Thu 22 Feb 2007
Features:
- - Talking navigation with intelligent voice
- - Brighter screen (than the c330)
- - Mounting system
- - Power adapter
- - SD memory slot
- - USB port with cable
The Garmin StreetPilot c340 was my choice for GPS navigation. I selected this particular brand and model for a few important reasons. First and foremost Garmin makes the easiest GPS navigation interface in my opinion. Nothing is more than a couple clicks away including nearby restaurants, gas stations, and grocery stores… 6 million points of interest in fact (compare that to just thousands in TomTom). I also particularly like Garmin’s map rendering which is miles ahead of TomTom and all of the other systems I looked at. Moreover, I discovered that many GPS navigation systems have rendering engines that look like attention to design was not considered in the slightest. Finally, a critical feature is its ability to read street names in navigation instructions out loud (not available on the c330).
To test my system, I plugged everything in and set off for Myrtle Beach from my home in Winston-Salem, NC. I had to make one stop at my in-law’s in Cornelius which was clearly far off of the route. For about 15 minutes, the Garmin system gave me routing instructions to turn around and head the other way, which I was actually impressed with. Instead of just saying, make a u-turn now, it actually found nice places to make an easy turn around using short roads without having to pull a 3-point or a u-turn. Having not entered the address of my in-law’s on the itinerary, the Garmin system was thoroughly confused for a long time. When I finally got on the road in the right direction, it started to settle down a bit. The route it took me on was the exact route I would have planned myself minus driving through Friday rush-hour traffic down Independence Blvd. in Charlotte. That set me back a bit. One problem I noted was that it had a hard time identifying bypass highways that skipped thick business districts. This only occurred in the country and as soon as I didn’t turn onto to the slower route, the computer recalculated my route within seconds and approved of the new route I was on. Using a bit of common sense can save you some time since it’s hard for a little device like this to always optimize a long drive perfectly.
I arrived exactly when the system predicted I would. The trip computer inside of the system is really nice. It logs time, mileage, speed, average speed, time stopped, time moving, average speed while moving, and max speed (erase this if you get pulled over by an officer with one click on “Reset Max”).
Satellite reception is no problem for me on the road, but of course I cannot pick up anything when in a garage or parking deck. Once I noticed the system thought I was on the other side of the highway and demanded that I exit up the wrong side of the ramp and pull a u-turn. I thought that was funny. A cool feature of the c340 is that the woman that speaks to you actually says the road names instead of just “turn left in half of a mile”. That helps me figure out where I need to go without having to look at the screen. I found that the brightness of the screen is adequate even in sunny conditions while wearing my sunglasses. The windshield mount works perfectly.
I am very pleased with this device. It has exceeded most of my expectations and has instantly become an integral part of travel for me. I was able to find destinations with door-to-door directions read from a soothing voice which could be heard even over relatively loud music. I would recommend this unit to anyone looking to get a GPS navigation system. It’s especially nice to use once you get to your travel destination as you can quickly find places that you need to get to when you’re not in familiar territory. I give this device 5 out of 5 stars because they really couldn’t have done anything better in my opinion. It’s simple, sleek, and fully featured.
