Garmin has been designing GPS equipment since 1990 - which is a considerable timeframe for the relatively new GPS consumer market. Still seeking to expand their product line, Garmin is planning to move into marine GPS systems with their recent purchase of Nautamatic Marine Systems Inc.

The Garmin Nuvi 600 comes in two versions – one for the USA and one for Europe. Other models in the Garmin Nuvi 600 series include the 600, 610, 650, 660 and 680. Some of the best automotive GPS navigation features available are common across the Nuvi 600 series including:

• large widescreen 4.3 inch TFT display,
• mp3 payer,
• audio book player,
• picture viewer,
• world travel clock, currency & measurement converter, calculator,
• Garmin Lockâ„¢ (anti-theft feature),
• maps preloaded into internal memory – use straight out of the box.

TFT Touchscreen Display

A recent Consumer Electronics Association report “GPS- Exploring Ownership and Interest” revealed that owner satisfaction with a GPS device are strongly influenced by ease of use and display quality. The Garmin Nuvi 670 delivers display quality with a 4.3”, 64K color TFT touchscreen display with WQVGA resolution (480 x 272 pixels).

2D and 3D perspective views are available for viewing maps. The touchscreen is used exclusively for GPS operation with an on/off switch and rotary volume control knob being the only other controls. Now that Apple’s boss, Steve Jobs, recently announced the iPhone with its “finger touch” operated touchscreen. Expect to see more rapid adoption of this very flexible technology in other consumer electronics products. Rather than just announcing to “turn left” or “turn right” the Garmin Nuvi 670 has text-to-speech capability for pronouncing street names so there is no need to check the display for confirmation.

If you want to plan your route while out of the car, the Nuvi 670 has an internal lithium-ion battery with a respectable 7 hour life. It comes with an AC charger and a 12-volt power adapter for in-car recharging.

Users can search for addresses and points of interest (POI) and can also upload their own POIs. A useful selectable feature is a proximity alert which notifies the driver of upcoming custom POIs. Up to 500 waypoints with name and graphic symbol can be entered. Software features include a trip computer, resettable odometer, timers, average and maximum speed outputs.

SiRF Star III GPS Receiver Chipset

All Garmin Nuvi 600 series receivers have their GPS functionality provided by a SiRF Star III chipset, a winner of PC Magazine’s Award for Technical Excellence. The SiRF Star III family was a breakthrough innovation GPS chip architecture offering impressive performance improvements to the GPS receiver manufacturing industry.

The SiRF Star III chipset is a WAAS enabled (which improves accuracy) GPS receiver. The SiRF Star III has position accuracy down to 2.0m, velocity accuracy of less than 0.01 m/s and hot and warm autonomous times to first fix (TTFF) of less than 1s and less than 35s respectively.

Its recently been announced that the SiRFstarIIITM architecture will provide the GPS-based location awareness for products based on the new Intel Ultra Mobile Platform 2007. The Ultra Mobile Device reference design will offer manufacturers of mobile devices in consumer electronics, wireless, automotive and computer industry a comprehensive, turnkey, location-enabled solution they can employ to drive down the cost and speed the development of next generation location-aware ultra mobile devices.

The SiRF Star III has been adopted by numerous GPS manufacturers including TomTom and Magellan although TomTom look to be moving to sourcing some GPS chips from Global Locate which SiRF has sued for patent infringement. The SiRF Star III offers faster fix times, higher signal locking, higher tracking sensitivity and lower power requirements.

Audible Book Player

With the included Audible book player you can download books to your Nuvi and have them read to you as you drive. You need to have a subscription with Audible to download from their library of some 35,000 titles.

Nuvi 670’s MP3 Player

Garmin have included music player functionality into the Nuvi 670 with a built-in MP3 player. It has some useful menus with users able to see album art and able to browse music by the artist, album, song or genre. Music is loaded on the SD card and can be dragged-and-dropped. For better sound it’s possible to wire your Garmin Nuvi into your car sound system using an audio output jack.

