Garmin nüvi 350 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator

I liked the product so much I bought 3, one for my wife, one for my parents and one for myself. I travel extensively thoughout Canada and the United States and this device has been a charm in every city and rural area that I have traveled through, including back woods farm roads when accidents on rural roads made detours the way to proceed.

I would recommend this device to everyone, even if you think you know where you are going.

This broke after just over one year. I'm outside the warranty so I'm out of luck.

Just a warning... buy an extended warranty from squaretrade.com

My wife was going to be a traveling nurse and she was going to need some help finding her way around the town and county. What better way to give her help than a GPS system. I decided on the Garmin 350 mainly because my friends had one and they raved about it and I did trusted their opinion. So the research began. I ended up purchasing a new 350 for 15 dollars more than my friends had bought their used. I personally have not used it but my wife swears by it which is all that matters. She has nicknamed him Lenny (the australian accent) and they have conversations everyday. This thing recalculates the directions if you make a wrong turn and gets you back where you need to go. It has points of interest like restaurants, gas stations, and much more more-too much to list here. This model is not made anymore for one simple reason. I emailed Garmin and they said they want to concentrate on building the units that don't have the flip up antennae. It still works fine mounted to the car windshield. If anyone is thinking on buying a GPS unit, get a Garmin. They are far superior that the others

I love the Nuvi 350; I bought my wife one for Christmas back when they were almost $500 and then bought myself one a few months later after I found out how well it worked.

A couple of years ago, hers was stolen from inside the car(I guess that's the ultimate proof of how popular they are), so I bought her a "factory re-manufactured" unit because of the lower cost. It worked fine for a while, then it started taking longer and longer to acquire enough satellites to navigate. Now it can take up to 10 to 15 minutes from a cold start; that makes it almost useless when starting out unless you already know approximately which way to go.

There are some annoying traits that Garmin should fix, such as:
(1) If you drive to the airport in New York using the Nuvi 350, then fly to California and then turn the GPS on, it still shows East Coast time even after it has located itself on the West Coast. You have to change the time zone manually, which seems silly.
(2) If you don't like the route the 350 picks, it's not possible to select an alternate. The only way around this is to start driving the way you'd rather go, and wait for the GPS to announce, "Recalculating!"
(3) The route selection software consistently selects toll roads over non-toll roads. There's no way to make it exclude one or the other, and the Nuvi doesn't warn you in advance that it's directing you to a toll road. That can lead to problems in California because some of our toll roads require a transponder for billing (no cash is accepted). If you don't have a transponder, the system photographs your license plate and you can get stuck with a big fine as well as the toll.

Other than those nits, the Nuvi 350 is a real workhorse in personal navigation. I'm anxious to try some of the newer Garmins; I hope some of these admittedly minor problems have been fixed.

First GPS, I had it for about 6 months, been from NC to NY. Updates no problem, using windows XP. Seems very well built. I wanted the small screen because its mounted on the windshield.

SWEET:
1. Many different voices to chose from.
2. Mount has the power connector, and stays put.
3. Automatic day/night display mode.
4. Push the map around using touch screen, like Google maps.
5. Free update, you have 3 months to use


DRAG:
1. Latest update behind about 6 months.
2. When it says shortest route, it's not kidding. Going up I95 to NY, had me taking Pennsylvania Ave through DC at rush hour, WOW the wife was pissed.

IDEAS:
1. Needs to calculate several top routes and let you decide which one you want to take. Otherwise it keeps saying recalculating at every exit.
2. I wish Garmin would put more behind their software instead of having 20 different types of the same thing.