Garmin nuvi 660 Car GPS Receiver

I do over the road trucking and must find many new addresses. This unit is very good at what it does, but does not replace good directions and common sense, it compliments them. Nice to know left exits, and distance to location, etc. I would recommend it to anyone as a tool to be used while driving. Haven't used many of the features yet but may later. Bluetooth, audiobooks, etc. Traffic alerts in big cities are handy, but usually just let you know you're in for a bit of a wait. Not too many errors yet, but a few. These tools have their own little quirks. We sometimes disagree on routes and the little unit is very stubborn! Overall tho, I'd buy again.

Pros:
a.> Simple and easy to install.
b.> Ships with everything you need to charge, activate and use the device, including the dash mount kit.
c.> Good size screen for easy navigation.
d.> Real-time accident reports and detour option and it really works too.
e.> The device can be customized for all most all features and accepts multiple blue tooth devices, so others can use the device in their vehicle.
f.> Super touch screen typing and dialing.

I really like that I can unplug, change vehicles and plug it in next vehicle or let it run on its own rechargeable batteries. Whether I am in the countryside or the inner city the Garmin 660 goes with me. I can hide it, when I am parked for the day or shopping to avoid tempting crooks who like to get at the car stereos in public parking lots, so it is a big issue for me.

Cons:
I can't really find anything that I dislike about it.

The Garmin nuvi 660 is one of the most reliable and completer products I have ever bought and I saved $200.00 by buying it on Ebay.

Sincerely,

Peter Schroebel
ultimateproductsusa

This is my only experience with a product of this type however I can honestly say that I would buy another Garmin product. The Nuvi 660 is a pleasure to use and for a first timer like me and a breeze to use. Very user friendly! I especially like the Bluetooth feature and the speaker system is quite good.

I guess the only thing I dislike is the portability of the unit. It is too easy for my wife to get it and put it in her car.

I Have owned this model for over 2 years and decided to buy one for my mom because she kept stealing mine.
Pro's: 1. I have used it to find my customers easily and quickly.

2. The screen and prompts are loud and clear due to the built in Fm transmitter that can be set to any station.

3. Having a built in MP3 player a huge plus when you use the optional sd card slot; 4 gig is the max it can take.

4. The traffic subscription is a nice bounus but I only subscribe when traveling.

5. The music sounds good and no distortion and sounds great plugged in to my home theater system.

6. Battery time with gps on and listening to music without a power source is about 4.3 hours using it as an MP3 player only about 6.5 hours.
I recommend using the british english prompting because he is the easiest to understand.

7. The screen and navigation on the fly is simple and easy to use especially nice is the pre programmed Points of interest any thing From fast food to your local hardware store to parks or hotels is in there to get you to where you need without even having to enter the address just type in the name of what you want and it will take you there.

Cons:
1. doesn't always take you the quickest and most direct route this only happens about 10 to 15 percent of the time but you allways do get there though.

2. Maps seem to be about 1-2 years behind in getting updated to the newest added negiborhoods or streets it does have some of the newest streets just not all of them I say it's missing only about 15% to 25% of them just depending on where you live.

Despite these two minor drawbacks it's much better than Magellan or the lousy TOM TOM brands. I chose to get this older model again not only because of familarity but also because In my opion I think the maps have better detail on the screen when in map mode than the later 700 & 800 series models.

We do a lot of traveling and I always have to print maps of our destinations from Mapquest. The drawback on this is that you have to fumble with a lot of sheets of the printed map. With this Garvin Nuvi 660, just punch in your destination and it will give you the turn by turn routng including advance warning of your exits or splits on the road. In case you miss your exit or made a detour, it will re-calculate the new routing and give you the new direction. This GPS talks to you and give out actual names of the exits or streets not just distances. It is also bluetooth compatible and also doubles as an MP3 player and many more numerous other features. This is the least expensive of the Garmin NUVI line that has all the features that I like. The latest one GArvin NUVI 880 cost like $800. I paid $202 for mine.

