Garmin Introduces Sleek New Widescreen nuvi Navigators

June 15 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Garmin International Inc., a unit of Garmin Ltd., today announced the nuvi 200W and the nuvi 250W -- two new widescreen GPS navigators that are sleek looking, simple-to-use, and affordable.

"Many customers want a larger display on their personal navigation device, and the nuvi 200W series delivers," said Dan Bartel, Garmin's vice president of worldwide sales. "The nuvi sets the industry standard for elegant design and a simplified user interface, and these newest units represent the pinnacle in widescreen entry-level PNDs."

The nuvi 200W series boasts a bright, sunlight readable 4.3-inch color touchscreen display (480x272 pixels). Like other models in the 200 series, the nuvi's new design incorporates a high-sensitivity internal GPS antenna that makes it thinner and even easier to mount in a car. At startup, users are presented with Garmin's intuitive "Where to?" and "View map" welcome screen, allowing for quick searches of addresses or nearly six million points of interest like restaurants, hotels, attractions, gas stations, and more. Turn-by-turn, voice-prompted directions guide the driver to their destination. The nuvi automatically recalculates a route and gets them back on track if they miss a turn along the way.

The nuvi 200W and nuvi 250W also feature extras like a built-in picture viewer, calculator, currency converter, unit converter and world clock. Owners can also purchase invaluable Travel Guide and SaversGuide databases to make their time on the road even more enjoyable and economical. For additional security, Garmin has included Garmin Lock, an innovative patent pending theft prevention system that disables the unit from performing any functions until the user types in a specific 4-digit PIN or takes the unit to a predetermined secure location.

Garmin has also added the ability for customers to augment the preloaded maps with custom points of interest (POI's) from third parties such as school zones and safety cameras. The European versions of the nuvi 200-series come preloaded with speed camera information.

The nuvi 200W and nuvi 250W are expected to be available in July 2007 at an MSRP of $499.99 and $549.99, respectively. The nuvi 200W includes preloaded detailed mapping of the contiguous United States (lower 48), Hawaii and Puerto Rico. The nuvi 250W has preloaded detailed mapping of the entire United States (including Alaska and Hawaii), Canada and Puerto Rico.

Garmin will also offer nuvi 200-series products with regional specific coverage for Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and Brazil. The regional coverage for Europe includes UK/Ireland, Nordics, Belgium/Netherlands/Luxembourg, France, Italy/Greece, Spain/Portugal, and Germany/Switzerland/Austria/Czech Republic.

Both versions include a vehicle suction cup mount, vehicle power cable, dashboard disk, and quick start manual. For more information, visit www.garmin.com.

SOURCE Garmin International, Inc.