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| Garmin nüvi 660 4.3-Inch Widescreen Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator | 
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| Brand: Garmin
Category: CE
List Price: $699.99
Buy New: $244.82
You Save: $455.17 (65%)
New (50) Used (3) Refurbished (7)
Avg. Customer Rating:  1431 reviews
Sales Rank: 34
Format: Cd
Platforms: Windows Xp Professional, Windows Xp Home Edition, Windows 2000
Media: Electronics
Memorabilia: No
Batteries Included: No
Native Resolution: 480 x 272
Display Size: 4.3
Includes MP3 Player: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 2.6 x 2.6 x 2.6
Legal Disclaimer: Warranty does not cover misuse of product.
MPN: 010-00540-00
Model: 010-00540-00
UPC: 053759065110
EAN: 0076565001226
ASIN: B000H49LXQ
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Garmin Nuvi 660 GPS June 27, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
We love this GPS!! We took it on our recent vacation and it took us right where we wanted to go. Also, we loved the restaurant and gas station listings. When you are in a strange town, it is often difficult to know where to eat or get fuel. We ate at some places that would have been difficult to find without the Garmin. This GPS instills a feeling of confidence that you won't get lost in an unfamiliar area. It has so many wonderful features and is really worth the cost.
 Good, but some disappointments June 25, 2007
16 out of 18 found this review helpful
Generally, I agree with most of the favorable reviews here. What I most like is:
* Form factor: slim shape fits easily to store in glove box, briefcase, etc. This sets it apart from the fat Tom Tom's etc
* Very bright, sharp screen. It's even noticably brigter & sharper than the Nuvi 360 which I compared it to, so not all Nuvi's are created equal
* Bluetooth works well with my RAZR; pulls up my phone's contacts, works with voice command, etc. The speaker phone, people tell me, sounds like most speaker phones - a little faint but audible. But I mount the unit pretty close to me on the dash. Might be less clear if it were mounted further back on the windshield.
* Good mount: Good sucker. They provide a "disk" for suction cup that sticks on dashboard. Nice bracket with quick release. Power cord/FM receiver plugs into mount, not the unit, so removing & replacing the unit is even easier.
* Includes FM transmitter to send audio to your radio. Near a major city these are never good enough for music listening, but this one's a little better by automatically scanning to find quietest station to use.
Disappointments
* MP3 player doesn't play all MP3's. I fussed with this a lot because it won't play my favorite podcasts. After some research it seems that it will only play MPEG-1 MP3's, which most of them are, but not MPEG-2 MP3's. I didn't even know there was a difference. Tech support tried to help me with this but in the end just blamed it on "corrupt file", "protection", blah blah. I wish they'd at least recognize this as an issue and maybe fix in future firmware release. I even got a replacement unit, but same result.
* Traffic service disappoints. It only shows traffic on major highways, not on main roads where I could use the information to make rerouting decisions. And it doesn't integrate this info with the navigation screen or detour routing. You see traffic info on a separate, difficult to read screen. (Maybe this is as good as it gets; I don't know.)
* The nav-map screen is not extremely impressive. It doesn't show much detail about what's around you (even in the "most detail" setting). It doesn't even tell you the street you're currently on once in routing mode.
* Trip information is poor. It shows ETA, speed and imprecise direction (N, NE, E, etc.). It doesn't show precise direction (e.g. NNE or 160 degrees) or show TTG or even current time! Instead it's got a "dash board" full of useless stuff like average speed, moving time, stopped time, etc.
* Recalculation (if you miss your turn) is so slow it gives you the next turn after you've already past it. It's comical, going down the street repeatedly saying "recalculating... Turn left at X street" right after you pass X street. Then the same at Y street, then Z street.
* Maybe it's me, but I'm sure she's snarling when she says "recalculating" like she really means "why did you ask for directions in the first place if you're not going to listen to me." That's Jill, the US female. Maybe some of the others are nicer.
GREAT GPS WOULD BUY ANOTHER! June 25, 2007
I purchased the Nuvi 660 on June 19 2007. I have used this every day since I have received it. I spend about 10 hours a day driving. This unit is great. I have found very few short comings, and I usually figured out a way to work around them. I have heard complaints of the FM transmitter. You may have issues when in an area that has many stations, but other wise worked well. You can control the volume of your music independent of the directions. My wife has not been able to get it out of my hands. I told her we would buy another, she was very impressed with it today, as I found many of the local shopping, food, gas stations and points of interest. I would not buy less. Others have shown me their GPS units, I have seen none that I would give up my Nuvi 660 for. Great purchase, Amazon did a great job in shipping. One thing you should note is the delivery from UPS requires a signature. Great deal, thanks Amazon, thanks Garmin!
Not Ready to Fall in Love June 22, 2007
50 out of 54 found this review helpful
From someone who has been using an automotive GPS for 7 years, a little philosophy first, if you please. A GPS should do 2 things very well: Show where you are (location), and provide accurate routing to get you to your destination. Inherent in accurate routing are 3 things: accurate maps, maps that are updatable so future accuracy is assured, and a good algorithm. These - location and routing - I call, "Primary aids to navigation."
Additional "features" fall into 2 categories: "Supplemental navigational aids," that assist getting to your destination and those that are unnecessary "fluff."
