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Garmin nüvi 650 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator | 
 enlarge | Brand: Garmin
Category: CE
List Price: $749.99
Buy Refurbished: $155.00
You Save: $594.99 (79%)
New (9) from $218.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  387 reviews
Platform: Not Machine Specific
Media: Electronics
Memorabilia: No
Batteries Included: Yes
Native Resolution: 480 x 272
Display Size: 4.3
Includes MP3 Player: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 4
Dimensions (in): 4.9 x 0.9 x 2.9
Legal Disclaimer: Warranty does not cover misuse of product.
MPN: Nuvi 650
Model: Nuvi 650
UPC: 753759070755
EAN: 0753759070755
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | Personal Travel Assistant comes preloaded with maps for U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico | | • | Super-bright, 4.3-inch widescreen display for improved viewing, day or night | | • | Includes automatic routing, 3D/2D map viewing, and turn-by-turn voice directions | | • | Built-in travel and entertainment tools include digital music player, JPEG viewer, currency converter, and more | | • | Measures 4.9 x 2.9 x 0.9 inches (WxHxD) and weighs 6.2 ounces |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com Product Description
With a gorgeous widescreen display, the Garmin nüvi 650 GPS Personal Travel Assistant is your answer to the call of adventure. A sleek navigator and a keen travel assistant, the nüvi 650 is preloaded with highly detailed City Navigator NT road maps for the entire United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. This map database features nearly six million points of interest (POIs), including hotels, restaurants, gas stations, ATMs, and attractions, and the data is provided by NAVTEQ, a world leader in premium-quality mapping. Step up to the nüvi 660 if you want to take advantage of Bluetooth connectivity, an integrated traffic receiver, and an FM transmitter. 
The nüvi 650 features a colorful widescreen and is preloaded with highly detailed City Navigator NT road maps. | 
The device includes many entertainment and travel tools. | 
A 4.3-inch display with a touch screen interface makes it easy to select destinations, play MP3s, and more. | This preloaded navigator brings all this fantastic map data to your fingertips with a super-bright, 4.3-inch widescreen display for improved map viewing, day or night. Use the touch screen interface to select destinations, look up POIs, and play your favorite MP3s and audio books. The device comes ready to go with automatic routing, 3D or 2D map perspective viewing, and turn-by-turn voice directions that speak street names. It also supports configurable vehicle icons. These fun, customized car-shaped icons come in a variety of colors to add a personal touch to your vehicle's position on the map. With this GPS system on board you'll be prepared to steer clear of traffic with an optional FM TMC traffic receiver. If you choose this add-on feature, The nüvi 650 will receive alerts about traffic tie-ups and road construction that might lie ahead on your route. The nüvi 650 includes many "must-have" entertainment and travel tools, including digital music and audio book playback, a JPEG picture viewer, currency converters, and more. All these great features make the nüvi 650 a complete Personal Travel Assistant. Note: Optional software for language translation, detailed travel guides, and savings programs allow you to customize your nüvi to fit your travel needs.
What's in the Box
nüvi 650 GPS navigation system, preloaded City Navigator North America NT data, vehicle suction cup mount, vehicle power cable, dashboard disk, USB cable, and quick reference guide.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 382 more reviews...
 Nuvi 650 stripped down from the 660 packaging July 28, 2007
841 out of 861 found this review helpful
I have have a been a long time Garmin GPS customer including three generations of the Streetpilot. I am very pleased with the Nuvi 650 echoing some of the praises you've read here in the reviews.
However for those of who are on the fence about getting the 650 versus the 660 for the extra Bluetooth, FM transmitter and traffic receiver, I want to offer you some more reasons to consider the 660. The Nuvi 650 does not include the leather carrying case, AC adapter and printed manual which comes standard with the 660 packaging ($50 value).
As a an old time Garmin user, I am used to having these items come with my GPS. In addition, the Nuvis do not include CD/DVD map software nor the friction mount (must buy separately esp. for California and Minnesota). Considering how easy it is now for users to access the memory space of the Nuvi from their computers, it's much easier to corrupt the system unintentially. Thats when you'll need the original map software to recover.
Don't get me wrong, I do like the Nuvi 650 over my Streetpilot 2720 for it's size, improve user interface and the SirF Star III receiver for much more reliable GPS reception. But I can only give this product 4 stars because of the lack of accessories that I find essential for my usage and yet comes standard for the Nuvi 660, 670 and 680.
