14 DAY TRIAL // As the competition on the personal navigation devices' market becomes increasingly harsher, the big names in the industry try to come up with various technological features and gimmicks that will make their products more attractive to the general public. And that's exactly the case with Garmin's latest offering, the nuvi 260, a portable GPS navigation system that provides a very special voice navigation feature: it speaks the name of the streets, rather than simply telling the driver that he/she has to take a left of right.
The nuvi 260 is based on the platform of the previous 250 model and provides most of the features common to the whole nuvi 200 series. Thus, beside turn-by-turn voice guidance and real-time route calculation and re-calculation, the PND also comes packed with maps for the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico, with approximately six million points of interest (like hotels, restaurants, ATMs, gas stations and more).
Moreover, the device also includes a built-in picture viewer, calculator, currency converter, unit converter and world clock and also provides an enhanced level of security, as it sports the company's Garmin Lock feature, a theft prevention system that disables the unit from performing any functions until the user types in a specific 4-digit PIN or takes the unit to a predetermined secure location. The nuvi 260 also offers users a very simple and intuitive control system, composed out of the 3.5-inch touchscreen LCD display and a single button (an on/off slider bar, which may be locked to avoid being turned on or off accidentally).
"Many potential PND customers want an entry-level Garmin PND, and many realize the convenience and utility of a device that speaks an upcoming street name. The nuvi 260 is for them," said Dan Bartel, Garmin's vice president of worldwide sales. "The nuvi 200-series has established itself as the gold standard for simple yet solid navigation, and the nuvi 260 only reinforces that."
The company also announced that the nuvi 260 is expected to be available in August 2007 for around 500 US dollars. Nevertheless, this is quite a huge price-tag, not at all "entry-level" as the company boasts and it's quite questionable whether users will actually pay this huge sum, considering the fact that the same amount can be used for purchasing mid-range or even high-end products manufactured by several of Garmin's competitors.
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