after doing research on gps unit's, I decided to go with the garmin nuvi 660. this gps unit is also a mp3 player, has blue tooth, and real time traffic. I'll be moving back east in the next few months, so will need help that online mapping cannot possibly provide. I have already used this unit on little week end jaunts, and on fire calls (I'm a Volunteer Fire Fighter). I have already had contact with the garmin company, and have been very happy at how quickly they responded. Their follow-up is awesome so far. I would have no problem with recommending this gps or one of garmin's other products. As anyone can tell you, customer service is huge. If I can't get help with just simple things, then I know that I can write off anything major. Garmin has both the product and customer service. So if you need a gps unit, garmin nuvi 660 is really great.

The unit is nice and would work great if the software were easier to work and work with. To travel with this unit, the software requires a street address number and will not calculate a navigation. Sometimes all I want to do is get from city to another city. An address is not as important to me, when I want is the best route or fastest route. Then, the software is not up to date with the most current roads and high ways that have been built in the last 3 years, including new developements that aren't shown. The software isn't even correct for the road in front of our house.

So far all I have been able to do is just play with this unit, it dose not offered me the use that I thought I would get.

Works great and is exactly as described on the web. My decision to purchase the nuvi 660 model was due to the high rating on Consumer Reports. I have yet to be unimpressed by any product purchased with their recommendation.

I recommend this particular Garmin to anyone I talk with about in car navigation systems.

it works great, but maintenance and updating software, maps, firmware etc is a bit cumbersome and time consuming and costly. traffic update subscriptions are pricy, but they bait you with a trail period and then once your hooked it seems worth it - but I wish it was built into the lifetime purchase, this way it is like a hidden cost that gets added later after you have already shelled out the original price for the device.... likewise the maps need to be updated periodically ... and the subscription is pricy. so to keep it working at it's best, you keep paying for it.

I really love my nuvi. It's sleek and love the wide screen design. The features are terrific, including the hands-free calling. You can even use the device or the phone feature through your car stereo system. I had 2 other Garmins before this one. The first, way back when, had a flaw so I brought it back and got the Garmin 550c which I LOVED, but I broke it (don't ask!) and couldn't live without my Garmin. I saw this on ebay and got it at a great price. I love it, love it, love it. We are planning a trip to Florida and I will take it with me. This design is great, it fits right in my purse. You'll love it!

This is my 3rd Garmin Nuvi 660; love the design, slim light and handy. I use the bluetooth feature a lot; automatically connects and disconnects with my phone (Nokia N95; other phone brands and models may react differently) as I enter and exit the vehicle. Superb display and text to speech feature keeps your eyes on the road. I would recommend this to anyone who drives around a lot. One great feature is while stopped a a location you desire to go back to, just touch the vehicle icon on the screen and save it with a title on your GPS enbaling you to return to this site location easily.

This GPS does it all... large touch screen, MP3 player, FM transmitter, picture viewer, bluetooth phone receiver and live traffic alerts. When the bluetooth connects to your phone, it downloads your phonebook so you have an onscreen address menu. Voice prompts make sure you don't miss turns. When you are listening to the MP3 player, it automatically pauses when you have an incoming call. You can choose to answer or ignore the call. The music resumes when you hang up.

You can chose to view 2D or 3 D maps to navigate. THe GPS automatically changes to night view to make viewing easy in the dark.

I love this GPS and can't say anything bad about it. I'll be getting one for my son and daughter this Christmas.

