Great Article, I have one question. Can you plot multiple points on the PC and upload them so it will guide you from starting point A, then point B, then point C, then point D, and back to point A. Basically as a delivery driver with new stops each day, program the stops in and go about my day.

Thanks for the descriptive article.

Harvey,

Thanks for the comment. As far as your question is concerned unfortunatly, no, the Nuvi can’t do that.

It will allow you to program in a single waypoint on your route, but it doesn’t let you put in multiple stops. So, you could program in points A and B, but then after you get to B you’d have to put in C and D.

So, you wouldn’t be able to sit down and program in your entire delivery schedule, but the good news is that you could still take along your route sheet and when you finish one delivery just enter in the next point.

It takes about 30 seconds to type in an address so at least they make it quick and painless even if you can’t schedule the entire day in advance.

Here is a link to the Nuvi manual in case you’d like to see more details about the features.

John

I finally bought a GPS and decided to take the plung on the high end portable Nuvi 660. Outstanding is a rare comment I make for new tech items. I have not used all the features yet but I found it to hit the mark EXACTLY every time I traveled so far. In my sales travels in the NE USA and elsewhere, I have found every customer and prospects location that was programmed in. With 500 favorites to save, you can build up a directory of accounts for recall. I went into NY state small towns, rural locations, downtown cities, suburbs along with my home state of Mass. Traveled to the outskirts of Toronto to a sister company office and local address’s. The unit plots quickly and if you miss the turn, recalculates every little detail. Can’t find the address, plot the nearest intersections. The voice commands are execellent and as noted you almost don’t have to watch the screen. Back screens give you average speed, stopped time, travel time, directions, estimated miles and time for the trip entered. Now I will read the manual. Yes it is that easy. Got to have the 12v auto power.

Thanks for the comment Mike. I’m glad to hear that you had a similar experience to mine.

I also found it is quite amazing that the Nuvi has more accuracy than the GPS built into my high end automobiles. There are very few instances where it can’t find a specific location. And I’ve normally found that by searching a different way it does usually find them.

And yes, it’s very fast at both satellite aquisition and route calculation. And although the auto power is a necessity, even the 6 or so hour built in battery life is quite outstanding for something so small and powerful.

Take care,

John

I just tried to order a 660 but quickly canceled the order. The guy I was placing the order with stated that the touch screen was very delicate and that I should get the extended waranty for $150.oo. Any comments would be greatly appreciated.

Ron,

Those retail sales people make big bucks to sell the extended warranties. The screen on this device is no more delicate than any other device I have with a touch screen. Cell phones, PDAs, etc. I’ve carried this thing all over the country, and use it almost every day in my car. That comment was an absolute lie.

The guy was trying to scare you into buying an unbelieveably expensive warranty ($150!!!). Please buy a Nuvi. You will love it. Please don’t by it from the scammers that were using fear tactics on you.

John

I’ve just bought a Nuvi 660 after using TomTom Navigator on a PDA for a few years. The Nuvi is truely excellent. The build quality, ease of use, size and functionality is far better than the TomTom 910 I was considering buying. There are two things that bug me, however: 1. Having the ‘Warning’ start-up screen every time you turn it on and 2: having to enter the country you are in when inputting an address after the unit has been turned off – shame it doesn’t remember or at least give you a default. Oh and another thing, the voices are not as good as TomTom; and I’ve been unable to find any comedy voices for it to make your journey a bit more fun. But, these are relatively small gripes. Overall it is a fantastic bit of kit.

My 660 came with the traffic updater. you get the first 3 months free. After that the oost is $60/yr. The updater/antenna is also your power adapter. If the service is available in your area it is well worth the money. It picks up traffic info and you can see where the problems are o your screen. If you are in the navigation mode (directions to a particualr place)the nuvi simply reroutes you around the problem area. If you normal mode (just using the maps) it will warn you with an icon and a verbal prompt (“traffic” ahead, “accident” ahead) Last week, on the way to work, I got the prompt of an accident ahead.. I put myself into navaigation mode using “work” as a favorite. The unit automatically directed me off the highway at an earlier exit, avoiding the entire mess.. very worth while option!!!

I about to buy one of these for my wife but worry that it might be easy to steal. How do you secure the unit if it’s only attached with a suction cup to the windshield?
Steve

Steve,

Very good question, unfortunatly no good answer. The portability of this device makes it easy to steal. It’s basically just like a radar detector in that regard.

