Products Review

Garmin Streetpilot C330 GPS Review

One of the favorite GPS manufacturers, Garmin, brings a new compact Street Pilot model to the portable automotive market. With Garmin’s Street Pilot systems users can typically expect a lot of features from this gadget.

Preloaded maps are one of the biggest selling points of the Garmin Street Pilot c330. If you want to save a little cash and load maps yourself, you might want to consider the StreetPilot c320 instead. To load maps you use the included MapSource City Select disc to load the 128 Mb SD card. But Text to speech is not included on the c330, while there are verbal directions the c330 will not speak the street name to you. If that functionality is important, consider the Garmin StreetPilot c340 instead.

The Garmin c 330 features a 3.5-inch (diagonal), 320–by-240 (16-bit) touch screen and a map-laden hard drive. The highly reflective screen was difficult to view in bright sunlight, but looked fine on overcast days and at night, when it automatically changes to a night color scheme.

Garmin Street Pilot c330 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
• Battery life: up to 8 hours
• 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 custom POIs, including alerts for speed zones and safety cams
• SD memory card expansion slot