this year, and the different windshield slants caused problems at times with the 660. The 750 mount allows greater rotation of the GPS for better viewing.

I didn't use the bluetooth on the 660, so I opted to not get it and purchased the 750 instead of the 760. I do disagree with an earlier review in that I greatly appreciate the traffic antenna and traffic routing. I travel mostly in major metro areas and it has helped me considerably. Fortunately when I lost my 660 I did not loose the traffic antenna or the electrical charger, both of which work on the 750. Is it worth $200? Probably not. But it has steered me around traffic jams and bridges that are out.

Also, one other neat feature that I haven't figured any usefull purpose for yet but that I like is that it lays down a pink line showing where you have been. Kind of like laying down bread crumbs.

There is NOTHING out there that is as good as the nuvi 700 series!

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Garmin nüvi 770 GPS Navigator and Personal Travel Assistant

Garmin nüvi 770 GPS Navigator and Personal Travel Assistant

The nüvi 770 adds European maps to the multi-destination routing and, "Where am I?/Where's my car?" features the entire 700 series brings to Garmin's popular pocket-sized GPS navigator lineup. As with all nüvis, you get Garmin reliability, the fast satellite lock of an integrated high-sensitivity receiver, a slim, pocket-sized design with a gorgeous display, an easy, intuitive interface, and detailed NAVTEQ maps for the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico with more than 6 million name-searchable points of interest. All of the 700-series navigators also feature a rich array of features including spoken directions in real street names, MP3 player and photo viewer, and an FM transmitter that will play voice prompts, MP3s, audio books, and more, directly through your vehicle's stereo system. The nüvi 760 and 770 add integrated traffic receivers and Bluetooth capability for hands-free calling. The nüvi 770 adds maps for Europe. The nüvi 780 adds enhanced MSN direct content capability.

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5-Star Feedbacks

I bought the Nuvi 770 for my wife for Christmas. I had been watching the GPS price/features evolution for some time, and almost went with the 660. Ultimately, the new, more polished interface of the 770 and a few of the more recent features won out. As a Mac user, one of the most important aspects of any electronics device is the willingness of the manufacturer to support the Mac platform. Garmin does a very nice job of this. I downloaded the Web Updater and updated the 770 software in less than 5 minutes. I also installed the POI uploader and tested it out; worked great.

While the 770 is no iPhone, it does what it does very well. The number of steps required to get to desired information is not significant, and the screen interface is quite nice. Very polished, less "cartoonish" than some interfaces I have seen. The 3-D view is very effective. Directions were flawless. No chance yet to test the Traffic.com functionality.

My wife loved how well the 770 pairs with her iPhone. Dialing POI phone numbers was simplicity itself, and the ability to use the 770 as a handsfree speakerphone, even when dialing with the iPhone is very nice. Sound quality is pretty good, too, for such a small speaker. Persons on the other end of the line report that sound quality is good and fully understandable.

The FM transmitter feature--for which I did not have high expectations--is at best so-so. The 770 seems to find open FM spots on the dial fairly well [here in the Bay Area of Northern California, that is not trivial], but the downside of leaving the radio turned on to an occasionally hissing, static-y spot did not seem worthwhile. I want to be able to listen to the radio, and be interrupted as need be. That's how the built-in GPS works on our Subaru Tribeca, interrupting as necessary. I have not yet tried to hardwire the 770. BTW, its GPS functions are vastly superior to the built-in navigation.

One reason we chose the 770 is because we are visiting Europe this spring, and renting a car. So, we are looking forward to using it there. My test of the POI capabilities in Europe was pretty impressive. So we are looking forward to taking it on our trip.

We bought the dashboard frictional base, and it is amazing. Through twisting curves, quick starts, and surprise stops, it never moved. I will never use a windshield or dash sticky mount again.