All I can say is that when I leave my car anywhere I take it down out of the window and put it somewhere out of sight. It does come with a nice carry case that you can slip it into when you are putting it away.

One of the nice things about the Nuvi 660 is that the mounting method is awesome. It snaps into and out of the suction cup holder, so removal is very, very easy.

Hope that helps,

John

It does include “Garmin Lock” (and a window warning sticker). Pro thieves should know about this deterant.

It is a software (firmware?) lock. You set your own pin. If you set it up, you need to enter the pin when u start the unit.

One neat thing is you can also set a “security location”… you literally take the unit to a specific location and save it as your security location. In case you forget your pin, you can take your unit to the security location, and it will unlock. (This seems very silly, since you would use your pin every time, so hard to forget, and if you are locked out because your wife changed the pin, she probably reset the security location too. But those things aside, I thought it was clever.)

Garmin claims there is NO WAY to unlock the unit without the PIN or by going to your saved location (or by sending the unit to Garmin, at which point if you have reported it stolen, it just may come back to you).

So, something to keep in mind, even if you are not concerned about theft much because you dont leave it in the car, you may want to set the PIN anyway, just so that nobody else does, either accidentally or on purpose!!

Oh, one other comment…

Great original marketing article, but please… That is an awful lot of knowledge, travel, and usage for a unit you bought “yesterday”. I don’t mind a marketing info article, but don’t pretend it is anything else.

JH,

First of all, fantastic info about the security feature. I didn’t know that but I’m going to try it!

Second, I promise you this is not a paid endorsement, I know no one at Garmin or anything like that.

I bought this specifically to use in my new NSX which I had to fly to San Francisco to pick up about a week later and drive home to Dallas. I paid $999 for it at Circuit City in Frisco, TX.

I did indeed do all of the first part of the article within one day of buying the unit. I’m like that with new gadgets. But you’ll notice I labeled the latter part as “UPDATE”. I should have put a date in there, but basically I added that a few weeks later.

If you read my About page you’ll see why I can afford to buy NSXs, Nuvis and all the other crap I Review on a whim. But I only review them because I enjoy sharing my experience with others. I only WISH someone would pay me to write all this crap! :-)

I hope that clears things up a bit for the record.

John

Hi John,

Nice review on the 660. I’ve used a StreetPilot III for years, and have been considering a Nuvi 660 as a replacement. I love the large screen, small unit size, and the host of features. But there are several things that make me hesitate.

On my cross-country drives, I often want to take a more scenic route than what the GPS picks for me. On the StreetPilot, I can add multiple waypoints to make sure it doesn’t take me back to its original route. How would I do this on the 660, considering its one waypoint limitation? Does the 660 allow you to remove specific roads from the route as some of the StreetPilots can? I have visions of having to repeatedly make many shorter routes for a day’s driving rather than programming one long route, which would be a big step backwards for most experienced GPS users.

I’m just curious how you handled it if you wanted to take a route other than what your 660 picked for you.

Another concern is that I understand the battery is only factory replaceable, at a cost of around $250. I downloaded the manual, but it doesn’t indicate expected battery life. Do any of the docs that come with the unit mention this?

Thanks for your time.

John,

Now that you mention it, I have run into the multi-waypoint issue with the Nuvi and it was very annoying.

My friend and I were going to go look at houses one day and I wanted to program in 5 or 6 houses as waypoints, but could not for the life of me figure out how to do that. I was very frustrated, but ultimately had to do them one at a time. So I would say that I haven’t really found a good way of dealing with this.

When I was driving home from San Francisco and wanted to stop by the Grand Canyon I had to manually tell the Nuvi a nearby town to go to in order to get it to stop “efficiently” routing me towards Dallas. But honestly I haven’t really tried that hard to find a work around because it’s never seemed to be that big of a problem.

As far as the battery is concerned, I can find no mention of it anywhere. Also the case has no screws or easily visible manner of disassembly, so it would be difficult to replace. I guess I never cared because I always use it plugged into the power socket.

Take care,

John

How about an address book for my customers. how many?
Did read one review right that if you shut it off it does not remember the last address imputed.
Also how do you compare it to the lawrence 500c
Thanks
Chris

Nice review and follow up with the comments..

