Customer Reviews

Garmin nüvi 650 4.3-Inch Portable GPS Navigator

5 star:		(246)
4 star:		(132)
3 star:		(52)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(21)

 

 

I have have a been a long time Garmin GPS customer including three generations of the Streetpilot. I am very pleased with the Nuvi 650 echoing some of the praises you've read here in the reviews.

However for those of who are on the fence about getting the 650 versus the 660 for the extra Bluetooth, FM transmitter and traffic receiver, I want to offer you some more reasons to consider the 660. The Nuvi 650 does not include the leather carrying case, AC adapter and printed manual which comes standard with the 660 packaging ($50 value).

As a an old time Garmin user, I am used to having these items come with my GPS. In addition, the Nuvis do not include CD/DVD map software nor the friction mount (must buy separately esp. for California and Minnesota). Considering how easy it is now for users to access the memory space of the Nuvi from their computers, it's much easier to corrupt the system unintentially. Thats when you'll need the original map software to recover.

Don't get me wrong, I do like the Nuvi 650 over my Streetpilot 2720 for it's size, improve user interface and the SirF Star III receiver for much more reliable GPS reception. But I can only give this product 4 stars because of the lack of accessories that I find essential for my usage and yet comes standard for the Nuvi 660, 670 and 680.

Before the Nuvi, the only GPS I'd ever used was a Garmin hiking GPS, which I purchased in 2004. It wasn't extremely easy to use, and installing maps on it was awkward. So for the longest time, I didn't bother looking at automotive GPS units, especially Garmins.

My parents recently got a Nuvi 650. They're in their 60s and not extremely technologically savvy. Yet they were able to use it right out of the box, spending minimal time reading the (very short, well-written) "getting started" guide that comes in the package. They are retired and spend every winter RVing around the country, so the Nuvi is an extremely useful device for them.

My wife and I got to see their Nuvi 650. We were impressed with how well designed the interface is. It's very intuitive. The screen is big and bright and easy to read in any light. We and my parents experimented with the auto-nav features and found it did a great job navigating us through complicated routes.

I got the bug to buy an automotive GPS and did my research. A recent Consumer Reports issue (Dec 2007, I think, also available online) has a great review of automotive GPS units. Four of their top 5 are Nuvis (the other is a TomTom).

I ruled out the TomTom because the suction mount it comes with isn't as good as the Nuvi's mount.

I considered the Nuvi 660 (which adds bluetooth and a traffic receiver, but is a lot more expensive). The traffic info requires an extra cost subscription (after a free trial period). The bluetooth wasn't attractive to me for these reasons: 1) I will only use my GPS for road trips and occasional visits to an unfamiliar part of the city I live in, yet I use my cell phone all the time. 2) My car stereo already has built-in bluetooth features and, after trying them out, I ended up not using them.

I ruled out the cheaper Nuvis for two reasons. Some of them have smaller screens: 3.5", whereas the 6xx series has a 4.3" screen. Second, on some cheaper units, the voice directions do not include street names ("turn left in 500 feet"), whereas on the Nuvi 6xx series, the voice directions tell you what street to turn on, as well as how many feet or miles or whatever.

So I settled on the Nuvi 650.

Before making the purchase, though, I was concerned that this particular model was introduced 3 years ago - a long time for a technological gadget. More importantly, I worried that the maps on it would be from 2004. I emailed Garmin customer support, they replied in 24 hours and said that Nuvi 650s are now shipping with the latest maps - the 2008 City Navigator North America NT mappping software. If, by chance, I happen to get a unit that doesn't have the latest maps, when I register my unit online I will be able to order a free update to the latest maps.

Based on this, I ordered a Nuvi 650. Sure enough, it came with the 2008 maps.

Despite that this model was introduced 3 years ago, my wife and I find it very well-designed and it meets our needs very well. As others here have noted, the auto nav is not always 100% accurate - but that's true with any automotive GPS. You always must travel with a good atlas, and of course, your cell phone.