 How can anyone possibly be happy with this??? October 18, 2007
142 out of 164 found this review helpful
First of all I'd like to start this review by saying that I got this as a replacement for my TomTom One XL. I was very happy with my TomTom, the reason I needed the Nuvi was for the Mount with integrated cables and the mount design itself. This is the only system that worked in my car in the space I wanted it in. Yes, Garmin has by far the best and the most convenient mount. You don't have to dislodge the suction cup, but rather just snap the unit off and the suction cup stays in place. This was extremely important in my application. Also it has a very long battery life compared to TomTom XL. Now to the review of the device itself. How silly is it that you can not input a zip code? Garmin can't do that. It is hard to believe but every time you input an address where you want to go you have to go through the whole find city/state routine instead of just putting in a zip code. The second disadvantage is the Keyboard layout. It is alphabetic. And you have no option to change that. An alphabetic keyboard is extremely slow. TomTom has a choice between three different keyboard layouts including QWERTY like on the computer. in the NUVI When you search for address you have to go through the whole city state routine every time instead of just having an option of searching for an address in the city you are in currently. It is extremely slow to input address as well. What would take a few seconds in TomTom takes a minute or two in Garmin. The interface is very narrow minded, no customization and very few options. There is no way to plan a trip beforehand and have multiple stops. There is no way to avoid certain roads. There is no way to use certain roads. The nuvi is just point A to Point B or point A to Point B with Point C in the Middle. That's It!? TomTom has an itinerary planning option that allows you to plan the whole trip with multiple stops. Or even numerous trips. Where TomTom comes with software to update your device and to load different, map colors, voices..., Garmin gives you just one map color. TomTom gives you so much more. it is just a much more fully featured device. The Nuvi is just so basic and slow. Now on to the worst part. Accuracy is very poor sometimes. It constantly confuses service roads and highways, direction of travel and current location. In NYC it is a disaster. The routes it chooses are also idiotic. TomTom does not nearly make so many mistakes. Another really annoying thing is the road input. You have to know exactly how it is spelled in the NUVI. I had to go once to 125 Route 59 East. Half hour after getting behind the wheel and I was still in the garage. The only way I found it is through the POI search. It turns out that you had to spell it Hwy 59 West. And that's the only way Garmin knew the road. I tried RT 59, Route 59, Just 59, Highway 59, RT 59 E, Route 59 East and many many more combinations and it still didn't see it. Combined with inability to input the Zip Code, I couldn't even find it by browsing the map. In TomTom it took less then two seconds. I just inputted 59 and immediately there were options on the screen while I was still typing. The options were Rt 59 East, Rt 59 West. So easy! This is how it should be. Garmin didn't even have east, only had west. One thing I will fault TomTom on is POIs. Let's say you are looking for Costco in your vicinity. TomTom shows the name and that's it No address. If there are numerous locations, the only way to know which location you are gong to is actually go there. Now there is an update that fixes that but TomTom still does not give you phone numbers for POIs. Garmin is much better in the way POI's are organized also. ie. Restaurants are organized by cuisine; Italian, French, German etc. In the end the Negatives greatly outweigh the positives in the Nuvi. So it is back to TomTom for me. I will have to fabricate something to get it mounted in the spot I want but I can not live with the NUVI!
Nice GPS, just a little overpriced September 8, 2007
139 out of 145 found this review helpful
We purchased this unit, our second Garmin Nuvi for moving to Texas on about 4/1/07. We have a 350 and now this 650. I'm not sure of the maps version we got and it has the matte screen. Overall, we're very satisfied but it's not perfect. We had to send the first sample we purchased back due to a dead pixel and a faulty touch screen. Ironically we had to send our first Nuvi back also. The second model arrived flawless. Since then we've made the following observations.
Pros
- Talks to you with the street names, saving having to look at the screen as often. How much is your safety worth?
- Attractive form factor, small enough but yet large enough
- Good battery life
- Saves gas and time, and reduces getting lost, even around your own town.
- Display, nice wide form factor. we are pleased with the daylight and nightime performance.
- Startup time seems MUCH faster than the 350.
Cons:
- Seems pricy for what you get
- Dozens of roads in the internal map software were not accurate causing much confusion when driving. This is a software map issue, not a hardware issue. Maps were not accurate.
