I know the question you’re all asking.  “Zarch, you live 1.3 miles from your job.  You live in Utah, where all the streets are laid out as a numbered grid.  You have two other means of GPS navigation.  WTH?”  To that, I answer, I am a gadget admirer, and I constantly seek the gadget that performs its function perfectly.  Enter the Nuvi 360.

Let me begin by saying that the official branding from Garmin is nüvi®, but that’s a pain to type, and it’s stupider than the Wii as far as brand names go (I know.  I’m used to Wii, but it’s still pretty dumb, when you think about it).  Hereafter I shall refer to the device as the Nuvi 360 like everyone else on the interwebs (except Garmin). 

I have and love a Garmin Venture Cx, so when I was researching a dedicated GPS for my car, that gave Garmin some weight.  I’ve also used TomTom’s software on some of my various handhelds, and found it to be quite good as well.  That led me to choose between the TomTom One and the Nuvi, either the 350 or the 360.  What swayed me in the end were a couple of nice features present on the Garmin:

• it becomes a very good speaker phone when paired with my T-mobile Dash.  This is a surprisingly well-executed feature.  Works perfectly, even in my sort of noisy little car.
• it reads out the street names with text-to-speech recognition.  There’s a big advantage to hearing “turn right on West Temple” rather than hearing “right turn ahead”.
• it can play books from my Audible.com account; I’ve got about 11 other devices that can do that, too, but it’s nice to have the option
• battery life: I’ve read reviews of the TomTom One which really hate its low battery life.  I’m not using this outside my car much, but I can see a situation where having 8 hours or so of navigation would be helpful
• it charges through a normal USB mini plug.  So does everything else I own, so this means I have a pile of cables around that will work.

So, aside from features, how does the thing perform?  Well, if you want to skip the details, it pretty much rocks.  My father-in-law was very proud of the navigation in his new car, so I haven’t shown him this so he doesn’t get disappointed in what he has now (it’s like a kid playing Atari, and loving it - you don’t want to go to him with a PSP and say “well, you could be playing this. . .”).  Now, as long as I’m getting carried away with bullets, here’s what I really like:

• It gets a fix VERY quickly.  Almost no wait, especially if I’m in the same spot where it last had a fix.
• The included car mount is quite good.  Stays up with no problem, with only one exception; if the temperature has changed quite a bit, it’s best to re-stick it.  Air pressure and whatnot.
• Routing is excellent, and it reroutes without nagging.  If I take a different turn, some GPS systems will be pretty demanding that you get back on their route.  With this one, it seems to get the idea that I may want to take a different route than the one suggested, and routes accordingly.  Routing is very fast, too - I could rant here about people not providing enough processing for the features they put in their devices.  Garmin  is not one of those; plenty of horsepower for this thing to run quickly.
• The interface is superb.  I was a little worried about that.  TomTom has a very nice interface as well, so I felt I was going out on a limb here.  I can assure you that the layout is intuitive, the menus are intelligent, and the touchscreen is very responsive.  Planning a new route or finding nearby locations is very simple.  Hey, it’s even simple to find a restaurant, then hit the “call” button to call in for reservations through the Bluetooth connection to my phone.
• The maps are very up to date.  There are a few things not there yet; the new route on Highway 52 up Provo Canyon isn’t there yet, but after a moment’s confusion the Nuvi corrects itself.

There are a few other miscellaneous things I might mention.  There’s an add-on you can get to push traffic info to the device.  I don’t need that, really, since I live outside the main Salt Lake metro here, where it might come in handy.  Could be worth looking into if you live someplace where traffic is more of a problem. 

There is an added Bluetooth option to connect to a laptop or phone, but I’ve got a Holux GPSlim 240 for that duty. 

I believe you can also add topo maps or other maps from Garmin to the device, but those are too expensive for my type.

So, final verdict; yeah, I love the thing.  That’s how it made it to my everyday gadget collection and qualifies as a piece of Zarch’s Gear.