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Garmin Portable Friction Dashboard Mount for Nüvi Series and StreetPilot C5XX Series GPS Navigators (C530, C550 and C580)

Garmin Portable Friction Dashboard Mount for Nüvi Series and StreetPilot C5XX Series GPS Navigators (C530, C550 and C580)

This product is intended to be used as a portable dash mount for the nuvi series of units and the StreetPilot C5xx series.

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5-Star Feedbacks

I have become addicted to my Garmin Nuvi 660 and used it for six months with a successful windshield mount. But now I have bought a new car. I discovered that the windshield suction mount left an ugly black ring on the window of my old car. (I assume I can get this cleaned up when I detail the car for selling.)

So no way was I going to put one of those on my beautiful new car. I tried the Garmin dashboard mount but shied away from the "permanent" disc. I found the "temporary" disc was just not up to the job of holding this device in place -- at least on my vehicle. I found this very frustrating. I read about the Portable Friction Mount, found a Best Buy store that had it in stock and ran out to buy it.

Though it is not terribly good looking, it does the job very well. I tried whipping around a few tight turns in parking lots and the whole thing stayed put. As another reviewer said, this lets you easily remove the thing and put it on the floor so it's not obvious. That may be more valuable than you would think. I know somebody who removed his Garmin Nuvi (and took it with him) but left the window mount in place. The car was broken into and the window mount alone was stolen. (Probably that was a pretty frustrated thief.)

Also, this will be easy to transfer to a rental car. And it will make it easy for my wife to borrow my Nuvi. Hmmm!

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Garmin nüvi 760 Portable GPS Automobile Navigator

Garmin nüvi 760 Portable GPS Automobile Navigator

Garmin's nüvi 700 series brings two exciting new features -- multi-destination routing and, "Where am I?/Where's my car?" -- to its popular pocket-sized GPS navigator lineup. As with all nüvis, you get Garmin reliability, the fast satellite lock of an integrated high-sensitivity receiver, a slim, pocket-sized design with a gorgeous display, an easy, intuitive interface, and detailed NAVTEQ maps for the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico with more than 6 million name-searchable points of interest. All of the 700-series navigators also feature a rich array of features including spoken directions in real street names, MP3 player and photo viewer, and an FM transmitter that will play voice prompts, MP3s, audio books, and more, directly through your vehicle's stereo system. The nüvi 760 and 770 add integrated traffic receivers and Bluetooth capability for hands-free calling. The nüvi 770 adds maps for Europe. The nüvi 780 adds enhanced MSN direct content capability..

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5-Star Feedbacks

I own both the Nuvi 660 and the 760, I'm writing this review for people having trouble deciding between the two as the price difference between the two products at the time of this review is about 100 dollars. I'm not going to focus on the feature differences, as that information can be easily obtained from specifications and online reviews. The 660 was a fine product back in 2005-2006, but the new 760 outdoes the 660 in practically everything, but there are some key usability fixes that make the 760 a better buy for the frequent user.

1. 760 has much better fonts for street names than the 660. This may seem like a trivial update to some, but the 760's fonts greatly improve visibility. The 660 uses all capitalized text for street names on the map, and the font is incredibly cartoonish and unaligned, something like the scribbling Comic Sans font on the PC. The 760 uses your standard Verdana-like font with street names in capitalized and lowercase letters. The fonts on the 760 are smaller, cleaner and surprisingly much easier to read while driving. The maps end up looking professional, and not some cartoony children's video game.

2. 760 has better rendering in 3D map mode than the 660. In the 660 when you are zoomed in under 3D map mode, the roads close to your car are displayed incredibly large, so large that they run into other roads, making the zoom function essentially kind of useless for dense roads. The 760 does not oversize your roads just because you zoomed in to view smaller roads in detail. This fix is very nice for those who drive in places with dense roadways, like New York City.