 Outdated technology in a pretty package. June 9, 2007
124 out of 135 found this review helpful
Let me preface this by saying I'm not new to GPS, and have used an old reliable Garmin GPS-V on long road trips for several years with excellent results. Being "early" technology from Garmin, my good 'ol GPS-V suffered from some drawbacks such as slow RS-232 data transfer (no USB), small monochrome display, limited and non-expandable internal map memory (only 19 MB), and a tedious method of data entry. All that notwithstanding, it was reliable and efficient as a rock and worked great, and had many excellent and useful "extra" features. My favorite of it's many features was the efficient way it made use of routes and waypoints. Not only can it download and store many routes and many waypoints within each route from your PC, but it will constantly show me in real time the distance, time, and ETA to the next way point and/or the next turn, in addition to the distance, time, and ETA to final destination. The old GPS-V also had a ton of the usual features such as current elevation with graphics and elevation gains, trip info (distance, stopped time, cumulative mileage, current speed, average speed, etc. etc., ad infinitum.
Fast forward to last week when my wife gave me a spanking new Nuvi 650 for Father's Day. Wow, what a display difference. Eye candy heaven! I loved the touch screen "buttons", the relatively large (compared to my old GPS-V) brilliant and sharp color display, the clever easy-release ball mount, and the huge POI database. I tried it out around town and it worked wonderfully. I figured that five years of rapid technical advancement in the GPS field would be mine with my new Nuvi 650. Well, guess what. A lot of my enthusiasm for my new toy came to a screeching halt when I decided to plug in a route with a bunch of waypoints for an upcoming 800 mile road trip, and realized I could only have ONE (count 'em, one!) "via" point (waypoint) between the start and end of the entire trip. Are you kidding me? That is a HUGE step backwards in GPS technology, and makes no sense at all to me unless the idea was to just quickly sell a pretty but grossly dumbed-down, idiot-proof device that was best suited to finding grandma's house across town. Considering the price of this thing, this is in my opinion totally unsatisfactory. It means on an 800 mile trip via long cross country highways like interstate 40 it will tell you the "next" turn is maybe 6 hours from now. Gimme a break. With my old GPS-V I could plug in dozens of small towns or spots I might want to see along the way, and it would keep a running display of not only how far and how long to the end of my trip but how far and how long to each of the waypoints along the way, thus breaking up (at least psychologically) a long and boring drive into something more interesting and palatable. Heck, this thing won't even store routes, period! The route you are on when you punch "GO" is the only route you get. Want another route? Want to repeat a trip, or do an "inverse" trip using the same path on return? With the GPS-V just scroll down the list of your previously downloaded routes and pick one, and you're off and running. With the Nuvi, you need to create another brand new route every time, and you are allowed only a single waypoint in that route.
It is absolutely stunning to me that Garmin chose to actually build LESS technology and usefulness into this new Nuvi GPS than my 5 or 6 year old GPS-V has. What kind of technology advancement is THAT? They appear to have decided to build and sell these based on simplicity and flashiness, and on that they have succeeded, because it is super simple to use, the display is certainly very flashy and pretty, and data entry can be done by a third grader. But sadly, when you look behind all of this glitter, this is a deliberately crippled version of Garmin's own 5-year old GPS technology. What a waste. The Nuvi 650 is a '96 Ford sedan with a flashy metalflake paint job and loud pipes. In other words, it's all show and no go.
My new Nuvi 650 is not totally useless, because I'll use if for around town and short trips, where I pretty much don't care about waypoints or elevation anyway. But beyond that it IS almost useless, and on my long road trips I'll continue to squint at the postage stamp display on my old GPS-V. Heck, for $600 the Nuvi doesn't even tell you elevations. Shame on you, Garmin. You got me this time, but I'll be more careful next time I buy. For serious road trip use, the Nuvi 650 doesn't cut it. As far as I'm concerned Garmin can continue to sell Nuvi's to the Ipod market, or to the folks who spend all day watching Paris Hilton footage on CNN and whose technological capabilities don't extend past using the TV remote. For serious long distance road use, it's a no go for me.
I gave it three stars instead of two only because of the super-nice display and very slick touch-screen operation.