Any comments on the more advanced 680 with MSN Direct? Would it make a significant difference in my business commutes to avoid traffic. For instance I know certain routes are congested during traffic hours, but do the subscription services tell you to what extent?

Do you think a QWERTY entry system would be a vast improvement? I read somewhere that Garmin was considering this as an update.

Would it be possible to use Mapsource maps (international, topo, etc.) as an additional layer with the Navtech?

Jonathan,

Thanks for the compliment. :-)

I’ve not yet played with the 680, but here are my thoughts regarding your questions:

I was an MSN Direct subscriber a while back with the little watch that got updates… anyway the service was pathetic and I would never get anything from them again.
The integrated traffice receiver in the 660 has actually helped me navigate around traffic more than once which was fairly useful, though I’m not sure it’s really worth the monthly fees in general.
A qwerty system would be slightly quicker for me, being a touch typist, but again, I’m not so sure that would make much of a real difference.
With regards to the maps, I’m not sure if they are interchangeable or not… sorry.

So, basically I guess I’m saying that I wouldn’t be inclined to pay much more for a 680 than a 660, so just make sure there isn’t a large spread if you go for the 680.

Take care,

John

i have the nuvi 660 this unit is my second some one Brock in to my car an take my first 660 i have the lock on i hop they do the mistake send it to garmin for unlock.
the good think is the poi’s point of interest that you can download from INTERNET and can have warnings for traffic lights with camera or other thinks like warning for your speed on locations with seed zone .
you can edit the poi you can record your voice and the nuvi will Warning you with your voice for traffic cameras .
also some think els is the blouetooth and mp3 player you can listen the music you like from your car speakers and talk to the phone and listen the person you talk to from your car’s speakers.
if you are interested about poi’s email me

I just bought the Nuvi 670. AFAIK, it’s pretty much the same as the 660 except the European cards are pre-loaded. That’s exactly why I bought it, since I’m leaving for France less than two weeks from now. I have a question for you satisfied users: how on earth do you change the starting point? We’ve been fiddling for hours, my husband and I. We managed it once, so we know it can be done, but we can’t seem to be able to do it again. When you travel around, you need to be able to have different starting points. Thanks for any help.

The battery on my 660 died and there is no mention of any way to replace it. Stories of factory only replacement don’t surprise me but I WILL be surprised if my unit which is less than 6 months old requires a $250 additional investment to replace the battery. If that is the case, I will be sure to relay that particular piece of bad news to all I see shopping for GPS units at the various stores I frequent.

Six months battery life when a majority of that time is spent plugged in inside my car? Unforgiveable.

Jeff,

That is seriously wrong! I can’t remember now, but doesn’t it come with a 1 year warranty? They should definitely replace it for you for free. Please let us know how it turns out.

John

have a nuvi 660 works great. have a question. HOw to get cross streets to always show on screen ?

I purchased the Nuvi 670, over $1100.00 with all the Bells and Whistels, Language Guide, Travel Guide, MP3, etc, for our trip to Europe. Tech support tells me “well it’s designed to be used in an auto, not as a stand alone”. HELLO ! It advertised as PORTABLE!
My problem is there is no way to change batteries, or even power the Nuvi w/o using the car adaptor. If you still want to operate the unit. If you plug in the USB cable the unit goes into Sync Mode, and not operational. Since were traveling by rail and staying in Hotels I wanted to carry the Nuvi on my “provided belt holster”. So I can use it throughout the days traveling. Now I have to rely on the over night charge which only GIVES ME about 4 hours of use after we leave the hotel for the days excursions. Garmin should have considered an alturnitive power source, or mfg’d it like a digital camera, with changable batteries! Other then that it’s still a great unit.
A-L-S-O a styless would have been a nice add on instead of the “fingernail”. I suppose I’ll have to purchase another 12vdc cord and auto stand, remove the mount, cut the cable and solder an adaptor plug so I can use an alternitive power source. This is the only way I can provide enough power to last the whole day. When I asked Tech Support is there was a way to change/override, “sync mode” Again I was told “NO!, it’s ment to be used in a Motor Vehicle”. I would think for the base price of $900.00, it would come with a BUTLER!

Hm. My 660 came with a seperate, small, wall-wart style power supply. I also think that if it is plugged into USB and you turn OFF the NUVI, it goes into charging mode (can’t confirm at the moment).