Garmin – Setting Trends

The research and development department at Garmin have been working overtime to now bring you contextual guidance for your journey. Units from the premium nuvi range are able to tell you to turn ‘just after that orange building’, or ‘go right by the pub’, ever increasing your familiarity with new and un-chartered territories.

Alongside real directions, Garmin have also launched Digital Traffic – a fully up to date service for the motorist that can’t filter through traffic.

These further updates in sat nav technology are combating the rise of smart phone guidance systems. An influx of waterproof cases, smart phone adapted areas in luggage and special bolt on attachments sees this market rapidly expanding. Indeed new waterproof smart phones are an additional development that will factor heavily on how versatile a smart phone can be for your journey in adverse conditions.

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For the time being though I will be sticking with what I have. The 350LM is a brilliant piece of kit. The premium 660L is the daddy in Garmins bike field but I found it a little oversized for a sportsbike cockpit. The 220 is smaller, and far better suited to the internals of a 675R or R6 but for me the 350LM is just perfect. It’s 4.3” glove friendly screen is a good size making the lane guidance and all instruction obvious enough to be acted on but not too in your face and distracting at in low light. Additional free lifetime maps are a godsend and you can even run a bike maintenance feature. You can get voice activation via Bluetooth but I have never really wanted to use that, well that is until now.

So with contextual guidance in the pipeline the first place I would want to try it is the IOM, (coincidently enough). But will it tell you that you are now on the ‘hairpin heading for the gooseneck?’  I have no idea, but it would be so cool if it did.

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