Digital Commons at Penn State

I had been holding out on purchasing a GPS for probably longer than I should have. I am new to Pennsylvania and travel to the other campuses frequently, so having good directions is pretty important to me. So far I have made it by on using google map print outs combined with my iphone to get around the state. Unfortunately I have gotten turned around a number of times since many of the Penn State campuses are not as easy to find as you would think. Finally this past weekend I decided to take the plunge and I purchased a Garmin Nuvi 660.

The Garmin Nuvi 660 was one of the top of the line units when it came out around a year and a half ago, but has come down in price quite a bit recently while still maintaining a very robust feature set. One of the main features which was important to me was Bluetooth integration with my phone. Since I do drive so much I am often forced to take cell phone calls while on the road. The 660 handles this feature really well. After an initial set up, any time I get in the car the phone and GPS unit sync up automatically. So I don’t have to remember to configure anything before I start my trip. The speaker phone on the unit is loud and the receiver seems to work well from a distance of around 3 feet.

The mapping feature uses the same routes as yahoo maps so if you want to preview the route on your computer before you leave it is quite easy. The 660 gives turn-by-turn directions with just the right amount of warning before an upcoming turn. It also recalculates quite quickly if you happen to miss your turn. The only problem I have discovered with the routing feature so far is that it will not usually tell you to make a U-turn even if that is the best alternative route. It will instead choose a longer path that does not involve turning around.

The Garmin Nuvi 660 also has around 500MB (after the OS and your maps) of storage space for MP3s and photos as well as an FM transmitter so that you can play your music and the turn-by-turn directions through your car’s stereo. As with all FM transmitters that I have used, there is a lot of static and you have to change frequencies too often on long car trips. A better option to use it with your cars stereo is to use the audio output of the 660 with a mini cable plugged into the aux input of your car stereo if you have one.

Entering addresses is easy and quick. You just select your state, enter the first few letters of a city, enter the building number and then the first few letters of the street. You can then get a route to that location or save it to your favorites for future use. The unit also comes preloaded with quite a few points of interest such as theaters, restaurants, and stores. So if you are in a new city you can just pull up a list of Italian restaurants near you, or find the closest Starbucks. Obviously not every business is on there, but you can also add custom points of interest and some businesses such as Sheetz have files you can download which add all of their locations to the map.

The Garmin Nuvi 660 is very well designed, intuitive, and easy to carry around with you. While I am sure that in the coming years there will be a flood of multi-touch display GPS units, if you don’t want to wait that long then I highly recommend the Garmin Nuvi 660.