I see you already bought one but I have a Garmin StreetPilot 2610. I love it. I'm getting my husband one for Christmas.

 

I'm thinking of picking up the Garmin 340c....supposedly it actually says the street name as opposed to "In 300 ft., take a right." It feels so James Bondi/Knight Ridery

 

i didn't think that and other features were worth the extra $120 or so, that's why i decided on the C330

i'll be living in Indianapolis soon, traffic is not a concern. i don't have bluetooth enabled car, so i don't need that feature either. the street name is nice but not terribly important.

 

Have you tested out the 330c yet? How do you like it? How well does it work in SoCal? Yeah, bluetooth is kinda useless for me, but that street name thingy

 

ok, i've only used the thing for an hour or so today, and here are my observations:

1. The screen is useless in direct sunlight (when the sunlight is in your face) - it's a typical problem with most if not all these products. Even the Pioneer AVIC-N1 i got in my van has that problem.

2. love the british accent

3. menus are easy to use, but my only gripe is that the menu system doesn't seem to have an "escape to map" feature, so i have to hit "back" button multiple times.

4. the calculation is quick!

5. POI search is fairly quick if you narrowed down what you wanted. if you search by name (such as "Costco") within a certain city, it takes a real LONG time to list all the Costcos, so it's a drawback there. My AVIC-N1 comes up with a list of names fairly quickly.

6. It would be nice if we could search by zip code, but neither the C330 nor the AVIC-N1 has that.

Overall i'm satisfied with the $56x.xx i spent on this (Amazon.com), and if you're looking for something easy to use, this is it. a lot of advanced stuff i find on AVIC-N1 weren't used frequently anyways.

 

One of my friends bought the 2610 the same week I picked up the 2720. He wishes now that he'd spent the extra for the 2720. I don't know that it's really worth the extra money but he seems to really like mine much better. I haven't used his so I can't compare.

 

I was considering the 2720 but the extra 400 or so just wasn't worth it - I'm waiting for the next gen AVIC-D2 to come out so I can install that on my WRX.

 

Thanks for the review. I think I'll either go with the C330 or C430. One question Mingster....did you consider Magellan? What made you choose Garmin over Magellan? Thanks again!

 

indeed i did - read up on the reviews for Magellan 700 ~ 760 - in fact a year ago i almost bought the Magellan 700 for $1200 (the going rate at that time). The problem is that although 700 can be had now for ~$600, there were a lot of minor issues with it i didn't want to deal with, and i'm not too hot on the interface and display. the C330's display, though small (compared with my AVIC-N1's 7"), is basically the same size as the Magellan, but a much smaller footprint in my car with a nicer laminate layer over the screen that offers a feel of those new laptop's "ultrabright view" feel, which i liked. i liked the way TomTom was designed and was happy to see that Garmin copied that.

i think Magellan would be nice if you were going to want more navigation features, but i didn't need those features. Lastly, if i could figure how to do this, you can make "custom" POI on the Garmin, i don't think you can do that on the Magellan.

 

Thanks Mingster! Much appreciataed :thumbsup: