Platform:Not Machine Specific Media:Electronics Autographed:No Memorabilia:No Batteries Included:No Native Resolution:480 x 272 Display Size:4.3 Includes MP3 Player:1 Shipping Weight (lbs):0.4 Dimensions (in):1 x 5 x 3 Legal Disclaimer:Warranty does not cover misuse of product.
Product Description portable GPS satellite navigation unit with flip-up antenna * includes car and home power adapters, USB cable, carrying case, and rechargeable battery with 4-8 hours of life * 4.3" color (480 x 272 pixels) touchscreen control * 6 million points of interest * integrated FM-TMC traffic-info receiver with free 3-month subscription to traffic-info service included (additional subscription required after trial period) * text-to-speech technology lets voice prompts announce road names over the built-in speaker * Bluetooth technology lets you make and receive hands-free phone calls * SD card slot (supports up to 4GB) *
Amazon.com Product Description Amazon.com Product Description Now you can go from North America to Europe without loading any moremaps with the Garmin's transatlantic nüvi 670 Personal Travel Assistant. This pocket-sized personal travel assistant comes with built-in street maps for both continents, making traveling abroad as easy as getting off the plane. The nüvi 670 is loaded with convenience features such as a travel kit and hands-free calling, on top of which it provides you with even more maps and an integrated traffic receiver.
Despite being loaded with features, the nüvi 670 still allows you to navigate with ease. This unit comes ready to go right out of the box with preloaded NavTeq City Navigator NT street maps for both North America and Europe, and includes a hefty points of interest (POIs) database with hotels, restaurants, fuel stops, ATMs and more. Simply touch the super-bright, sunlight-readable color screen to enter a destination, and the 670 takes you there with either 2D or 3D maps and turn-by-turn voice directions. This navigator voice even announces the name of exits and streets so you never have to take your eyes off the road, and can concentrate on your driving to keep yourself and your loved ones safe. In addition, the 670 accepts custom points of interest (POIs), such as school zones and safety cameras, and lets you set proximity alerts to warn you of upcoming POIs that require your special consideration such as speed zones and safety cameras.
This sleek multi-tasking Personal Travel Assistant features a colorful widescreen, hands-free calling, and an FM transmitter.
The nüvi 670 includes many must have entertainment and travel tools.
The nüvi 670 features a 4.3-inch display with a touchscreen interface that makes it easy to select destinations, play MP3s, and more.
Speaking of keeping you safe, the nüvi 670 lets you make hands-free calls so you can talk freely during your worry-free driving. By integrating Bluetooth wireless technology with a built-in microphone and speaker, you can pair your nüvi with any compatible Bluetooth phone and talk hands-free while staying focused on the road. You no longer have to fumble with your phone's handset to answer a call or dial a number, just tap the 670's screen and you're instantly connected. And with 1-touch dialing for your POIs, you can quickly and conveniently call ahead to make reservations or get needed information.
You can also avoid tie-ups and steer clear of traffic with the nüvi 670's integrated FM TMC traffic receiver. This unit allows you to receive alerts about road construction and traffic problems that lie ahead on your route. Simply touch the nüvi's screen to view traffic details or change your route so you can detour around the problem area. All of which can be customized with configurable vehicle icons that let you choose individual car-shaped icons in a variety of colors that show your position on the map. As an added benefit, the nüvi 670 has an FM transmitter as well, which allows you to hear its voice prompts, or your music or audio books through your car's stereo for a fuller, richer sound.
In additional to all this functionality, the nüvi 670 includes many must-have entertainment and travel tools such as an MP3 player, an audio book player (subscription to Audible.com required), and a JPEG picture viewer so you can take your favorite music and pictures with you wherever you go. This unit also features a world travel clock with time zones, a currency converter, a measurement converter, and a calculator so that wherever you travel it will be easy to know what you are getting and keep track of your costs. The MP3 player lets you browse music by artist, album, and/or song, while the optional audio books may be purchased from Audible.com which features over 70,000 hours of audio programs. What's more, the nüvi 670 allows further customization via optional software such as travel guide, savings programs and language translation on plug-and-play SD cards for all your travel needs.