3. No antenna on the 760 makes hooking up your Nuvi to the cradle one step easier. On the 660 you need to flip up the antenna before attaching the cradle. For people who park their cars on the street overnight, removing the GPS from the cradle for storage in the console or glove compartment is a must, and it's a lot easier hooking up the 760 to the cradle than the 660. It's hard to aim the 660 to its cradle in the dark as you have to align both the bottom edge and the charge port under the antenna. In the 760, the charge port is directly on the bottom of the unit; you can attach it to the cradle with one hand in the dark easily on the 760.

4. It takes the 660 a good 45 seconds on average (sometimes longer than 2 minutes) after boot up to locate the satellite on a cold start. If you have firmware 2.6 installed on the 760, the satellite acquisition time after boot up is between 10-20 seconds. After the firmware update, my 760 also holds a stronger lock to the satellites than my 660, I can get satellite lock inside my house with the 760, whereas I can't get a lock with my 660 (adjusting the antenna does very little).

5. The ability to set multiple ad hoc viapoints on the 760 means it's a lot easier creating alternate routes (very handy to avoid a specific interstate or a high traffic road). Whereas the 660 gives you just one viapoint.

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Garmin Nuvi 255W 4.3-Inch Portable GPS Navigator

Garmin Nuvi 255W 4.3-Inch Portable GPS Navigator

Garmin's nüvi 255W improves upon its 200-series predecessors by adding top-of-the-line features such as FM traffic updates or MSN Direct content to an entry-level line. But Garmin is also introducing some significant improvements with this new series, like a predictive technology that provides faster satellite lock, a redesigned screen with more information, terrain maps, and an exciting new photo navigation feature. The 255W adds complete maps for North America and Text-to-Speech, so you get turn by turn spoken directions with the real names of streets (e.g. "turn left in 50 feet at Nebraska Way", rather than merely "turn left in 50 feet"). The 255W also offers a wide 4.3-inch (diagonal) screen that displays 70% more of the road around you.

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5-Star Feedbacks

I actually could not decide between the Garmin Nuvi 255w or the 750 model, so I decided to buy them both for comparison. I mounted them both to my car windshield and gave them various addresses to find together. I found that both models took the same routes and announced upcoming turns and street names at practically the same time. One thing I noticed about the 255w was that it was updating my position on the road more often, I'd say about 3 times as often as the 750. This made for smoother graphics on the 255w of the vehicle moving along displayed roads, where the 750's display was more of a "jerky" movement. I also found that the display on the 255w was a bit brighter, clearer, and more vivid than on the 750 in both daylight and at night. Another feature I like on the 255w is the graphic turn indicator in the upper left corner, which the 750 lacks. This is a small arrow which shows upcoming turns and the distance to that turn. It also show things like a fork in the road, (ie: a Y intersection), and which fork you will be taking. The 750 just displays text on the top line for upcoming turns without the arrow. It's just a little extra feature on the 255w which I happened to really like. The 255 also automatically adjusts the font size of displayed text so that even lengthy text will fit.
Another feature on the 255w is a display of the posted speed limit on the road which you are currently on right above your current displayed speed. I found myself not even looking at my car speedometer as I could easily see my current speed and the speed limit of my route at a glance. The 750 doesn't have this feature. I also like how they moved the zoom in (+) and zoom out (-) buttons on the 255w to the same side of the screen which makes it a bit easier. On the 750 the zoom buttons are on opposite sides of the screen.
Now there are some features on the 750 that the 255w does not have. The 750 can broadcast it's sound over your FM radio with the supplied cigarette lighter cable, and it has a headphone jack, which I found to be nice features. The 750 also has an MP3 player and an Audio-book player, which the 255w does not. Another really nice feature of the 750 is the car locater. This is a great feature if you are parking in a really big lot, such as at an amusement park or a fair. The 750 marks your location when you remove it from the car, then you take it with you and it remembers where you parked and takes you right back to your car. The 255w doesn't have the car locater.
I also thought the the voice prompts of the 750 where more pleasant sounding than the 255w's. The 750 sounds more like a real female voice, where the 255w sounds more robotic.
Another thing to consider was that I paid $50 less for the 750 and it came with the FM transmitter cable and a USB cord to connect it to your computer for updates and downloads.
My final decision was to keep the 255w and return the 750 because I really liked the graphic turn indicator and the posted speed limit and current speed indicators. I didn't find a need for the 750's MP3 player and Audio book player, but that is up to personal preference. Since the USB cable was not included with the 255w, I purchased it on this site for $10. I also intend to purchase the MSN direct cable when it is available in August 2008.

