Lots of new Garmin PND's in US

In the first quarter of each year, a lot of electronics fairs take place. In Europe we're eagerly anticipating the next CeBIT (Hannover, March 15-21), but in the United States the first event is already taking place. Running from Monday January 8th to Thursday January 11th, consumers will be welcome at the fortieth Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. For a lot of American companies, this is the place and time to announce their latest plans and products.

Garmin

One of those companies which interests us, is of course Garmin. The US PND market leader won't let CES pass by unnoticed and already, on the eve of the fair, they have announced lots of new devices.

First, there's the nüvi 370 and 670 which are basically the same as the 360 and 660 respectively, but both offer a built-in RDS/TMC receiver. In the US, these devices are shipped with the maps of North America as well as the European maps. Also, the newly announced nüvi 680 offers an FM transmitter for broadcasting sound to headunits, and supports dynamic content through MSN Direct. This same content (traffic info, petrol prices, the weather and cinema programme times) can also be used on the new StreetPilot c580 (photo).

The last bit of Garmin news is meant for motorcyclists: apart from the recently announced zümo 550 (reviewed by yourNAV last week), there will also be a new zümo 450. This new model is $200 cheaper but doesn't include text-to-speech or Bluetooth support.

Europe

Garmin Europe has let us know that, for now, these products are all meant for the American market, and there's no guarantee that they will be introduced into the European market. An important reason for this could be that the use of an FM transmitter is still illegal in a lot of European countries. Steps have been taken to see these laws will change, but when this will happen exactly is still unknown. In the UK, these FM transmitters have been legal since December 8th 2006.