The Garmin nüvi 670 comes with a built-in, high-sensitivity, WAAS-enabled GPS receiver, and lets you view and operate it via its bright, LCD TFT touch-screen, wide-screen display that measures 4.3 inches (diagonal) and has a resolution of 480 x 272 pixels with 64,000 colors and a white backlight. As a whole, the nüvi 670 measures 4.9 x 2.9 x 0.9 inches (W x H x D), and weighs only 6.2 ounces for easy portability. This unit provides you with from three to seven hours of battery life (depending on use) via its rechargeable lithium-ion battery, and comes with Garmin Lock, which is an anti-theft feature to protect your investment. While you can add software via the SD card slot, the Garmin nüvi 670 also lets you interface via high-speed USB for loading data, though users should note that, like most USB mass storage devices, this unit is not compatible with Windows 95, Windows 98 or Windows Me.
First Rate Map Data The nüvi 670 comes ready to go right out of the box with preloaded City Navigator NT street maps, including a hefty POI database with hotels, restaurants, fuel, ATMs and more. Simply touch the color screen to enter a destination, and nüvi takes you there with 2D or 3D maps and turn-by-turn voice directions. Garmin gets its map data from NAVTEQ, a world leader in premium-quality mapping.
In addition, the nüvi 260W accepts custom points of interest (POIs), such as school zones and safety cameras and lets you set proximity alerts to warn you of upcoming POIs
Important note about map updates: Due to our high volume of sales, almost every Garmin portable GPS navigator sold by Amazon.com will come with the most recent map version. If you ever do need a map update, you can purchase one from Amazon.com at our Garmin Store.
What's in the Box Garmin nüvi 670, City Navigator NT maps for North America and Europe (preloaded, full coverage), FM traffic receiver and transmitter, vehicle suction cup mount, AC charger, vehicle power cable, dashboard disk, USB cable, leather carrying case, quick reference guide, and owner's manual.
Good, but with some surprising old Garmin faultsMarch 21, 2007 Chris Hann(Alameda, CA United States) 428 out of 434 found this review helpful
I bought this to replace a Tomtom Navigator 5 system running on a Dell x51v with the external Tomtom Bluetooth receiver. The major issues with that were a terrible lack of POIs, terrible time and distance predictions, poor routing, no control of the map view and the receiver shutting off despite being on external power.
First thing I noticed on opening the box is that the mains charger comes with adapters for all the countries I regularly visit, so I clicked the US two pin adapter in place, plugged it in then plugged the lead into the 670. It came on immediately and said it was loading maps. A few seconds later it showed a map. It was already locked on! That's a huge advance from the old days when it took at least 4 minutes for my GPSIII+ to find the satellites. I am in the middle of the top floor of a large open plan building, the position shown was accurate.
Without looking at the manual I got rid of the touch beep, bound it to my bluetooth phone, set the timezone and voice and set it up to navigate to a restaurant for lunch. All in under 15 minutes with time out for work.
In the car I mounted the unit to the windshield and plugged in the power conenction, it immediately lit up green to show it was connected to the traffic system. I was expecting to have to register and sign up for a service agreement, instead it came up and showed it was already enabled with 3 months to run. A few minutes later I looked at the traffic detail map and saw it already showed the local problem areas. Very cool.
Apparently the 2.60+ firmware handles 4Gb SD cards so I ordered one and look forward to trying the MP3 player. (I have used three different 4Gb cards since I wrote this and they all work perfectly.)
I tested the POI list by looking for gas stations and particular stores in the area, it had everything I knew of and more, so I am very hopeful at this stage.
I'm looking forward to trying the hands free too, all we did so far is dial another cell phone in the car and laugh about the echo we got. Sound quality and volume seemed good. I'm going for a 1500 mile road trip to Utah this weekend, so I'll update after that.
1685 miles later...