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Garmin nüvi 660 4.3-Inch Widescreen Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator

Garmin nüvi 660 4.3-Inch Widescreen Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator

With a gorgeous widescreen display, the Garmin nüvi 660 GPS Personal Travel Assistant is your answer to the call of adventure. A sleek navigator and a keen travel assistant, the nüvi 660 is preloaded with highly detailed City Navigator NT road maps for the entire United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. This map database features nearly six million points of interest (POIs), including hotels, restaurants, gas stations, ATMs, and attractions, and the data is provided by NAVTEQ, a world leader in premium-quality mapping.This preloaded navigator brings all this fantastic map data to your fingertips with a super-bright, 4.3-inch widescreen display for improved map viewing, day or night. Use the touch screen interface to select destinations, look up POIs, and play your favorite MP3s and audio books. The display also helps you control hands-free calling, traffic alerts, and the FM transmitter, all from the screen of your personal travel assistant.

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5-Star Feedbacks

With this unit, Garmin has blown TomTom out of the water. The 350/360 were slick units but arguably came up a bit short in the display department when compared to the TomTom - that's all a distant memory now.

This is the most elegant AIO (all in one) GPS navigation solution I've come across to date. IMO, it represents the best compromise between size and functionality on the market today. Beyond this point, increasing the screen size enters the diminishing return territory. The SiRFstarIII chipset, while no longer the absolute best on the market, remains a reliable workhorse with rapid satellite acquisition under even less than ideal conditions. The mapping details are excellent though, as with all mapping programs, is not beyond reproach. The 660 has the most recent highly detailed City Navigator NT maps.

The voice prompts are loud, clear and timely. The ease of use is just fantastic and the visibility and quality of the display are now the gold standard in the industry with a 4.3" WQVGA LCD screen and 480 x 272 pixels. It uses the same low reflection screen as the 360.

POI access is excellent and can be navigated to much more simply than the TomTom unit which requires additional cumbersome steps. The attachment system for the Nuvi is superb and very secure. You can access your POIs directly by name rather than having to go through a cumbersome category menu and then only getting the POIs by proximity as is the case with the TomTom 910. Garmin simply blows TomTom away in the POI functionality department.

This device is intended as an extremely simple point to point navigating AIO GPS navigation solution and is not intended to enable the use of way points or easily changing the course selected by the unit. You have essentially two options: the shortest route and the fastest route. Fortunately, the mapping program selects routs that are very acceptable. Personally, I like to look at the overall route and fiddle with it. This unit is not designed for such use. Microsoft Streets and Trips is ideal for this kind of tinkering, but terrible for point to point navigation while on the go at which the Nuvi has no peer.

Make sure and get the most recent firmware updates on the Garmin website which will fix the known bugs and further improve the functionality. Insofar as functionality goes this unit is as simple as the 350/360. Even my 85 year old father can use these things! He is, to put it kindly, technologically challenged but his 350 is so intuitive and easy to use that he's had no problems whatsoever. He doesn't like to be distracted while driving so he plans his trip before leaving and simply listens to the voice prompts.

The new bluetooth feature enables the use of your hands free bluetooth enabled phone. It's a nice feature, but as with all bluetooth devices that I've used it's still not as good as talking directly on the phone. I personally have not used the built in FM transmitter and so cannot comment on it.

I can heartily recommend this product. Garmin has knocked one out of the park.

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