 Great GPS! Now shipping with 2008 maps January 5, 2008
119 out of 119 found this review helpful
Before the Nuvi, the only GPS I'd ever used was a Garmin hiking GPS, which I purchased in 2004. It wasn't extremely easy to use, and installing maps on it was awkward. So for the longest time, I didn't bother looking at automotive GPS units, especially Garmins.
My parents recently got a Nuvi 650. They're in their 60s and not extremely technologically savvy. Yet they were able to use it right out of the box, spending minimal time reading the (very short, well-written) "getting started" guide that comes in the package. They are retired and spend every winter RVing around the country, so the Nuvi is an extremely useful device for them.
My wife and I got to see their Nuvi 650. We were impressed with how well designed the interface is. It's very intuitive. The screen is big and bright and easy to read in any light. We and my parents experimented with the auto-nav features and found it did a great job navigating us through complicated routes.
I got the bug to buy an automotive GPS and did my research. A recent Consumer Reports issue (Dec 2007, I think, also available online) has a great review of automotive GPS units. Four of their top 5 are Nuvis (the other is a TomTom).
I ruled out the TomTom because the suction mount it comes with isn't as good as the Nuvi's mount.
I considered the Nuvi 660 (which adds bluetooth and a traffic receiver, but is a lot more expensive). The traffic info requires an extra cost subscription (after a free trial period). The bluetooth wasn't attractive to me for these reasons: 1) I will only use my GPS for road trips and occasional visits to an unfamiliar part of the city I live in, yet I use my cell phone all the time. 2) My car stereo already has built-in bluetooth features and, after trying them out, I ended up not using them.
I ruled out the cheaper Nuvis for two reasons. Some of them have smaller screens: 3.5", whereas the 6xx series has a 4.3" screen. Second, on some cheaper units, the voice directions do not include street names ("turn left in 500 feet"), whereas on the Nuvi 6xx series, the voice directions tell you what street to turn on, as well as how many feet or miles or whatever.
So I settled on the Nuvi 650.
Before making the purchase, though, I was concerned that this particular model was introduced 3 years ago - a long time for a technological gadget. More importantly, I worried that the maps on it would be from 2004. I emailed Garmin customer support, they replied in 24 hours and said that Nuvi 650s are now shipping with the latest maps - the 2008 City Navigator North America NT mappping software. If, by chance, I happen to get a unit that doesn't have the latest maps, when I register my unit online I will be able to order a free update to the latest maps.
Based on this, I ordered a Nuvi 650. Sure enough, it came with the 2008 maps.
Despite that this model was introduced 3 years ago, my wife and I find it very well-designed and it meets our needs very well. As others here have noted, the auto nav is not always 100% accurate - but that's true with any automotive GPS. You always must travel with a good atlas, and of course, your cell phone.
The Nuvi series is great: there are lots of different ones with different features, something for just about everybody. Some reviews of the 650 complain about this or that feature missing -- fine, then look at the Nuvi line -- there's probably a Nuvi with the feature you want.
Nuvis are easy enough to use right out of the box, for people who don't like reading manuals. But for those that do, it's worthwhile to spend 20-30 minutes reading the manual and tinkering with it.
If you plug it into your computer using the included USB cable, it shows up as a drive in Windows explorer. You can drag and drop your favorite photos onto the photo folder of this "drive", and then view them on the Nuvi as a slide show. You can pick one of them to be your splash screen, which you see when you first power up the unit or plug it into your computer. You can drag and drop your favorite MP3 files to the Nuvi, and play them on the Nuvi's internal MP3 player. The Nuvi has an audio output jack (which takes a standard earphone sized plug), so you can play the Nuvi's sound through your car stereo if it has an auxiliary input jack.
You can change the auto icon that represents your vehicle on the map; there are quite a few to choose from on the garmin website. You can change the voice that gives you directions; the English speaking voices include an American female (the default) or male, a British female or male, and an Australian female or male. My wife likes the British male voice the best. If you're multilingual or traveling abroad, you can switch to one of many foreign language voices.
Since the Nuvi 650 is not the latest and greatest, shop around and you should be able to get a great deal. We got a fantastic deal from c o s t c o d o t c o m. (Trying to avoid the censor.)
One last tip: The Consumer Reports article I mentioned said that thieves love to break windows and grab GPS units (and iPods, etc). The article said that you should not only take the unit with you when you park somewhere, but also remove the windshield mount - some thieves will see it and assume you left your GPS in the glove compartment, and break your window to find out.
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