NEWS: New Garmin nüvi 3500 Series Test

We're just about to do a long term test of the brand new, as yet unreleased Garmin flagship model – the nüvi® 3500 series of personal navigation devices (PNDs), pictured above. You can see more images of the new nav on our Facebook page and we will be taking it on a 1,000 mile road trip to the French Alps soon too, which should see what it's capable of. That report will be in a forthcoming issue of Road Magazine.

The range-topping £280-£310 model is the company’s first GPS navigators combining the ultra-thin design with a large, 5-inch capacitive glass display. The new model features the Guidance 3 navigation engine, 3D Traffic and is made Live Ready through compatibility with Garmin’s newest Android™ application, Smartphone Link.
"The nüvi 3500 series is the most full-featured, top tier navigators," said Clive Taylor, Director Automotive Product Marketing "This series offers it all, from the thin and stylish form factor and large display to the most premium capabilities like 3D Traffic and access to Live Services via Garmin’s Smartphone Link app. What’s more, all of these features are included with the purchase of the device, so customers with Android phones and a corresponding data plan don’t have to worry about any additional costs, fees or subscriptions."
Powered by Guidance 3: As the flagship nüvi series in the Premium range, these PNDs feature the Guidance 3 navigation engine, which provides a faster, more intuitive user interface to enhance the speed and accuracy of searches and routing. Lane assist with photoRealTM junction view realistically displays road signs and junctions along the route with photographic detail to clearly mark the correct lane to be in for junctions and exits, including 65,000 junction views in Europe (four times more than in previous nüvi models.)

Guidance 3 also includes myTrends™, the ability for the nüvi to automatically remember frequent favourite route destinations and predict the destination without the user needing to activate a route. And there's 3D Traffic for Life: To keep drivers moving instead of sitting in traffic wasting time and fuel, the nuvi 3590LMT offers subscription-free 3D Traffic for the lifetime of their product. Garmin sat nav’s with 3D Traffic technology computes with 80 million detailed traffic sources to confidently plan the best route around future traffic on the journey ahead.

In addition, there's Live Ready with Smartphone Link for the nüvi 3590LMT, an Android app that provides live services to the sat nav, letting nüvi users add live services such as 3D Live Traffic – providing real-time information to help users navigate in and around congestion, traffic camera images, safety camera updates including mobile speed traps crowd sourced by the Speedwatch community of users, weather, parking and fuel prices to their sat nav, utilizing the smartphone's mobile data plan.

The nüvi 3500 series includes the 3540LT with free lifetime traffic updates (Western Europe £279.99) and the Bluetooth® enabled nüvi 3590LMT with free lifetime map updates for the whole of Europe, voice-activated navigation, free lifetime traffic updates, and Smartphone Link support (£309.99).

The new nüvi 3500 series goes on sale to the public in March 2012. For more information about individual models, features and pricing, visit http://www.garmin.com/move and find out more on Twitter at http://twitter.com/garmin. And of course stay tuned to the blog for more testing and reviews.