Garmin StreetPilot c340 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator

A great tool if you don't know how to get somewhere

Let's start with why I got the C340... I wanted an affordable, updatable, trustworthy unit that I could place in my vehicle to quickly find addresses, and I didn’t want to pay high dealer prices for an in-dash GPS solution. I read all the reviews, and weighed the pros and cons.

To make this a complete review, I think it is necessary to define what I thought was important when I was looking for a GPS. Above all, I wanted a reliable solution; something that had a simple/clean user interface and something accurate. I also wanted something that would be supported or backed by its manufacturer, and a solid product that would stand up to moderate usage. Based on my research, all signs pointed to the Garmin C3XX series. But that wasn’t enough for me. I also wanted word of mouth. My sister is into “geocaching”, and she uses a handheld Garmin for hiking and geocaching. I talked with her and it turns out that lots of people in the geocaching community recommend the Garmin line of products. In addition to this, I talked to my boss’s secretary, who uses the Garmin C330 in her SUV. Pretty much everyone I talked to was happy with the performance and reliability of the Garmin brand.

My experience with the C340 is no different.

The first time I got the Garmin, I decided to test it “out of the box” by taking a road trip from Orlando, FL to Saint Augustine, FL. I put in my ending address and hit Go…several seconds later, the voice started guiding me. The first thing I noticed is the Garmin defaults to using major highways and toll roads. I try to avoid the Interstates in the Orlando area as much as possible, so I decided to go part of the way using my own personal route preference and let the Garmin do the rest. The Garmin didn’t disappoint. After I took my familiar back routes out of the Orlando area, the Garmin guided me perfectly to the destination. The Garmin even “knew” about the tricky one-way streets in St. Augustine and was able to route me directly to my ending address with a minimum of fuss. At one point in my journey, I hit a large backup of traffic due to road construction. All I did was hit the “detour” button on the Garmin, and it recalculated a route away from the traffic, then guided me right back to my original route once I was past the traffic block.

I was very satisfied with my trip to Saint Augustine, but not so happy with the drive back. We decided to let the Garmin guide us to the interstates to get us home, and everything was going fine until I got on I-95S. The Garmin completely locked up. I pulled off at the nearest exit, and reset it using the procedures I learned from the Garmin user forums (it is not published in the manual), and the Garmin was back. So I got back on I-95S and once again, the Garmin locked up. My wife tried all sorts of things…turning off WAAS, zooming out, etc. But the machine just kept locking up. When I got back home, I immediately called Garmin. They were very pleasant and helpful, and they got me on the line with one of the tech guys. The first thing we checked was the firmware. It turns out that the Garmin unit I had shipped with a very, very old firmware. A quick download of the Garmin Web Updater and the C340 was flashed to the latest version. I have not had a single problem with lock-ups since. I took several other “day trips” with the Garmin after that, and it was much improved in a number of ways after the firmware update.

I now use the Garmin to get to appointments, to find out of the way restaurants, to get to relatives, etc. It is very trustworthy and reliable. I have had no issues with screen glare, probably because I have darkly (legally) tinted windows all around.

But what about the other features? I tried several times to see if the Garmin could guide me to a restaurant, and every time was a failure. The first time, a coworker told me about a bakery downtown, so I punched in the address and away I went. Problem is, the Garmin directed me to a residential neighborhood to someone’s house! The next failure happened when I was on a business trip in Melbourne, FL. I wanted to eat seafood, so I pulled up the list of seafood restaurants…I found the closest one and hit Go…when I reached the address, the restaurant had long since closed. So I picked the next address. That restaurant didn’t exist either! I ended up going to another place I saw on the way that wasn’t in the list. Bottom line – their restaurant database is very outdated. The third experience was similar – but I was looking for a McDonalds in the Clermont, FL area. It found one, some 14 miles away. As I started toward the McDonalds, I drove right past another McDonalds which was closer…and it wasn’t on the list! It was an older McDonalds too, not a new one that just sprang up. So the restaurant feature is not to be trusted too much.

Other nitpicks – if you decide you don’t want to follow the Garmin’s advice, then the voice prompts can get annoying because it will try for a short period of time to get you to do a U-turn, or it will keep saying “recalculating” over and over.

Bottom line…I find the Garmin C340 very useful. I have had no issues with screen glare, lockups or “late” vocal instructions since I used the Web Updater to update the firmware. I did have some of these problems with earlier firmware, so any reviews you read with these problems may chalk up to a firmware versioning problem. I also recently updated the base maps which added in some missing new roads in my area. I give the Garmin a 95%, because it is very accurate with finding addresses, especially in densely populated and tricky areas.

A couple of points to remember:

1. always have a general idea of where you are going
2. the Garmin usually knows how to get you somewhere faster than you think you can go without it. Every time I second guess the Garmin, I end up getting there later than I would have if I had followed the Garmin’s advice.
3. Read up on undocumented features.
4. It isn’t written down anywhere that I know of, but if you don’t know an exact street number, simple enter 000 for the street number and the Garmin will take you to the street.
5. get a CF card reader, because the USB interface is slow when updating maps
6. Garmin makes a travel case for the C340 which is a must-have if you are always taking the Garmin out of the car or transferring to other cars.

Hopefully I have helped someone with their decision to either buy or forego the Garmin. My friend recently asked me which GPS I recommended, and I recommended the Garmin hands down. He got the C330, and could not be happier with it. He even talked his parents into getting the C330 for their car. I do feel that the C340 is worth the extra bucks to get the spoken street names.