A few tips on buying a Garmin GPS unit can be quite helpful. Because Garmin is the industry leader in the United States, and they have such a large number of products to choose from, it’s sometimes difficult to find the right model for your needs and budget.

Hopefully, I can make this all a little easier for you.

The first thing to know about Garmin is that they sell almost half of the GPS units sold in the United States. They do this by offering quality products at a wide variety of price points.

The nuvi is their newer line of GPS devices. You can get a Garmin nuvi for anywhere from $150 to almost $900. That depth of product is great, but it does make selection a little hard sometimes.

In this article, I’m going to concentrate of their newer nuvi line, instead of their older StreetPilot line. The StreetPilots are great devices, it’s just that they’re being pushed aside by the sleeker, more feature-packed nuvis.

Okay, let’s divide the marketplace into three areas, low, medium, and high.

The nuvi 200 is Garmin’s entry level device. And, if you’re just interested in getting from point A to point B, the nuvi 200 might easily be the right one for you.

It’s got maps of the continental United States, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico. It will show you where you are on an electronic map and tell you where to turn to get to your destination. It can also double as a digital photo viewer.

At slightly less than $150, you can’t really go wrong with a nuvi 200.

If you want more features, you can spring for the nuvi 350. It does everything the nuvi 200 does and also adds maps of Canada. It can also actually tell you the street names of the streets you’re turning on. In addition to being a digital photo viewer, it can also be used as a mp3 player. At less than $200, I can’t think of a better GPS device at that price point.

If you really want to pack on the features, consider the nuvi 660. It can do everything the 350 can do. Also, it has real-time traffic capability, a bigger screen, Bluetooth, and you can hear it through your car’s stereo system. You can pick up a nuvi 660 for less than $350.

All that leaves as far as your main features is multiple point routing. That means you can enter more than one destination into the device, and it will show you the best route to get to all the destinations on one trip. For some, that’s a really good feature. If you’re interested in this feature, the nuvi 760 is the one for you.

Or, if you want what is truly the most advanced, feature-laden Garmin GPS unit on the market, then spring for the nuvi 880. For a cool $900, you can have it all!

By: Rick Cole