The Nuvi series is great: there are lots of different ones with different features, something for just about everybody. Some reviews of the 650 complain about this or that feature missing -- fine, then look at the Nuvi line -- there's probably a Nuvi with the feature you want.

Nuvis are easy enough to use right out of the box, for people who don't like reading manuals. But for those that do, it's worthwhile to spend 20-30 minutes reading the manual and tinkering with it.

If you plug it into your computer using the included USB cable, it shows up as a drive in Windows explorer. You can drag and drop your favorite photos onto the photo folder of this "drive", and then view them on the Nuvi as a slide show. You can pick one of them to be your splash screen, which you see when you first power up the unit or plug it into your computer. You can drag and drop your favorite MP3 files to the Nuvi, and play them on the Nuvi's internal MP3 player. The Nuvi has an audio output jack (which takes a standard earphone sized plug), so you can play the Nuvi's sound through your car stereo if it has an auxiliary input jack.

You can change the auto icon that represents your vehicle on the map; there are quite a few to choose from on the garmin website. You can change the voice that gives you directions; the English speaking voices include an American female (the default) or male, a British female or male, and an Australian female or male. My wife likes the British male voice the best. If you're multilingual or traveling abroad, you can switch to one of many foreign language voices.

Since the Nuvi 650 is not the latest and greatest, shop around and you should be able to get a great deal. We got a fantastic deal from c o s t c o d o t c o m. (Trying to avoid the censor.)

One last tip: The Consumer Reports article I mentioned said that thieves love to break windows and grab GPS units (and iPods, etc). The article said that you should not only take the unit with you when you park somewhere, but also remove the windshield mount - some thieves will see it and assume you left your GPS in the glove compartment, and break your window to find out.

Had this GPS exactly one month, so I'm still learning about it. However, it's an extremely convenient, easy-to-see, great sized navigation tool. Can easily fit in a jacket pocket to take with me anywhere. I find it helpful just about every time I use it, and wouldn't hesitate to recommend it.

But it's not the perfect answer, just a tool. You have to be aware of what it's telling you, and make decisions based on your knowledge and common sense.

Pros:
--Large, bright screen (which can switch to a dark backlight when it gets dark out).
--Text-to-speech directions pretty clear (occasional weird pronunciation.)
--Remembers lots of places you've been, easy to save places as favorites.

Cons:
--Need to understand what the Nuvi believes is fastest versus shortest, and when you may want to turn off highways as part of the navigation.
--Sometimes the nuvi does NOT tell you to bear right or left as a road forks, and if you're not looking at the screen, you won't realize it (until the GPS-voice-with-an-attitude tells you that it's recalculating).
--The precise locations of things is more of a rarity than you may think. As an example, the nuvi is locating my "home" on the street that runs 150 feet behind my house. If it's accurate to within 200 or 300 feet, that's a football field away from where you actually are.
--It sometimes doesn't announce turns in advance (doesn't happen often, but does happen).
--Do yourself a favor and buy (separately) the friction mount (sandbag-style) rather than bothering with the suction cup mount that's included. You'll love it, it's easy to move (either from car to car, or to put under you seat so that thieves don't see it and break in). Absolutely should be the standard mount.

Additional comments:
The 650 doesn't include a few features, such as bluetooth, that are standard in the 660 and above. If you use audio books or play music through the MP3 player, bluetooth would enable you to play through your car stereo. If you don't care about that, the 650 is a better deal.

No printed manual is included -- just a Quick Start pamphlet. Do yourself a favor and go to the garmin site and download the manual right away. It'll answer a ton of questions for you and clear up things that are not obvious.

I have been in the market for an automotive GPS for a year or so. I have an old Garmin handheld unit that has been fantastic with many useful features. I put off buying an automotive GPS because the manufacturers are so obsessed with the dainty little 3.5 inch displays. That's great if you want to put it in your pocket, or for pedestrian use, but it's woefully inadequate for automotive use. Unfortunately, there are no reasonable options out there with a large enough screen, except for the Garmin StreetPilot 7200, which has a 7" display. And that model is way overpriced, and doesn't even have a built in battery.

