"Turn Right on Pine Street, Arriving at Nordstrom on the Right"

Garmin StreetPilot C340 GPS Receiver

I decided to make the purchase of the Garmin StreetPilot C340 GPS Receiver after I was awarded the contract to photograph every establishment of this corporation’s properties within a 5-state region. This meant arriving at various airports and picking up a rental car to get around to each property. With these establishments scattered about, I needed a way of getting to the photo shoots efficiently without the frustration not evening knowing where to begin to find my way around and getting lost. The beauty of having this Garmin device with even just a road map, at least you know where you are relative in an unfamiliar city. I understand that some car rental companies will now offer the Garmin or similar device for rent with the vehicle. The advantage of bringing your own device again is familiarity with the operation.

I did some research comparing several manufacturer’s GPS devices and have found the Garmin devices as the cleanest and simplest devices in that with the touch screen feature, the menus were intuitive leaving the devices outer case devoid of unnecessary buttons and knobs. Looking at the Garmin home site, you will find several model lines and model series amongst their portable road devices as well as navigation devices for watercraft. Among the road devices Garmin offers the Nuvi series, 300 series and 500 series GPS devices. If you compare using their product comparison chart you can see for yourself each unit’s features and determine for yourself whether or not that feature is important to have and the cost difference is worth while. Some of the lines are specific for Europe and the Rest of the World (ROW). My wife is from Canada and is not too familiar with the area in which we live past a certain comfort circle however this will quickly change following our first full weekend of “road trials” with our new StreetPilot C340.

The C340 Features:
• Receiver: WAAS-enabled 12 parallel channel GPS
• Display: 2.8” W x 2.1” H (3.5” diag.), 320 x 240 pixels; QVGA transflective TFT with 16-bit color; 64K colors; bright white LED backlight and touch screen
• Unit dimensions: 4.4” W x 3.2” H x 2.8” D
• Weight: 9.45 ounces
• Internal Lithium Battery: 8 hours of use without being plugged into the lighter
• Supports FM TMC traffic alerting
• Voice announces streets by the actual street/road name versus turn in 100 feet
• Preloaded maps for all of North America or Europe
• Fingertip touch-screen interface
• Look up addresses and points of interest
• Choose 2D or 3D map perspective
• Upload additional custom Points of Interest (POI’s), including alerts for speed zones and safety cameras
• SD memory card expansion slot (Secure Digital Card Not Included)
• Dual internal speaker system for voice guidance and alerts

What you get in the box with your C340
• Preloaded City Navigator® NT North America or Europe (full coverage)
• Vehicle suction cup mounting bracket with 12-volt lighter adapter
• Dashboard self-adhesive mounting disk
• USB interface cable and CD with necessary drivers
• Quick-reference guide

I ordered the Garmin device from 4x4 Books/GPS Now in Nebraska where there was a significant savings over several of the larger electronics internet sites. I placed the order before 2 p.m. C.D.T. and received the box in two days via Priority Mail.

The C340 out of the box had some battery charge in it but after loading the USB driver onto my laptop computer, the C340 can then be plugged into the computer with the accompanying USB cable and the internal lithium battery charged or topped off. It took about 3 hours to fully charge the battery initially. Future map and other informational updates can be downloaded and uploaded onto the C340 as they are issued by Garmin and outside vendors.

Initializing the device for the first time in front of the house and saving as “home” sets the device to direct you back when later selected. A “Recent Destinations” menu page recalls a list of the latest destinations where you can then select and save them into your “Favorite Destinations” menu.

Destinations are entered into the C340 using an alpha-numeric touch keyboard either by entering full address information or typing in the name of a business entity. If not using one of the broader category of destinations.

I drove to my sister and brother-in-law’s with the C340 stuck to the windshield to see how it routes me to their address destination to which I have driven enough times to have a very direct route to. I followed the directions as prompted by “Emily” the British English guide voice knowing that it was further than my regular known route and aside from going in a bit more circuitous route got us to their house at the determined time.
On the return drive home, I purposely ignored Emily’s prompts, driving my normal route home only to hear a barrage of “Re-Calculating” at every missed turn. It’s too bad that the C340 doesn’t have the ability to “learn” routes from familiar trips. Other trips to the shopping mall were very similar in that if you know the area and know how to get to a destination, following the direction prompts can be a bit irritating with that knowledge as the routing can be again circuitous. The C340 had no difficulty in the area with the preloaded maps and can be relied on completely by anyone not familiar driving around the region. The only area where there was a slight “glitch” was going through a few of the tunnels over this area’s highways which caused a momentary loss in satellite signal but was immediately picked up when through them.

The screen size (3.5” diagonal), I found is large enough to be read from if needed while underway and not too distracting when the C340 is hanging on the windshield. While the map is displayed the next direction is displayed across the map while two window tabs at the lower corner displays arrival time and count down distance to the next change in direction. When either one of these tab displays is touched, takes you to an additional information screen. The time of arrival screen tab takes you to a dashboard screen with multiple displays for trip distance, trip time, accumulated time, time stopped, and maximum speed. The distance countdown tab will take you to a screen that has the series of the next few changes or maneuver directions listed.

Under “Destination” you can type in Chevron and the screen will display every Chevron gas station around your current location with the relative distance away. Simply select which station’s line and hit “GO” and the directions to that station will be calculated and directions set to that location.

The beauty of the C340 is the ability of this device to speak the street or road name in the direction instead of the “left turn in 500 ft.” an important feature in my opinion for greater familiarity of a new area for the first time. The other Garmin model that offered this feature is the C550 which was $250 more, offering more features such as blue tooth communications ability as well as the ability to play MP3 music. These features were not important enough to have to have. The C340 is capable of receiving traffic reports and notices of heavy congestion from a separately available cable and antenna with paid subscription where the C340 will process this data and be capable of forewarning you of these issues as they occur in real time.
The various language prompts which come pre-loaded are fun to scroll through and use just to learn what “Turn Right at Pine Street” sounds like in Italiano.

All in all the Garmin C340 is a very capable GPS device that is very intuitive in its use and is so user friendly that Garmin decided not to print up and include a hard copy of the instruction booklet but instead offer it as a downloadable .pdf.file.
With my latest purchase I’ll approach every new city that I arrive with a new confidence of being able to get to where I need to go and trust the C340 to guide me there saving me in time, gas and frustration of not knowing the local road systems.