short review

I just purchased a Nuvi 670. This is an updated review after using the unit for several weeks and also installing the latest map upgrades for both North America and Europe.

The main reason I selected this unit was that it incorporates both North American and Europe maps. This is a great feature if you need to travel in both North America and Europe.

The prime purpose of the GPS is of course to help me navigate. To this end, the two main aspects are its ability to lock in to the correct GPS location in a speedy and reliable manner; and to have the best and most up-to-date map and point of interest data.

In short, this Garmin GPS excells in the former, but falls short in the latter. The time it takes to find itself and the sensitivity of the receiver is excellent compared to my other (Harman) GPS units. It seems very reliable in this respect.

The downfall of this GPS is in the map and point of interest data. My Harman GPS units have map data from 2006, and even with the Garmin 2009 North America map, the map data is at least three years old in the area where I live (Ottawa, Ontario -- capital of Canada). Point of interest data is also very poor, most businesses are not present in the POI data so if you use it to navigate to businesses, forget it.

The shortcomings in the quality of the map data seriously compromises the utility of this GPS. Even though it locks in to the satellite much better than my Harman GPS units, the poor quality of the map data makes it really not very useful in day to day use.

I will be using this unit only for travel outside of North America; and I wonder whether in fact it's Europe map data is also as out of date as it is for North America.

I should also warn that free map upgrades (to bring you up to date as of the first time the GPS unit connected to a satellite), only cover ONE of these TWO map sets. The Euro map upgrade is twice the price so this is probably the one most people will go for. I paid retail for my North American upgrade. The European map upgrade was sent to me by UPS and Garmin declared it for duty based on its value not the price paid, and when you send through UPS ground to Canada this attracted a $40 (!) brokerage fee. I rejected the shipment and phoned them, I had to escalate to a supervisor but they agreed to send a new one by USPS, which will avoid these fees. Users in Canada and other countries that will impose taxes and duties beware! Your free upgrade may be anything but, due to this.

Unlike the previous reviewer I do find the extra travel features to be handy; I like the ability to load language software (despite the serious shortcomings of this software it's better than nothing), and the calculator etc. lend it reasonably well to being taken with you when you leave your car in order to navigate in foreign cities.

The mapping display is somewhat slow, and the quality of the graphics is relatively uninspiring. However, it does seem to work reasonably well. There are many voice choices that can all read out street names, and it does this better than the Harman units I have. The unit has the ability to directly enter GPS coordinates as well, a handy feature and I don't know why any manufacturers leave this out.

The bluetooth phone connection is somewhat finicky and audio quality is so-so. You have to do too much entry on the GPS for my taste, and I wasn't able to get dial by voice working (perhaps I will be able to get this going if I experiment more). Hard to say whether it will replace my plantronics handsfree or not.

I haven't tried the FM feature (and not legal everywhere anyway). The music and picture navigation features are not of interest to me so I have not explored them.

I originally gave the unit a reasonably high mark, but now that I'm sure I'm using the very latest maps from Garmin (for which I had to pay!), I'm definitely disappointed overall.