Garmin certainly has accurate maps for CA, NV and UT, they seemed very up to date. The option to "avoid dirt roads" was especially welcome and saved me some nasty miles that the direct route would have taken on unpaved roads. Routing was mostly good, but could do with some more skepticism on the choice of rural state roads. I was happy to take route 88 into the Sierras from the bay area because I was on a road trip, but I80 is probably 50% faster.
The one significant bug is a holdover from previous Garmin products like the GPS V, it is also an issue it shares with Tomtom. While heading down an interstate, let's take I880 from Oakland to Fremont as an example, with many miles of straight ahead to go, the 670 will direct you off at a ramp, it likes to take the I238 ramp towards Livermore, and then immediately back on. This is amusing to a local, but it could be very confusing to a visitor. It did the same to me in 395 south through Reno last night, that did confuse me. This is a bug that should have been eradicated years ago.
Another issue with the GPS V is still present in the 670. When recalculating the map display is suspended, so right when you need to see what's going on you have a useless map. When routing resumes it gives the verbal instructions before repainting the map. Not good. In contrast the Tomtom always recalculates silently and just flashes up the new route. The Tomtom never leaves you with a dead screen. I don't like to be told every time the route is recalculated, when I go the wrong way, for whatever reason, there's no brownie points to be gained telling me off. At the very least there should be the option to disable this 'feature'.
POI selection is absolutely outstanding, at least compared to other things I have used. It makes the Tomtom implementation look like amateur night. You can select the POI by type, gas stations, shops and restaurants are my favorites, then either go straight to the list of hit SPELL and type in part of the name. It will match on any part of the name, so you can include partial names, even partial words, and it will still show the matches. Once you have your list you can select by address, direction and distance, or see the POI on a map. The direction changes from compass direction when stationary to relative direction when moving, so you don't have to waste your time looking at gas stations you passed twenty miles ago.
I did have one POI which can obviously never have been true, the Shell station near Lohi, UT has obviously always been a house. But mostly the POIs are very accurate.
It is disappointing that you can no longer select different on-screen data, I liked that with the old units and miss it. That's a big step backwards. I want to know time-to-next, time-to-go, course, altitude and other things that used to be offered.
There is a weird issue with map detail and zoom level, small roads appear and disappear as you zoom in and out. Let's be clear, a small road that is visible on a small scale (big area) disappears as you zoom in and then only reappears at some of the highest scales (most detailed) when you can't see any context, or even if it's actually the same road.
In general though, the automatic map scaling is very good, the 3-D view shifts to a track up view as it zooms out, this addresses my major gripe with Tomtom in that it allows you to keep your route in context and see how you are getting on in the big picture. As the view zooms in it adds a lot of street detail, much much better than Tomtom.
The time to destination predictions remain excellent. Outstanding. It was within minutes on the driving time over a distance of hundreds of miles on each occasion. Tomtom is often pessimistic by 50%, totally inadequate for planning purposes.
Is it worth it? Is it as good as it should be? For me, no and no. For $850 I can get a decent laptop, that's a lot more hardware, so that's not where the money went. They are still not addressing their software issues, they have faulty algorithms that have been unmodified for years and inherited from old products. As a software engineer I am disappointed but not surprised. Near work it will still sometimes tell me to take three right turns instead of an entirely legal left.
But it is very good. Garmin's mechanical people have done a great job, this is obviously a class device. But the software and systems people aren't as good.
Overall? If I could edit the rating I'd drop at a point or two now. But I still haven't seen better. At these prices it's not like there are many people who are willing to try them all.
Contrasting my own companies attitude to software errors (we are one of the biggest suppliers in the cell phone, commercial radio, wireless networking and many other fields), we would not allow even a mildly irritating bug to remain in one of our products for years. So I am wondering if I should return this on principal. I'll try support first, in the past that didn't achieve much.
8,000 miles later
Yes, I do a lot of miles.
Lasting impressions: I almost always have the voice prompt switched off, the guidance is repeated too often on high speed roads and I hate to hear it continuously telling me that it is recalculating when I don't agree with the way it told me to go.
There have been too many instances of ridiculous routing, you need to zoom out and see of the route looks sensible. Most do. A good example of a bad one was in Yellowstone National Park, I was in Canyon Village and wanted to return to my hotel in West Yellowstone, about a 35 mile trip fairly well due west. The first part went OK but then I was directed north 60 miles on US89, 30 miles west on I90 then 60 miles south on US191. I ignored the advice and the continuous u-turn instructions and recalculation. As I arrived at the Wyoming/Montana border, about three miles down a straight road from my hotel, the Nuvi crashed. Screen controls didn't work. When I swiched it off and on again it discovered there was a three mile route to the hotel instead of the previous 170+ mile suggestion. Strange.
The traffic information has been a mixed blessing too. As traffic builds in the morning and evening rush hours it seems to be added in realtime, but it doesn't seem to be purged out when it is no longer present. So if I go in to work late at 10am the roads are running at the speed limit but the traffic information on the Nuvi still says they are at a crawl. On Friday night I went to dinner after work, when I left at 11pm the roads were quiet and most people were doing 15mph over the limit, but the Nuvi told me that I880 was jammed solid with a 30 minute delay for the next few miles. That had probably been true six hours earlier, but not in the last four. This isn't a fault with the unit, it's a fault with the traffic service, when switched on the unit gave the correct route. Bad traffic information also gives unreasonably pessimistic ETA estimates.
Would I buy it knowing what I do now? Still yes. I still think Garmin are the best of the current offerings, they just need to fix a few things and beat up their traffic information provider.
Does it work with SDHC Cards? Yes it does. I have tried the Transcend 4Gb card, which I use for music and audio books, and a SanDisk 4Gb card which came straight out of my Canon SD1000 and in to the Nuvi. A couple of seconds later it was showing a slide show of the pictures I took recently, so it can handle 2Mb jpeg files too.
Long term traffic issues: the traffic information is mostly for entertainment, the service quality is minimal, so you might get informed within half an hour of an incident, but they then might leave that on for another couple of hours. So by the time you multiply that by a few hundred incidents and road sensors it leaves you with a very unreliable picture of the world. It also misses some of the major daily bottlenecks, in the SF Bay Area good examples would be where south I880 narrows at Mission, and north I880 at Alvarado Niles, both places slow every day and can cost you 10 minutes and aren't reported reliably unless they spread out of their usual mile of clogged road. But again, this is the fault of the service, not the unit, but Garmin pays the fee and needs to lean on their information providers.
Good but needs more configuration options.April 10, 2007 Michael A. Israel(United States) 140 out of 145 found this review helpful
From an ergonomics and hardware perspective, the Nuvi is clearly the class leader. It does cost too much and the simplicty of the interface greatly limits flexibility.
Hardware. The Nuvi makes the TomTom and other units look downright bloated and clunky. The industrial design is not quite in the Apple league but is the best thing available at the moment. The SiRF chipset is far superior to those used in older GPS units (including some current Garmin StreetPilots). It locks signal quickly, the screen is bright, the voice to text is clear, etc.
I have owned many GPS units of all makes and types. Thus, unlike many 1st time GPS owners, I am no longer mesmerized by the fact that GPS can find my street address. The Garmin, like many other brands does a very good job at getting you from point A to point B. Garmin's maps and algorithms do seem slightly better than some others but it will still send you on some routes that a local driver would not use. the fact that the 670 is preloaded with maps of both Europe and the USA is a great feature IF, and only if, you have a need for this.
My biggest frustration with the Nuvi lineup is the limited configuration options. Garmin, in an effort to appeal to soccer Mom's, has really dumbed down the interface compared to years ago when you could configure just about everything including display of MGRS data. The Nuvi has even less flexibility than the StreetPilot series when it comes to configuration options.
