Exactly one year ago, mid September 2005, Garmin surprised the PND world with their first Nüvi Personal Travel Assistant. The Nüvi 330 and 350 immediately gathered a lot of loyal fans, and were able to gain a respectable market share. Not surprising really, because hardly anything was omitted from these good-looking, compact but very well specified Personal Navigation Devices.
Downside
Hardly anything in the features, but the Nüvi range had one big downside: it's price. They were (too) expensive. But since the price cuts at the beginning of last month, that downside has melted away, and now nothing lies in the way of the Nüvi's path to success. Especially not now that Garmin released it's third generation of Nüvi models in a year: the Nüvi 610 and the new high-end model, the Nüvi 660. (available in the shops for ¤ 599,-)
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Box
We've become used to the small boxes in which most modern PND's are shipped nowadays, and the Nüvi's packaging is no exception. Still, a lot seems to fit in such a small box, and it immediately becomes clear that Garmin hasn't skimped on parts.When we spread the contents of the box out on our desk, we saw (obviously) the Nuvi 660 itself, a car holder with suction cup, a sticky cap used for fitting the Nüvi to the dashboard, the Garmin GTM 21 (a combined 12/24 volts charger lead and TMC antenna), a 220 volts charger with several plug variants, a USB cable and a very nice leather carrying bag for the 660. Of course, there's also lots of paperwork, eg. a whole lot of 'getting started'- guides in lots of different languages. The complete user manual is also shipped with the unit as a PDF on CD-ROM.
The device
Of course we first took a look at the device itself. And it has to be said: even though the device has an enormous 4.3 inch touch screen (the first time we have ever seen one of those 'live'), we still found the 660 to be rather compact. Especially since it's only 23 mm thick., which is truly impressive by itself. But also the simplicity of the design, only using straight lines, gives the device a very sleek look.Just like the other Nüvi's, Garmin has chosen a fold-out GPS antenna (1), which also has the connector for the external aerial (2). Below the antenna, there's the reset button. The on/off switch (3) is located on top of the device and on the right hand side we find the SD card slot (4), the USB connector (5) and the headphones connector (6). An LED for indicating that the unit is charging is not present, unfortunately.
Now it's the time to breathe life into the Nüvi 600. After pressing the on/off switch for a few seconds, the screens lights up and a few simple country/language settings need to be entered. Then the unit switches to it's main screen. The test can commence!
Screen
First something about the screen. As we already said, this is the first time we have been able to lay our hands on a unit with a 4.3 inch touch screen. And there's no arguing about this: this screen's quality is top-notch! Even though the screen diagonal might be only 0.3 inch (7,6 mm) larger, the outer measurements of about 9.5 cm x 5.4 cm make this screen look a lot larger that the 4 inch screens used by competitors. Add to that the enormous clarity and the perfect ease of use, and it becomes apparent that this screens is an enormous plus for the 660. Truly a beauty!
The Nüvi 660 ships with software version 2.10 and CityNavigator version 9.This means that not only are the detailed NAVTEQ maps of Western Europe shipped with the unit, but also the detailed maps of Eastern-Europe! (which completely cover Poland, and also cover most of Slovenia and Croatia). The 660 has almost 1.9 GB of storage capacity, of which 261 MB were still free on our test unit. This free space can be used to store extra map material and/or MP3 files.The 660 is also very fast. The route to San Marco Square in Rome is calculated in a mere 51 seconds. Compare: it took the GO 910 more than one minute and a half to calculate that route during our in-depth review.
The 660 interface of the Garmin software is the same as the other Nüvi models and is very good. Large and clear buttons are used on-screen, and touching those buttons is confirmed by touch-tones. These tones can be disabled, but we found them a very nice addition. Garmin has also used the extra space the 4.3 inch screen provides by putting eight icons per screen, instead of just six. A small minus is the inability to use the keyboard layout in QWERTY. Only alphabetical layout is supported, which we found rather unpleasant to work with. We also found some other sloppy details, like some texts which didn't fit the screen properly.
In practice
We tested the 660 in practice, on a 178 km long route from Oestgeest (NL) to Brussegem, in the north-west of Brussels, Belgium where we were expected for an appointment at ? Mio headquarters! (surprising, no? )During the two-hour trip we were able to find out all about the navigational qualities of the 660. And it probably won't surprise you that we can only say that those qualities are excellent. We were accurately guided right to the front of the competitor's offices.
Of course we do have some reservations. We found the text-to-speech voice not all that good. The voice sounded rather nasal to us, and the pronunciation of the instructions was sometimes flawed. And we also weren't 100% happy with the map display. We realise that these are subjective comments, but we would have like those maps to be a bit less florid. It all looks a but cartoony to us, and we can't really say that this appeals to us. We also noticed that the map doesn't shift entirely smoothly. This is a shame, because this causes a rather bumpy display during navigating.
Complete
The Nüvi 660 comes with all imaginable modern extras. Like the previously mentioned text-to-speech, audio-books and MP3 files playing capabilities, photo viewing, a calculator, optional language guide, a world clock and a conversion utility for units and currencies. Those last features aren't really needed for navigating, but they sure are handy.
Hands free phoning is also possible. For this, the unit needs to be paired with a Bluetooth capable mobile phone. Pairing is incredibly fast and easy. Within 30 seconds, our 660 was paired with our Nokia phone, and we were very surprised to see that in that time, the complete contacts database of the phone had already been copied to the PND. And, to make things even more complete, the Nüvi has no problem with the Nokia feature which enables users to assign more than one phone number to a contact. Perfect! We've known it to be otherwise...Car mount
Finally, something more about the car mount. Garmin provides a mount which is a brilliant as it is simple. It might feel a bit cheap and plastic, but our first impressions after more than a week of intensive use are nothing less than excellent. The Nüvi 660 mounts very simply inside the car thanks to a horizontal hinge close to the suction cup and a ball-joint close to the holder, the 660 can be manoeuvred into almost any position. The holder also attaches very firmly to the windscreen.The holder only has two connection points: one for the headphones, and one for the combined 12/24 volts charger with standard RDS/TMC antenna built-in. This option performs very well and warned us on more than one occasion of potential traffic-jams in the last few days. For a photo of this part, click on the images on the bottom of this review.