Bluetooth Wireless Technology

Bluetooth wireless technology enabled cellular phones can be combined with the Garmin Nuvi 670 for safer hands-free mobile phone operation allowing your eyes to stay on the road. Incoming phone calls are displayed on the 670 and a tap of the display accepts the call. As with other systems, any other audio is automatically muted during phone calls. Calls can be made using the nuvi’s touchscreen keypad. A handy convenience is being able to access phone numbers associated with the POI making it simple to call ahead.

Operation and GPS Maps

Getting started with the Nuvi 670 is easy as it comes preprogrammed with highly detailed City Navigator® NT street data of the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico or Europe. The European version includes a preloaded safety camera database containing the location of safety cameras for parts of Europe. The detailed maps contain information on highways, interstates, business and residential roads with attributes such as turn restrictions, speed categories and other navigation features There is an SD expansion slot for adding other maps. The map database features some six million points of interest including hotels, restaurants, gas stations, attractions, entertainment, shopping, emergency services, post offices, camp grounds, movie theaters and ATMs.

One way to navigate is to select a POI by touching its icon on the display screen. To make life even simpler Garmin has provide their free POI Loader software (which can be downloaded from their website) for you to import customized POI. It provides the ability to upload POIs created by others from your PC to your Garmin unit.

Having selected a destination from the touch screen interface, one is directed by Garmin’s text-to-speech functionality which tells users the name of the street, when to turn, and in what direction. Missing a turn is not a major problem as the Nuvi 670 automatically calculates a new route to the selected destination.

The Garmin Nuvi 670 comes with Garmin Lock which is an anti -theft feature that disables the unit from performing any functions until enter a specific 4-digit PIN or take the unit to a predetermined location.

Integrated Traffic Receiver

Real time traffic information is one of the services which will drive the uptake of automotive GPS navigation devices in the years to come. To access these services the Nuvi 670 incudes an FM TMC traffic receiver. Users see congested areas color coded on the map displayed. Avoiding a traffic delay is as simple as pushing a button to calculate a new route around problem spots.

The traffic receiver is a small, FM-band traffic receiver which is connected to the car radio/antenna system to provide real-time Traffic Message Channel (TMC) data. TMC data provides swift, accurate notification of situations impacting traffic such as accidents, road construction, police and emergency services. Because traffic broadcasts are received via a “silent” FM data channel, you can still listen to music or news programming on your car radio without interference from incoming FM traffic data transmissions. Digital traffic data is available from specific FM broadcast stations in a fast growing number of major metro areas throughout the United States and Europe. Traffic alert service subscription costs vary with different locations.

A three month traffic service subscription is included for the USA and European models. You do not need to activate the subscription that comes with your traffic receiver. It starts receiving traffic information automatically.

Garmin Nuvi 670 Video - Garmin Blog via YouTube

Comparison of Garmin Nuvi 670 v

Other models in the Garmin Nuvi 600 series include the 600, 610, 650, 660 and 680.

• The 670 is one down from the top 600 series Nuvi, the 680, and shares all its features except for MSN Direct.
• The Nuvi 600 and 610 have regional maps only and the 670 is the only model with Europen maps as well as US + Canada.
• The Nuvi 610 does not have text-to-speech capability for reading street names.
• Both the 600 and 650 miss out on Bluetooth for hands-free calling.
• An FM transmitter is built into the 660 and 670. The 680 gets traffic condition updates through its MSN Direct subscription.

Garmin Nuvi 670 Package Includes

Included in the Garmin Nuvi 670 box are:

• Garmin Nuvi 670
• Preloaded City Navigator® NT North America and Europe (full coverage)
• FM TMC traffic receiver with vehicle power cable
• Real-time traffic services with free 3- month trial subscription (U.S.) or free lifetime subscription (UK) or free 3- month trial subscription (France)
• AC charger
• SD memory card slot
• Dual internal speaker system
• Suction cup mount
• Dashboard disk
• USB cable
• Leather carrying case
• Owner Manual on disk
• Quick-reference guide

Further Reading

Our review of Pioneer’s AVIC-S1 Portable GPS Navigation System

Tom Tom’s GO 510 GPS Car Navigation Unit Review.

Resources

Garmin’s nuvi 670 owners manual.

Compare Garmin GPS products using their comparison page.

Customer Reviews and Price Comparisons

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Specification Garmin Nuvi 670