After waiting a long time, I decided to buy the best deal out there with a display larger than the 3.5". At first I waited for the release of the new Mio C520 with the 4.3" display. But after checking it out at Circuit City, was disappointed. The Mio has tiny faint control icons that are barely visible and spaced very close together. Plus the menu icons used tiny fonts that were barely legible. Same problem with the top banner that provided directions and cross street info. Also, the colors they chose for the controls buttons didn't have enough contrast between the button background and font; whereas the Garmin use high contrast colors on their buttons/icons and larger fonts. Even the 3.5" Garmins were more legible than the larger Mio. Amazing a manufacturer could come so close and then botch it on something so basic.

Here's the pro's and con's of the Garmin Nuvi 650.
Pro's:
1) Bright display and good contrasting colors on control buttons/icons.
2) Thin case that allows more versatility in mounting.
3) Great/quick satellite reception.
4) MP3 and JPG viewer features (which I have no need for).
5) Great hardware/software quality and stability.
6) Allegedly good customer support (although I haven't needed it yet, that was a serious factor).
7) Unit powers on/off automatically with vehicle when plugged into 12 volt receptacle.

Cons:
1) Overpriced. The larger display simply does not justify the price hike over the smaller Nuvis. Even at 25% off MSRP, I don't feel it was a value. If not for restocking fees, I would consider returning it.
2) Needs an even larger display. The reviews referring to the display as "large" and to the StreetPilot 7200 as "huge" are ridiculous. Auto manufacturers would never get away with putting anything less than a 7" or 8" Nav display in cars.
3) Needs some type of lanyard or wrist strap for hand carrying and securing to bicycle or motorcycle. I use this GPS on my motorcycle and would like a lanyard to securely fasten the device in case it pops out of the cradle while hitting a bump or at high speed. GPSs are simply too expensive to not provide this basic security feature.
4) At over $500, this thing should at least come with some basic padded case or preferrably a hard case with padding to protect the device and the display.
5) Doesn't leave a bread crumb trail showing where you've been.
6) The jpeg viewer doesn't automatically resize photos to fit the screen. To view photos requires much tedious button pushing.
7) No north pointer in the 3D map mode.
8) The map starts to rotate as you approach an intersection even though the vehicle hasn't started to turn. If you then stop, the map is not properly oriented and it is difficult to align what is straight ahead in the real world with what the map is trying to show.
9) The most glaring omission is the restriction to only one via point when planning a route. This is simply inexcusable, particularly when even the cheapest hand held units have more extensive route planning capabilities. If you are planning a trip across the US, it is impossible to plan a route incorporating more than one desired stop. I generally know exactly where I want to go and which roads I want to take to get there. I want the GPS to cue me as the turns approach and to calculate trip info. Unfortunately, Garmin is bent on playing the backseat driver and only permitting me to select the final destination and one via point. It does this well if that's all you want. I'm hoping future software updates will rectify this problem.

Some additional features I'd like to see in a GPS:
1) More extensive/manual route planning.
2) A built in electronic compass so the unit knows it's orientation as well as position when not in motion (GPS only provides position). By the way, some hand held units have this feature.

All that said, the Garmin Nuvi 650 is as advertised and performs the provided features well.

In summary, I recommend waiting 6 months or a year as GPS prices are dropping drastically and manufacturers are starting to offer larger displays. The Nuvi 650 has potential, and it could earn another star from me with some software updating to make it more of a value (route planning enhancements, north pointer, etc.).

We purchased this unit, our second Garmin Nuvi for moving to Texas on about 4/1/07. We have a 350 and now this 650. I'm not sure of the maps version we got and it has the matte screen. Overall, we're very satisfied but it's not perfect. We had to send the first sample we purchased back due to a dead pixel and a faulty touch screen. Ironically we had to send our first Nuvi back also. The second model arrived flawless. Since then we've made the following observations.

