5. The Garmin Nüvi 350

Garmin claims its Nüvi 350 is an "all in one" portable GPS navigator, traveler's reference guide and digital entertainment device, but its real utility is for navigation, a function it performs surprisingly well. As described in detail below, the unit's voice prompt directs you to not only turn left or right or to continue straight, but it communicates the name of the street and road or exit number as well, which makes a lot of sense.

For some reason, none of the other devices we tested offer this feature. It is, in fact, almost a must-have when driving. With the Nüvi voice prompt, you can check street, road or exit names before you make a turn. With the other units, you often have no way of knowing until it is too late that you just made a wrong turn after the voice prompt tells you to go right or left and you have no idea what street you were looking for.

The Nüvi also serves as an MP3 and audio book player through Audible.com, JPEG picture viewer, world travel clock with time zones, currency converter, measurement converter and calculator.

The Audible.com online audio book store has a wide range of titles, which can be downloaded onto the Nüvi or other compatible devices, such as an iPod. The cost is steep, though, as the books that interested me, such as "The Fellowship of the Ring" or "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People," cost $35 and $28, respectively. "Wuthering Heights" for $18 was cheaper, but dangerous in my case as the title would likely make me very drowsy while driving.

An optional language guide sold separately on SD Data cards offers a multilingual word bank, phrase bank and five bilingual dictionaries from none other than the Oxford University Press. The word and phrase bank cover nine languages and dialects, including American English, British English, French, German, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, European Portuguese, European Spanish and Latin American Spanish. More than 17,000 words or 20,000 phrases per language can be looked up and translated.

The Nüvi is 3.87" x 2.91" 0.87" and weighs 5.1 oz. Its display is 2.8" x 2.1". Maps are stored in ROM. In addition the device has 200 MB of internal memory to store way-points, MP3 files, etc. An SD card slot allows for additional memory.

A travel guide module offers reviews and recommendations for restaurants and tourist attractions while points of interests, such as hotels, restaurants and tourist attractions, can be located. The Nüvi is also compatible with the GTM 10 FM TMC traffic receiver for traffic information, but this feature was not tested.