Car And GPS (1858)

Garmin nuvi 500 series launches

Rugged all-rounder

22 July 2008 13:24 GMT / By Amy-Mae Elliott

Garmin has announced its first multi-use nüvi portable navigation device dedicated to walking, cycling, scootering, driving and boating in one rugged "easy-to-use" unit.

The nüvi 500 series comes equipped with the latest tech from Garmin including Navteq mapping data and the ability to accept different types of mapping including TOPO for outdoor navigation and Blue Chart cartography for marine usage.

The new waterproof nüvi 500 series offers a 3.5-inch touchscreen, gets Garmin's "Hotfix", millions of points of interest and "traffic avoidance compatibility".

The nüvi 500 series comes as standard with Garmin's "Where am I?" safety feature that, with a single tap of the car icon, drivers can display their exact latitude and longitude coordinates, the nearest address and intersection, and the closest hospitals, police stations, fuel stations and recovery service telephone number.

In addition, with Garmin Connect Photos, users can choose from millions of geo-located images provided by Google's Panoramio to photo-navigate on land or water.

With one touch, the nüvi 500 transitions between walking, biking, driving or boating mode with a compass page, track log, Wherigo and Geocaching player and Bluetooth.

The nüvi 500 and 550 for Europe come preloaded with either country-specific City Navigator NT Map Data (500) or full European City Navigator NT Map Data (550) with detailed street and topographic mapping. The nüvi 550 will be available in the UK in September at a RRP of £299.