Garmin Nuvi 660 FM - advice needed / opinions sought

declan29 · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jul 04, 2006 Posts: 11

Hi,

I'm seriously considering buying the 660 FM model in the next couple of weeks (having finally gotten fed up with CoPilot 6 on my PDA).

I'm just wondering what the opinions are of people who actually have this unit are? Are there any major gripes I should be aware of? In particular, what's the traffic module and FM transmitter like? Good / bad or indifferent?

Having looked at other models like Navman and TomTom the 660 FM seems to offer everything I want without pointless extras (like an integrated camera), so really I just want the lowdown from people who have experienced the unit.

All replies gratefully received!

Kind regards,

Declan.

declan29 · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jul 04, 2006 Posts: 11

I'm finding it slightly disconcerting that no-one has so far praised or even commented on the Nuvi 660fm!

Is it universally treated with indifference?

swing · Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2007 10:36 am Post subject:

The 660FM is quite new to the market, so there may only be a handful of people who could comment.

A quick search of these forums will give you most of the good and bad points, although you should perform similar searches for the other products too - generally the traffic module is a little flakey, but then so are most of the other units on the market today...
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declan29 · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jul 04, 2006 Posts: 11

Many thanks for the response Swing.

Yep, I've been reading through the posts and haven't come across any "show stoppers" so far. There seems to be an issue with using the speed camera database from PGPSW and the direction the car is moving in, but other than that I can't find any major gripes. Which is all good I guess!

Really, I'm just hoping for some feedback from a proud (or disgruntled) 660fm owner, before taking the final plunge! Of course there is the old maxim that people are much more likely to post complaints that praise about any system, so maybe the silence is golden.

abrowne1950 · Occasional Visitor Joined: May 08, 2007 Posts: 2

I have both a 660 and a 670. The FM transmitter is weak. You need to have your unit in close proximity to your car's antenna. On my Nissan Murano (antenna is on roof, centered just next to moon roof), FM trans quality is OK. Its a real PITA to find strong stations in a metropolitan area. My second car is a Nissan Z350 Roadster with the antenna mounted on the rear fender well. FM transmitter is completely useless. Thank goodness both cars come equipped with a Bose sound system (with cassette). I use a cassette adapter plugged into the headphone jack for awesome sound, all the time.

TrevorFowler · Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2007 12:55 pm Post subject:

Hi Declan29

I'm in a similar position to you only that I have had my 660FM for two weeks now.

So, my comments on the Nuvi 660FM vs Copilot 6 (on an iPAQ 3970)

1. No more obsession with the so called "Driver Safety" mode. There is just the 2D or 3D view.

2. Road colouring is strange, with motorways in red. Call me old fashioned, but IU would prefer them to be in blue.

3. Maps are more detailed with rivers, railway lines and parks all shown.

4. The TTS voices are superb and do not sound electronic at all. They are very clear. The British male one sounds like Jon Briggs who is the voiceover for The Weakest Link. The British female sounds like none other than Judith Chalmers!

5. The trip computer is nice though it does provide a temptation to improve on one's previous stats when travelling the same route.

6. Traffic data is available ("Come in Alk, your time is up!") but I have not had the unit long enough for it to be used in anger so to speak.

7. The unit does allow for various types of vehicle (car, truck etc), and although does affect ETA times how the settings affect routing is unclear.

8. There is no tailoring of speeds for various classes of road (unlike CP6)and the ETA times are wildly optimistic. I don't know why these units can be set to learn the average speed one travels on a particular class of road (and type of vehicle) so that more accurate/realistic ETA times can be calculated.

9. POI handling is much improved from CP6, but still falls short of what would be genuinly useful. I would like to see the POIs (or a subset of which) on a calcualted route and give me the opportunity to route round them or set them as a stop. Installing POIs on the Nuvi is easy, whereas on CP6 the whole mapping has to be reinstalled.

10. The FM option is worth the extra (IMO) and it works very well.

11. Like CP6, the Nuvi uses Navteq maps. I reject any unit that uses TeleAtlas. Accurate maps are to me more important than any routing software.

Please ask if you have any questions before you take the plunge.

Trevor

swing · Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2007 1:01 pm Post subject:

TrevorFowler · Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2007 1:04 pm Post subject:

I would make rivers a much lighter blue than motorways which (and I don't know whether this is practical) a double blue line. However this pales into insignificance compared with the inability to select points to avoid.

declan29 · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jul 04, 2006 Posts: 11

Hi Trevor,

Many thanks for the detailed reply; that was exactly the kind of info I was after, so it's very much appreciated.

Just a few queries on your response:

1) Is the lack of the "driver safety" view from CP6 an issue, or is it better in 2D/3D? I've always just left CP6 on "driver safety" by default. I guess I should switch it off and try it in "normal" mode for a while to see what kind of difference there is.

2) Yeah, the ETA rubbishness is hard to fathom. Surely it can't be that hard to write a decent algorithim for these things! CP6 is absolutely rubbish as far as ETA is concerned. I don't know why it can't just monitor your average speed over the journey itself and adjust accordingly. With CP6, it reckons I can get 10 miles through central London (to Croydon) in 10 minutes, based on using A roads at 60mph. Fair enough (rubbish, but fair enough). But when it's taken me 20 mintues to travel 2 miles to Brixton, my ETA shouldn't be pushed out by 18 minutes, it should be pushed out by 40 minutes. If the next 2 miles are covered in a quicker time, readjust the ETA downwards... surely not rocket science?

3) Any idea what the mapping for the Republic of Ireland is like now? It used to be terrible (and is pretty basic on CP6), but I've seen some very impressive Irish mapping from MapQuest which someone said was no being used on the latest maps on the Nuvi 660fm, but I don't know if that's true or not. I go back to Ireland quite a lot, so it would be useful if the maps were useable now.

No more questions at this point, I'm sure you'll be glad to hear! All I have to do now is figure out a way to convince the missus that we need new sat nav!

Once again, many thanks for the info, just what I was looking for.

Kind regards,

Declan.

TrevorFowler · Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2007 1:44 pm Post subject:

Hi Declan

My basic problem with the "Driver Safety" mode was that it presumed a Pocket PC navigation program could "nanny" me into not looking away from the road. It would be fine if the mapping is correct all the time, but in the real world it is not of course.

I cannot vouch for the mapping for Ireland, but I was impressed with the German ones - being able to search by German post codes whcih are more sophisticated than the UK ones.

The Nuvi features a screenshot facility so if you could send me some examples of Irish addresses and your email address (perhaps by a PM), I could email you with the screenshot images. I've not tried this before, but I am willing to give it a go.

Trevor

philpugh · Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2007 2:38 pm Post subject:

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