The International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), held every January in Las Vegas, is just around the corner (and Switched.com will be there), which means it is time for companies to assault us with an absurd number of product launches. Garmin took this idea to heart, apparently, and is prepping the launch of no less than 11 new GPS products for the world's biggest geek-fest.
At the top of the heap is the new
Nuvi 880, a 4.3 inch car navigation unit with more features than you could possibly imagine using. The usual suspects are there: text to speech, Bluetooth, digital audio playback, and picture viewing. But there is also plenty new packed in to the dash mountable device, including -- terrifyingly enough -- games. (If we ever see someone playing Tetris on their GPS while trying to drive we're pulling over to the side of the road.) The 880 also comes with
MSN Direct service which provides traffic updates, weather, news, movie times, local events, and even gas prices.
The most innovative feature packed into the new 880, and its stripped down sibling the
Nuvi 850, is speech recognition technology. If you're driving on a particularly icy, or winding stretch of road and taking a hand off the wheel feels like it's inviting disaster, now you can talk to your GPS device to perform all but the most advanced functions, including searching for points of interest or setting an entirely new route. The 880 will be hitting the market with a suggest retail price in the $1,000 range, while the 850 gets its price down to about $800 by ditching the Bluetooth and MSN.
Also of interest is Garmin's new
Colorado series of hand-held units that feature three-inch screens and the trademarked Rock 'n Roller™ wheel, which is essentially a ruggedized version of a click wheel. The Colorado will come in four different flavors: the base level
300, which retails for $499; the
400t, which is aimed at hikers and comes loaded with 3D topographical maps for getting your bearing; the
400i tackles the fishing market with maps of the shoreline, and locations for boat ramps on inland lakes and rivers; and finally the
400c goes after the boating enthusiast with shorelines, depth contours, harbors, marinas, and coastal roads for the United States and Bahamas. The 400t, i, and c all retail for $599.
Every member of the Colorado series comes packed with an electronic compass, temperature sensor, altimeter and the new
Wherigo (where i go) platform. Wherigo allows Colorado users to create "location-based multimedia experiences in the real world." Which is of course a fancy way of saying creating guided tours, adventure "games," and scavenger hunts. All of this info can be shared wirelessly with other Colorado users.
We'll be sure to check out the new Wherigo features at CES and let you know whether the folks at Garmin have truly stumbled across something innovative.
Related links:
Apparently all those studies and advertisements about the dangers of texting while driving are getting through to the American people. According to Motor Trend, Ford recently commissioned a survey that found 93-percent of the participants support a nationwide ban on texting while driving. It looks like the automotive giant surveyed a bunch of cynics though -- because only 42-percent said they believe drivers would actually stop texting if the ban was enacted. 
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