//This guide will be most helpful if you are looking at Garmin's official webpage for their automotive gps devices' product page//
Last updated Feb 20, 2008.

Since first writing this review, Garmin has put out many more great products onto the market, let's take a quick look of them all.  I am not affiliated with Garmin in anyway.  I love their product and I hope you find my guild useful in helping you choose the right GPS for your needs. To me, GPS has become an necessity than an accessory.  I travel a lot both in town and out town, and a GPS eliminates over 300 pages of maps that I need to carry in the car and it gets you there without much distraction and constant stop on the road reading maps.

Garmin is the King of GPS in USA, for a good reason: great customer service, reliable device and innovative design of their constantly evolving GPS devices. I was in the market to purchase a GPS for my personal use, and was overwhelmed by the varieties of GPS each manufactures had to offer. 

This guide will be concentrating on only Garmin GPS in US market.  Their main steam GPS line include the StreetPilot series and Nuvi series GPS devices.
Street

The StreetPilot C300 series are Garmin's basic line GPS devices, offers the most basic function of automotive GPS navigation, C340 supports Text-To-Speech which means it will speak out street's name like "in 300ft, turn right on elm st" instead of just plain "in 300 ft, turn right", it also supports  FM traffic data (need to purchase a FM traffic receiver and subscription though).  If you purchase C310 you are better off purchase a SD card with a capacity of at least 1GB yourself to load entire US maps and any additional maps you wish to load into the SD card.

Notice the C300 series devices do not have the new SRiF High-sensitivity receiver, so you might have some trouble navigating in busy downtown areas or airports.

Now lets take a look at the StreetPilot C500 series GPS devices.

Street Pilot C580

They are an upgrade to C300 series, with C580 been current top of the line Garmin StreetPilot  GPS device with a build in MSN Direct data receiver, that reports traffic, movie times, gas price and weather in major metroplex areas (subscription to MSN direct for the first year is free, then $50 per year or $150 for lifetime service).  C500 series have couple improvement from C300 series: they are equipped with Anti-Glare high contrast LCD screen that is very sun-lit readable, they are also all equiped with SRiF high sensitivity receiver for very quick and accurate GPS satellite locking, even in busy downtown areas with a lot of skyscrapers.

Okay, now lets take a look at the mainstream Nuvi 300 and 600 series GPS.

Nuve 650

Nuvi 350

The Nuvi 3xx features standard 320x240pixel screen and 6xx features the new widescreen with 480x272 pixel resolution.  They are all very slim and can be fit easily into your pocket. The only difference between these models are the fancy add-on features like hands-free bluetooth calling, mp3 player, or types of traffic receiver build-in to the device.  The Nuvi series are Garmin's current top-of-the-line automotive GPS navigation devices.

The Nuvi 6xx have same function as 3xx series, but with widescreen display for easy map browsing and viewing.

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Then, there comes the brand new Nuvi 7xx and 8xx series GPS.

The Nuvi 7xx series is meant to replace the 600 series,  improvements including:
Redesigned and now more compact unit with antenna build into the gps, instead of you have to fold it out like the 3xx and 6xx series.
Ability to plan up to 10 routes (great function).
Where Am I function, which finds closest hospitals, police & gas stations, nearest address & intersection.
Car locator feature (marks position when removed from windshield mount)
Qwerty or ABC keyboard (older models only have ABC layout which is odd and slow to use than a QWERTY standard keyboard layout)

There is Nuvi 750, 760 and 780 to choose from, where 780 have MSN Direct service (MSN Direct subscription fee required after trail period.), and 750 lacks the option of bluetooth hands-free calling.  They all have FM Transmitor which transmit MP3 music on you GPS to your car's FM radio frequency thus eliminate the need for an extra mp3 player.
Nuvi 780


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The most significant and powerful GPS in the Garmin line now is probably the Nuvi 8xx series GPS, which will be available 2nd quarter of this year.
Most advanced Garmin Nuvi 880 GPS

On top of the improvements that the 7xx series had over 6xx series, the Nuvi 8xx series adds the following:

Voice/Speech Recognition (You say street name, it finds it, this function first appeared in TomTom's European models, but Garmin is the first in USA to add such function)
Dual Speaker design instead of one (louder more clear sound.)
Micro SD card instead of SD
Only 0.7" thick
Removeable and rechargeable battery (so you can buy extras for use off the car)
And even a remote control

There is Nuvi 880 and Nuvi 850 to choose from, they are all wide screen models, 850 lacks the bluetooth hands free calling function of 880.

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Nuvi 2xx series with normal 3" screen
Nuvi 2xx series with wide 4" screen

The 200 series are watered-down version of 300 and 600 series.  The 200 series' current street price is not as appearing as some of the 300 or 600 models.  So I suggest that you are looking into the 300 or 600 series GPS.

The major difference, or improvement of the 200 as to 300 or 600 series is that the antenna of Nuvi 200 series are build-in into the device, as opposed to 300 or 600 series antenna that have to be folded out to use. The 200 series also added a HOLD function so when you take your device off the car for pedestrian use you will not accidentally touch the screen when the GPS is been put into your pocket.

250W features larger LCD widescreen, 270 comes loaded with both American and European maps, and 260 have the Text-To-speech function that spells out street names.
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Last, the whooping huge 5.2" LCD screen Nuvi 5000.  This is nothing new but a Nuvi 7xx series packed in a higher resolution screen, and without any internal battery, it won't run if you take it out of the car.  This GPS will be mostly useful for truck drivers, people who have lots of ego, and people who wants to block most of their view from the field (which is dangerous...)  It can store 3000 (compare to 500 on most other models) Favorite locations...

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*Personal thoughts on Bluetooth Hands Free Calling:  Unless you own a super nice car that isolates wind and road noise completely. This is a totally and absolutely useless function.  Save yourself some money and time by purchasing a good bluetooth headset from Plantronics or a Aliph Jawbone.

*Personal thoughts on MSN Direct Service: After about half years usage of MSN Direct Service, I have to say that the innovative idea behind this service is great, but MSN's traffic and weather update is really out-dated. For example, some accident happened couple hours ago, but the information transmitted to my GPS hours after accident had already been cleaned up (DOH!!)  If you can afford regular FM-TMC traffic information update, get it.  If not, don't bother with MSN Direct service as of yet, because it still needs improvement.

That's about all I have to offer now. A lot of data comes from official Garmin website, so if you see any GPS device that is not listed here and would like to know more, visit their webpage.  Discontinued units are not listed in this guide.  And this guide will be upgraded if any models listed here is discontinued or newer models are added.

One direct competitor to Garmin been Tomtom, and their release of brand new Tomtom Go 720 and 520 GPS navigator.  But I personally think that the POIs and Maps offered by Tomtom is not of equal quality of Garmin simply because Garmin is US based and Tomtom's headquarter is in Europe.  Also the routes calculated by Tomtom is less efficient than Garmin  But, this is entirely a personal perspective.

Thank you for taking time to visit my guide, and if you like it, please vote.
Retro.Cat