The supplemental aids breakdown into 2 categories, as well: Primary and Secondary supplemental aids. Primary supplemental aids are real-time (RT) or near real-time (NRT) data: traffic, weather radar, nearby fuel prices, and to a lesser extent, safety camera locations. Without exception, RT and NRT data aids are subscription-based services.
Secondary supplemental navigational aids are places to eat, or other places you may need to find on-the-fly in unfamiliar areas, such as banks with an ATM, and stores. These are known as "points-of-interest" (POI). Primary and secondary supplemental aids aren't absolutely necessary to navigation, but contribute greatly to the overall navigation functionality and experience. Most would consider these as, "must have," as part of any GPS.
What remains is fluff. Of far too many current upper-range GPSs, 50% is navigational aid, and 50% is fluff. Bluetooth, MP3, an FM transmitter, and photo displays - all included with the Nuvi 660 - fall into the fluff category. Sure, they might be fun to fool and fuss with to take your mind off of driving - gee, what a capital idea - but they are not navigational aids: they're distractions.
That said, this review does not include commentary on the fluff.
PRIMARY NAVIGATIONAL AID: Good to excellent for urban and suburban areas; challenged by rural areas
The Nuvi 660, like its 650, 670, and 680 counterparts, picks up GPS signals rather quickly. The display is easy to read. The touch-screen menu system is fairly easy to find your way around (sic). Setting up a route is a matter of plugging in a destination by using the touch screen keyboard. You don't even have to spell the whole name; only enough so the Nuvi can narrow down the search results to a manageable level. When I typed, "Fairfield," it successfully pulled the Fairfield Inn of interest out of its POI database even though the hotel was over 250 miles away. Good. The POI database seems reasonably robust, although I noticed at several exits along Interstates 85 and 65 in Alabama, about 35% of the gas stations were not in the POI database.
ROUTING
There's some good, and some not so good about the routing. I live in a rural area. Google Earth (GE), which also uses the NavTeq maps, successfully chose the route 20 years of experience taught me to be the fastest. The Nuvi insists on routing me on slower, narrower roads, as though every state route (SR) or county route (CR) has the same properties or precedence as every other. In the case of a SR that I often use, it is 4-lanes wide with a 65mph speed limit. That's probably not the norm, but GE figures it out; Nuvi does not. Also, routes may not be imported from an external source, otherwise I'd import the GE route into the Nuvi. Considering the same maps are used by both GE and Nuvi, the determining factor becomes the routing algorithm which is inadequate for the Nuvi in rural areas.
The Nuvi routes quite well in urban and suburban areas, though. While transversing Atlanta's spaghetti junction at I-85 and I-285, "Wilma" (yes, I named her) accurately got us through the maze, telling us to keep left or keep right as appropriate for upcoming lane changes. (3337'13.72"N, 8428'28.39"W.) Wilma also kept up with the changes even though we were flowing with traffic through the junction at a goodly pace.
PRIMARY SUPPLEMENTAL AIDS
For RT/NRT data aids, the Nuvi 660 comes with a 3 month traffic subscription to Total Traffic Network from Clear Channel. The subscription activates automatically when you are in range of one of the participating transmitters. Mine activated when I was about 30 miles out from the Atlanta area. Since we never ran into any traffic, it is difficult to surmise the effectiveness.
SECONDARY SUPPLEMENTAL AIDS
Some may disagree POIs don't have a higher level of importance than what I assign...they ARE fairly important, especially when you're looking for someplace in particular and don't have the address. Fair enough, but I believe the primary navigation and primary supplemental aids hold higher precedence.
Unlike Garmin's StreetPilot III, the Nuvi does not clutter up the screen with all nearby POIs at the "most detail" setting. This makes it significantly easier to find the particular POI you're seeking. The Nuvi fixes the scale at which you can see POIs, whereas the older SP III allowed adjusting the scale.
SUMMARY
If you're looking for your first GPS and live in or frequent an area covered by the traffic network (www.garmin.com/fmtraffic), the Nuvi 660 is an acceptable choice. Auto-routing seems to work very well in these areas and along Interstates. If you live in a rural area, then the less expensive Nuvi 650 is a smarter buy. Additionally, auto-routing in rural areas where's there's lots of farm, county, or state roads, is not as well refined.
If you are looking to replace an older GPS, my advice is to wait about a year. In that time, there should be some high-end interconnected units available which sound to have great promise for accurate mapping and traffic information outside of urban areas using the cell phone system.
 Truckers be forwarned, they don't use truck routes! June 20, 2007
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
As a new truck driver I needed a GPS unit to help me get from place to place and was willing to spend a pretty penny to have a good unit. This unit is indeed great in almost every single way. For me however the only area it comes up short is when you select the option to plan your route by 'truck'. I had mistakenly thought that Garmin programmed in a route so that you would stay on designated truck-only routes and might even warn you of low underpasses (a trucker's nightmare). Both of my hopes were dashed. Garmin even mentions on the FAQ section of their website (if you query by the words truck routes you'll find the details), that they do NOT claim at all to route via truck routes when selecting 'truck' as your vehicle type. All they do is keep you on more major streets, but not necessarily trucking ones. They also have no low underpasses pre-programmed in at all. But, while it sounds like I'm slamming the unit, I'm not. It's a great GPS device, easy to use, works wonderfully for what it's been programmed to do, and my wife and I will get a lot of use out of it on many trips to come. But, if you're specifically looking at one for a trucking job, this is NOT the one to get.
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