Like any brand of GPS, the Garmin will often recommend a route that is simply absurd. This is where the interface falls down because the only place to select from shortest time, shortest distance, etc., is in the system configuration menus. Magellan, for example, asks you every time if you want "shortest time", "shortest distance", "least use of freeways", "most use of freeways", etc. If Magellan suggests a goofy route you simply go back one screen and pick an alternative. This also provides a quick and easy way to compare various routing suggestions. To do so on the Nuvi you have to return all the way back to the system settings and even then you only have shortest time or shortest distance. I do understand that many folks want to keep it as simple as possible but I also think Garmin should include an "advanced settings" menu for those who want more. Yes, the StreetPilots are more configurable but they are dinosaurs from a hardware perspective.
The TMC traffic service is a mixed bag. It is only useful in certain metropolitan areas. Likewise, the information is often not current. It is like listening to the traffic report telling you that Route XYZ is fine when you are sitting in bumper to bumper traffic on that very road. Quality of data really depends on the geographic area and the road itself. But yes, the way Garmin built the FM receiver into the power cord is a thing of engineering beauty.
Bluetooth may or may not work for you. When I try to pair my Nokia 9300 the Nokia sees the Garmin but the Garmin never sees the Nokia. If this feature is important to you then do check the Garmin site to see if your phone is listed as a compatible unit.
The graphics are good but nothing special. Again, about on par with everyone else.
I have not tried using the Nuvi as an MP3 player. I already own an iPod.
The big question becomes, is it worth the money? This is a tough call considering that some GPS units are now at the $200 mark. If you fly from city to city and want to take your GPS along then the Nuvi is a good choice. It is great to be in a strange city where you jump in a rental car, plug in an address, and away you go. If you want the basics or do not need the slim form factor there are much better deals from Magellan, TomTom, and even Garmin. The Nuvi is a better product but i do not think it is so much better that it justifies the huge price premium. I might feel differently if it had some amazing graphics engine or there were an "advanced configuration" menu that allowed me to tailor it to my own quirks and needs.
I did buy the 670 for the size and the USA/Europe maps. For those specific needs it is the best in class. I do love the Nuvi hardware but I still prefer the software and configuration options on my 4 year old Magellan Roadmate.
nuvi 670March 22, 2007 Douglas G. Liu(Maryland USA) 90 out of 92 found this review helpful
The nuvi 670 is my third Garmin GPS. The first one was Street Pilot II, very hard to use. The second one was C330, very easy to use. I also have built-in GPS in two of my cars too. The new Garmins are all very easy to use. I bought the 670 for traveling in north America and Europe. Also bought the bean bag, what a waste! Within the first two miles I tried, it just flew off the dash board in a straight acceleration at a traffic light. I am sticking with the suction cup.
A couple interesting things: A street near where I live was built about three years ago and it wasn't in the nuvi still. I tried to look up some hotels and attractions in Venice, Italy and Geneva, Switzerland but the nuvi didn't even list the two citis (read on). I e-mailed Garmin tech support and was told I have to be near the cities to be able to find the POIs. What a bunch of BS. It worked when I searched POIs in Zurich, why not Geneva and Venice? Later I found out by myself that, if the spelling of an European city in its native language is not the same as its English spelling, the nuvi may not list it after you enter the city name in its English spelling. You need to enter the native spelling. For example, I entered "Geneva", it listed a bunch of Genevas in the U.S., but not THE Geneva in Switzerland, same thing with Venice. I found out the Geneva is Geneve and Venice is Venezia in native language. Once I typed Geneve and Venezia, it worked!
I guess you need to play with it a bit to learn the tricks but all in all it's a nice device.
My First GPS NavigatorFebruary 28, 2007 K. Gindl 44 out of 47 found this review helpful
I picked Garmin because their web site gave better info on their products than other manufacturers. The size and shape of the Nuvi sold me over their PDA-based products. This 670 has a larger screen than the 370 and has the pre-loaded European maps which the 660 model lacks.
The unit has worked properly right out of the box and even acquired the GPS signals inside our house.