I got my Nuvi 660 about a week ago and have been playing with it for the last few days. The unit is really easy to use with a big clear display that you can see well even in full sunlight. I will only highlight some of my observations/frustrations. Since I am in the Gatineau, Quebec area the 660 is really comical in the speech of French names when using it in English. Also, street names are preceded by rue(street), chemin(road), etc. and the 660 cannot find the addresses. I also found that I have to enter the exact format and spelling to find addresses, ex: mount xxxx could not be found until I looked at another map on my PC and found it was shown as Mt. xxxx. The FM option is not too reliable and lost the signal often no matter how many times I re-tuned the FM frequency. You really need to be very close to the car antenna for good reception. One other observation, since I have been handling the unit often to input information, I found myself shutting off the 660 inadvertently as the position of the power switch is at the corner where I tend to hold the unit. I am happy with the 660 but since it is my first experience with a GPS unit I can't really comment on what it does better then other units on the market as this is my first car GPS.

I had several decisions to make about a GPS and after much research, decided upon the Garmin Nuvi 660 for the following reasons:
(1) Robust and fast performance device according to ratings and actually proved true
(2) Upgradeability, I want to be sure to have the latest maps for any region at a fair price, also proved true.
(3) Support, research proved that Garmin is very supportive and so far, I'm fairly impressed.
(4) Features, I'm not as big of a feature-freak as I am functional and dependable minded, these characteristics proved true as well.
(5) Ease of operation, there was a l bit of a learning curve to understand how to operate it but it was minimal. Functionality is great and I recommend anyone considering a Garmin, spend a little time getting to know your device, set up the basics first like your home location and program in some of your favorite destinations before you start traveling with it.

Connectivity:
Overall, I'm very happy with this product. It was easy to install in my car (2005 Camry LE) and basically just used the windshield suction cup and plugged it into the in-dash power port.

I attempted to use the FM modulator but my problem is that I travel long distances and every city has a little different use of the available frequencies so going through the motion to set up the frequency and program it to a location on your FM dial may not work in every city if you travel a lot.

Fortunately this device also has an external audio port so you can plug in a mini-jack and then plug that into a port on your car audio head unit. I ultimately will do that because I'm somewhat of an organization freak in my vehicle and don't like a lot of cables and cords strung across my dashboard. I bought an iPod adapter that plugs into the back of my Toyota factory head unit and lets me play my iPod and control it from the steering wheel controls but it also has a secondary port which I will use to plug the Garmin into.

Audio:
Audio is clear but sometimes road noise can reduce clarity but its not bad. If you have a noisy vehicle (I used it in my truck) you'll have trouble hearing it. I'm not crazy about the constant turn instruction it gives and a couple of times, it was delayed a bit so I missed my turn.

Bluetooth:
This is a great feature for most phones but my cell phone apparently doesn't support all the features the Nuvi 660 has. In other words, when I get calls, it doesn't tell me through the Nuvi 660 what the caller ID is or directory name which apparently is available but only with a few select phones... not mine. The speaker phone is okay but because the speaker isn't loud enough, I find myself disconnecting the handset from the Nuvi and taking the call which basically defeats the purpose. I'll try again after I hard-wire it to the head unit.

Performance:
As I stated above, performance is good. After putting my first 2000 miles on it, I was really impressed with its accuracy. Re-calibration is fairly quick too. I've been in rentals where that just takes what seems to be minutes and the Nuvi 660 is fast. I have noticed that when driving frontage roads, the Nuvi doesn't realize this so it may not detect your exit correctly or on-ramp properly. Be cautious of this. Overall, its good though. It came with the Traffic receiver power cord which I thought would be great since I travel mostly in big cities but that doesn't really seem to be a big feature that works as well as I thought.

Overall, great!

I love this model. It has all the features of the Nuvi, 4.3 inch screen, speaks street names, FM Transmitter, Bluetooth, case, wall charger, etc. The only differece between this model and the much more expensive nuvi 680 is that this model uses the older version of the traffic locator instead of MSN

I would highly recommend this model.

I purchased this item for GPS purposes, but figured why not get all the bells and whistles with the upgraded model. This thing is great!

You have an MP3 player to listen to tunes from an SD card, this runs through an FM transmitter which could be better, but for the most part works well.

Anything from food to shopping is at your fingertips, simply spell a name of the store you're looking for or search categories to find something where you are, enroute to your destination or near your destination!