Pros
- Talks to you with the street names, saving having to look at the screen as often. How much is your safety worth?
- Attractive form factor, small enough but yet large enough
- Good battery life
- Saves gas and time, and reduces getting lost, even around your own town.
- Display, nice wide form factor. we are pleased with the daylight and nightime performance.
- Startup time seems MUCH faster than the 350.

Cons:
- Seems pricy for what you get
- Dozens of roads in the internal map software were not accurate causing much confusion when driving. This is a software map issue, not a hardware issue. Maps were not accurate.

I've only had this unit a couple days and am mostly impressed. I haven't had the opportunity to use all the features but the ones I've used have worked very well. However, there is one exception.There is a four month old highway about 5 blocks from my home and the unit doesn't recognize it. Also, there is a Walmart about 3 miles from my home that has been open for about 3 years and the device also doesn't recognize it. Actually, it sends me to a Walmart about 20 miles away. I called Garmin about these concerns and was advised that I must wait for an update to be available in the fall. Hopefully, at no cost. I understand they only update these babies once every 12 to 18 months. That really concerns me.I purchased a brand new unit with year old data. Not too smart.At the price one must pay for these products they should be updated free every 6 months, at a bare minimum. Other than the above mentioned items ,it is a pretty nice unit and I think I made the right choice. Only time will tell. One caution for everyone, Check with the manufacturer of the unit you're considering purchasing to be sure it has been recently updated, otherwise you have up to an 18 month old program in a brand new unit.UGH!

Let me preface this by saying I'm not new to GPS, and have used an old reliable Garmin GPS-V on long road trips for several years with excellent results. Being "early" technology from Garmin, my good 'ol GPS-V suffered from some drawbacks such as slow RS-232 data transfer (no USB), small monochrome display, limited and non-expandable internal map memory (only 19 MB), and a tedious method of data entry. All that notwithstanding, it was reliable and efficient as a rock and worked great, and had many excellent and useful "extra" features. My favorite of it's many features was the efficient way it made use of routes and waypoints. Not only can it download and store many routes and many waypoints within each route from your PC, but it will constantly show me in real time the distance, time, and ETA to the next way point and/or the next turn, in addition to the distance, time, and ETA to final destination. The old GPS-V also had a ton of the usual features such as current elevation with graphics and elevation gains, trip info (distance, stopped time, cumulative mileage, current speed, average speed, etc. etc., ad infinitum.

Fast forward to last week when my wife gave me a spanking new Nuvi 650 for Father's Day. Wow, what a display difference. Eye candy heaven! I loved the touch screen "buttons", the relatively large (compared to my old GPS-V) brilliant and sharp color display, the clever easy-release ball mount, and the huge POI database. I tried it out around town and it worked wonderfully. I figured that five years of rapid technical advancement in the GPS field would be mine with my new Nuvi 650. Well, guess what. A lot of my enthusiasm for my new toy came to a screeching halt when I decided to plug in a route with a bunch of waypoints for an upcoming 800 mile road trip, and realized I could only have ONE (count 'em, one!) "via" point (waypoint) between the start and end of the entire trip. Are you kidding me? That is a HUGE step backwards in GPS technology, and makes no sense at all to me unless the idea was to just quickly sell a pretty but grossly dumbed-down, idiot-proof device that was best suited to finding grandma's house across town. Considering the price of this thing, this is in my opinion totally unsatisfactory. It means on an 800 mile trip via long cross country highways like interstate 40 it will tell you the "next" turn is maybe 6 hours from now. Gimme a break. With my old GPS-V I could plug in dozens of small towns or spots I might want to see along the way, and it would keep a running display of not only how far and how long to the end of my trip but how far and how long to each of the waypoints along the way, thus breaking up (at least psychologically) a long and boring drive into something more interesting and palatable. Heck, this thing won't even store routes, period! The route you are on when you punch "GO" is the only route you get. Want another route? Want to repeat a trip, or do an "inverse" trip using the same path on return? With the GPS-V just scroll down the list of your previously downloaded routes and pick one, and you're off and running. With the Nuvi, you need to create another brand new route every time, and you are allowed only a single waypoint in that route.