The maps display clearly in both 3D and 2D views, with detail appropriate to the level of zoom, which can vary from tens of meters out to showing the whole continent. Mounting the unit in the center of the windshield just under the mirror reduces the obstruction and places it where one is already used to looking. As expected, full sunshine compromises visibility even with backlighting set to 100%. At night, reducing the backlighting to 50% still gives a brighter image than the car's instruments.
The pre-loaded maps include some fairly out-of-the-way restaurants and hotels that I've visited before. Searches for points of interest can start from other locations, so you can get directions to an out-of-town location that you haven't already visited and saved.
Calculation of routes works well with the caveat that the the unit can't know that I prefer to use a scenic route or to turn onto busy main streets at a light.
You can select from several voices. I first picked a classy British lady to read directions, and was quite happy with the result. However, her pronunciation of street names once we got to Quebec make me laugh. Picking the French voice cleared that up, but now I can't wait to hear what that one will do to English place names.
I've had no use yet for the Bluetooth and FM TMC traffic features. Ditto the so-called "must have" features such as MP3 player, audio book player, JPEG picture viewer, currency and unit converters, and extra-cost SD cards. However, I do find the world clock feature, displaying up to five time-zones, useful. The MP3 player is just that; CDs ripped in .wma format won't play.
Overall, I'm satisfied with the purchase. I rationalize the expense (maps only cost a few dollars) by noting that, although I can plot out a route on a map, a few minutes into the trip, I'll have forgotten the directions. Write them on paper? What, and miss all this fun?
Excellent navigator, room for improvementAugust 8, 2007 Jondil(Bucks County, PA USA) 32 out of 33 found this review helpful
Took the Nuvi 670 to Sweden, Denmark, and down to central Germany. Also, did a trip from southern Maine to eastern PA. GPS reception was always good, maps were very good, and no major routing problems. The fastest route setting does sometimes send you on a slower route (one time it took us off the main road through winding slow roads back to the main road, and there were no traffic alerts). The traffic receiver worked in the congested areas of both our Europe & USA trips. When there is traffic info, an icon silently appears on the screen (several times we hit traffic delays only to see that the nuvi knew about it but didn't warn us). You only get an audible traffic delay alert (and automatic recalculate announcement) when a fixed excessive delay ahead value is exceeded (you can't set that value). Also, the traffic display map is separate from the navigation display maps... and that traffic map is rather primitive.
Signed up to one of the safety-camera POI services linked from the Garmin site and downloaded the locations of European speed & traffic-light cameras. The POI alert function on the nuvi worked great.
The photo viewer is dreadfully slow. Photos aren't always displayed full screen, even when they have enough resolution. There is no way to easily locate a photo... you have to painfully go through the thumbnails in sequence.
I'm not so sure the extra price for the wide screen nuvi is worth it. I sprung for it thinking the picture viewer would be great with my camera... most of the photos had black bands to the side, so the smaller screen would have been about the same. During on-the-road navigation you tend to only look at the map area at the center of the screen, so the sides are not quite as important. The wide screen is useful when finding something when you are at a roadside rest.
The MP3 player is great... patched the Nuvi to the radio aux input and enjoyed what we loaded on an SD card. The FM transmitter works well until your radio picks up a weak station at the frequency you pick.
Bluetooth hands-free works well.
The Webupdater works well, and you'll want to update the software to the latest version.
Some suggested improvements for Garmin to consider in a future software update:
- give an audible alert when traffic info changes on the calculated route
- integrate the traffic display info into the navigation maps.
- improve the fastest route calculation algorithm... add time for each turn, sharp curve, and crossroad/congested-area.
- expand on ways to customize the route... for example, it would be nice to tap several road segments and mark each as route-via or do-not-use (and an option to save do-not-use segments for future trips).
- add a way to quickly locate photos in the photo viewer application (every Nth thumbnail option)
- speed up the photo thumbnail display
- have the photo viewer show photos as full screen (unless the photo's resolution is so low it would be too fuzzy)
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