If you have a bluetooth phone, your Garmin becomes your hands-free set, it will give you the phone number to the place you want to go & call through your car speakers. It also syncs with your contacts, phonebook, & messages and displays them on the large screen.

The voice prompts are pretty good, I like to switch between UK & Australian English, but you can choose from many different voices, male & female.

The folks at Garmin really loaded this unit with features. You can view the stats of your trip, such as: average speed, moving time, stopped time, max speed. etc. Also, I haven't quite figured out how it does it, but as you drive into the evening, the display switches to a night mode that is not as bright & changes the background to black so you don't have an overbearing distraction on the dash.

All in all, I'd have to say this is my most favorite purchase on eBay and I highly recommend it to anyone that's racking up the miles like me or gets lost a lot...like my wife! lol

After checking many sources we found this to have everything we needed for the least amount of money. It has a slot fot a expansion card (music or audio book), bluetooth and you are able to reconize you cell phone for hands free operation while you are driving. The map is large and easy to see. We traveled recently to Boston and were able to use it while walking.

Great display...bright, crisp and extremely easy to view. Data entry interface is easy to use, accurate and intuitive. Directions are good, although when set to "fastest route" the Nuvi routes you to major streets/highways which, during rush hour, are not alwasy the "fastest." I believe this is universal to all GPS units and NOT a NUVI specific issue. The window suction mount is very well designed and works great...it really sucks (in a good way)! The FM traffic receiver saved me huge time last week when an 18-wheeler wrecked on a major highway. The police closed the highway to clean-up the mess and the Nuvi alerted me to avoid the problem (from 60 miles asway) and routed me around the issue. Great feature! The Nuvi has been great for business travel. Finding clients/prospects is now very easy. I highly recommend this product to road trippers everywhere.

This once-used nuvi 660 has all of the features I was looking for in my first GPS--particularly the text-to-voice announcement of an imminent navigation change. That was safety MUST for me! And the reasonable used price made that extra-priced option affordable, too. The seller had kept the device in better-than-new condition. I received it complete with all of it's boxed accessories and set up to operate, but unregistered and without the Garmin Lock enabled. I was able to register it as a first owner and enter the Garmin Lock feature with my own unlock data. Other buyers of used Garmin GPS devices should find out whether the Garmin Lock feature would prevent them from unlocking and using the device. It COULD be a real (and sometimes impossible) hassle to resolve!

Very nice having a navigation system, no more getting lost or taking the long way. Easy to find restaurants and other points of interest. Navigation system keeps you on tract and if you get off course it corrects you and gets you back on the correct course.
The bluetooth works good and when you play it through your radio is very nice and "hands free".
The system is not nearly like having a built in navigation system, but does a good job and you can take it with you when your traveling to other parts of the country and you don't have your own car with you.

Very user friendly. Actually more user friendly than I expected. Has so many features and I wish I never was without it. Now I am a firm believer than it is top of the line.

Love it. Easy to use and the features are pretty impressive for the price. With blue tooth, language translations and local area references available at the touch of the finger.

TomTom not made in America/ or at least the maps are not, Garmin 660 unit works great, can travel on your person or in the car. Has the larger 4.3 colored LCD touch screen, BlueTooth for Handsfree calling in states where you can't talk & drive. In & out Map so you can see just close up view or back out some and get the whole view with side streets and water & green areas. This unit has the MP3 player with the FM sinc system as to listen to your sim/card music through the Garmin and through the radio system in your car, really great to have and when the cell rings just tap the phone simble and start talking (again) through the Garmin. Hang up and back to music, this unit also has the picture viewing on screen, have a photo slide-show right on your dash. Unit came with carry case, car winshield and dash unit mounts, and both the 12 volt car charger & 110 volt house or wall charger. All the software and paperwork to use plus Quickstart guide.. Overall great unit, I love it. So Glad I used my daughters 200w Garmin Nuvi. Will never travel again without this thing again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!