Garmin's nuvi Hits CES With Blog, New Features

Jan. 3 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Garmin today announced that the nuvi 350, its innovative and acclaimed Personal Travel Assistant, is poised to take center stage at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week.

"Public response to nuvi has been amazing," said Gary Kelley, Garmin's vice president of marketing. "We believe it's because nuvi is a one-of-a- kind, all-in-one device -- a GPS navigator, an MP3 player, an audio book player, a language translator, a travel guide, and much more. Nuvi provides industry leading convergence of capabilities in the PND product category."

Visitors to CES are encouraged to stop by Garmin's newly-designed booth (#35920) to see nuvi and the many other new and innovative offerings from Garmin, long considered the leader in GPS and related technologies.

Garmin is introducing the latest software plug-ins for nuvi at this year's CES, including the Garmin SaversGuide. With data provided by Entertainment Publications, the world's leading provider of value and savings, the Garmin SaversGuide is the first geo-coded "coupon book" that notifies users of merchants near their current location where they are eligible for a discount such as restaurants, hotels, stores, dry cleaners, movie theatres, and auto repair shops. Subscribers will receive over 45,000 discounts from participating businesses in 160 markets across the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. Users can save 20% off dining, shopping, and services (up to $25) and up to 50% off at participating hotels.

"We are excited to work with Garmin to offer the first-ever GPS-enabled version of our exclusive Entertainment merchant database," said Terry Clark, Entertainment's executive vice president. With nuvi, users will not only have access to discounts at tens of thousands of our merchant partners across North America, they'll also be able to navigate directly to their doorsteps."

In addition, Garmin will soon announce a partnership with a leading travel publisher to develop the Garmin U.S. Travel Guide for use with nuvi. This database gives users in-depth travel information -- helpful and thorough reviews and recommendations for restaurants, hotels, shopping, nightlife, sporting events, and tourist attractions. Turn-by-turn directions to a selected location are then just a finger tap away.

Both the Garmin SaversGuide and Garmin U.S. Travel Guide are available separately on SD data cards. Once a Guide is installed, users can remove the card to free up the SD slot for other purposes.

For those who can't attend this week's CES in person, nuvi's exploits in Las Vegas will be chronicled at www.nuvi.blogs.com -- a tongue-in-cheek diary of a week at CES. Written from nuvi's perspective, the blog will demonstrate the many unique features of this travel device. Additionally, users who sign up to receive automatic updates from nuvi.blogs.com will be entered in a daily drawing to win a nuvi from January 5 through 8, 2006. See nuvi.blogs.com for details, rules, and an entry form.

Nuvi is a portable GPS navigator, traveler's reference, and digital entertainment system, all in one. Combined with detailed maps, nuvi provides automatic routing, turn-by-turn voice directions that speak street names, and finger-touchscreen control-making it easy to find your way anywhere.

The device offers a bevy of useful travel tools to help keep any journey fun: MP3 player, audio book player from Audible.com, JPEG picture viewer, world travel clock with time zones, currency converter, measurement converter, and calculator. With the optional GTM 10 or GTM 11 traffic receiver, nuvi notifies drivers of traffic, construction, and weather delays (where available) and automatically suggests and calculates alternative routes.

An optional Garmin Language Guide (with data provided by Oxford University Press) contains five bilingual dictionaries and a multilingual word bank and phrase bank that support nine languages and dialects -- including American English, British English, French, German, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, European Portuguese, European Spanish, and Latin American Spanish. Through the unit's text-to-speech interface, users can get a spoken pronunciation of each word and phrase.

A European version of the Garmin Travel Guide is also available on SD card, with information provided by Marco Polo, one of Europe's leading travel authorities.

Nuvi is available now for $899.99, and is sold with a suction cup mount and 12-volt adapter, AC power cable, PC/USB cable, owner's manual, and quick reference guide. The Garmin SaversGuide, Garmin Travel Guides, and Garmin Language Guide are sold separately. Visit www.garmin.com for more information.

SOURCE Garmin International Inc.