It is absolutely stunning to me that Garmin chose to actually build LESS technology and usefulness into this new Nuvi GPS than my 5 or 6 year old GPS-V has. What kind of technology advancement is THAT? They appear to have decided to build and sell these based on simplicity and flashiness, and on that they have succeeded, because it is super simple to use, the display is certainly very flashy and pretty, and data entry can be done by a third grader. But sadly, when you look behind all of this glitter, this is a deliberately crippled version of Garmin's own 5-year old GPS technology. What a waste. The Nuvi 650 is a '96 Ford sedan with a flashy metalflake paint job and loud pipes. In other words, it's all show and no go.

My new Nuvi 650 is not totally useless, because I'll use if for around town and short trips, where I pretty much don't care about waypoints or elevation anyway. But beyond that it IS almost useless, and on my long road trips I'll continue to squint at the postage stamp display on my old GPS-V. Heck, for $600 the Nuvi doesn't even tell you elevations. Shame on you, Garmin. You got me this time, but I'll be more careful next time I buy. For serious road trip use, the Nuvi 650 doesn't cut it. As far as I'm concerned Garmin can continue to sell Nuvi's to the Ipod market, or to the folks who spend all day watching Paris Hilton footage on CNN and whose technological capabilities don't extend past using the TV remote. For serious long distance road use, it's a no go for me.

I gave it three stars instead of two only because of the super-nice display and very slick touch-screen operation.

This Nuvi 650 is a a nice upgrade that is long overdue for me. I've been using the Garmin eMap for 7 years, and really appreciate the features of a well-made GPS. So what sets this unit apart ?
- The design of this unit is excellent - It feels solidly made, and has a look of high quality.
- The wide display on the 650 is bright fast, and easy to read at a glance. The touchscreen works beautifully. Response to input is quick and consistent.
- The 3D mapping on the widescreen helps to address one of the biggest challenges using a small electronic display vs a large paper map. With the 3D perspective, you can see a field much larger than can be displayed in 2D, so there's less need to zoom out to see roads that would be beyond the 2D window.
- The pre-loaded 6 million points of interest are amazing. In just a few days this unit has pointed out many local POIs I didn't even know existed. When I travel in unfamiliar territory, I frequently need to find a restaurant or bank or other POI and now I am confident I'll save time and aggravation, locating them quickly. Plus, the support for downloadable POI-TourGuides adds an interesting new dimension to sightseeing via GPS guided audio tours.
- Sound output is also very good, connected to my car stereo thru the aux input.
- Cost of the unit was a factor, and I saved some money vs the 660 by skipping unneeded features: Bluetooth, and FM transmitter.

OK, I gave it four stars and not five - Why ?
-The routing software is very good, and the voice prompts are very clear and timely, and ultimately it gets you there, but like other portable units, occasionally it will choose an odd path that is less than ideal, and send you off on an unnecessary parallel detour.
- I miss the Tracking "bread-crumbs" feature that records your movement, and is useful for back-tracking.
- The picture viewer displays large jpegs, and zooms them, but the initial view is small, not zoomed to fit the window. And zooming is slow. Ideally, it would auto-zoom & "remember" the zoom from the last time viewed.
- MP3 player only plays MP3s, no support for WMA, which most of my music is formatted to. And no equalizer or tone controls.

I had a Garmin Ique 3600 that I've been happy with for several years. My father-in-law began talking about driving from California to Oklahoma this summer. I told him he needed a GPS for the trip. So I began my research for a GPS that would be easy to use and not a complete fortune. When I got done researching I decided on the Garmin Nuvi 650. He didn't need the Bluetooth or traffic tracking capabilities of the higher units, but a larger screen than the 300 series would be a benefit. I convinced myself that I needed to test drive the unit before recommending it for him to buy (okay, rationalization to get one for myself because it seemed to be a really nice unit that my family would appreciate as well).

I purchased mine for about $460. When it arrived, I was up and running within 15 minutes. The menus were intuitive and easy to figure out (good because there is only a printed quick start guide...you have to access the digital manual using the USB connection and access the file located on the Garmin with a computer). The satellite acquisition is pretty quick (really quick compared to either of my GPSs from a couple years ago). In fact, I was able to lock on satellites from inside the house! The voice commands are clear and you can choose from a male of female voice and from several different languages (which my daughter enjoyed, but following the directions in Italian, which we don't speak, was challenging although not impossible). The suction cup mount that came with the unit is adequate if you clean the windshield where you intend to mount the unit and slightly moisten the suction cup. I purchased the bean bag friction mount which is easier to use in different cars.

I am very happy with the unit and had no problem recommending it to my in-laws who are not really tech savvy. My mother-in-law had the unit operating in less than an hour and they used it to get around town that afternoon. That's a testimonial in of itself!

First of all I'd like to start this review by saying that I got this as a replacement for my TomTom One XL. I was very happy with my TomTom, the reason I needed the Nuvi was for the Mount with integrated cables and the mount design itself. This is the only system that worked in my car in the space I wanted it in. Yes, Garmin has by far the best and the most convenient mount. You don't have to dislodge the suction cup, but rather just snap the unit off and the suction cup stays in place. This was extremely important in my application. Also it has a very long battery life compared to TomTom XL. Now to the review of the device itself. How silly is it that you can not input a zip code? Garmin can't do that. It is hard to believe but every time you input an address where you want to go you have to go through the whole find city/state routine instead of just putting in a zip code. The second disadvantage is the Keyboard layout. It is alphabetic. And you have no option to change that. An alphabetic keyboard is extremely slow. TomTom has a choice between three different keyboard layouts including QWERTY like on the computer. in the NUVI When you search for address you have to go through the whole city state routine every time instead of just having an option of searching for an address in the city you are in currently. It is extremely slow to input address as well. What would take a few seconds in TomTom takes a minute or two in Garmin. The interface is very narrow minded, no customization and very few options. There is no way to plan a trip beforehand and have multiple stops. There is no way to avoid certain roads. There is no way to use certain roads. The nuvi is just point A to Point B or point A to Point B with Point C in the Middle. That's It!? TomTom has an itinerary planning option that allows you to plan the whole trip with multiple stops. Or even numerous trips. Where TomTom comes with software to update your device and to load different, map colors, voices..., Garmin gives you just one map color. TomTom gives you so much more. it is just a much more fully featured device. The Nuvi is just so basic and slow. Now on to the worst part. Accuracy is very poor sometimes. It constantly confuses service roads and highways, direction of travel and current location. In NYC it is a disaster. The routes it chooses are also idiotic. TomTom does not nearly make so many mistakes. Another really annoying thing is the road input. You have to know exactly how it is spelled in the NUVI. I had to go once to 125 Route 59 East. Half hour after getting behind the wheel and I was still in the garage. The only way I found it is through the POI search. It turns out that you had to spell it Hwy 59 West. And that's the only way Garmin knew the road. I tried RT 59, Route 59, Just 59, Highway 59, RT 59 E, Route 59 East and many many more combinations and it still didn't see it. Combined with inability to input the Zip Code, I couldn't even find it by browsing the map. In TomTom it took less then two seconds. I just inputted 59 and immediately there were options on the screen while I was still typing. The options were Rt 59 East, Rt 59 West. So easy! This is how it should be. Garmin didn't even have east, only had west. One thing I will fault TomTom on is POIs. Let's say you are looking for Costco in your vicinity. TomTom shows the name and that's it No address. If there are numerous locations, the only way to know which location you are gong to is actually go there. Now there is an update that fixes that but TomTom still does not give you phone numbers for POIs. Garmin is much better in the way POI's are organized also. ie. Restaurants are organized by cuisine; Italian, French, German etc. In the end the Negatives greatly outweigh the positives in the Nuvi. So it is back to TomTom for me. I will have to fabricate something to get it mounted in the spot I want but I can not live with the NUVI!