Olathe, Kan. — Garmin will ship its first multi-use personal navigation device (PND) that may be used for driving, cycling, boating or in walking mode.
The Nuvi 500 series at a suggested $499 is based on the Nuvi 205 or 255 models, but it ships preloaded with both street maps and topography maps of the lower 48 states, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. It also has street maps for Canada, and users can load optional cartography maps for marine use and fishing.
The device has soft icons on the top of the screen to switch between usage modes, and it also lets users import geo-coded pictures from Google Maps and navigate to those locations.
The Nuvi 500 may be used with optional traffic receivers from Clear Channel or MSN Direct.
Magellan and reportedly TomTom already sell multi-use PNDs.
The Nuvi 500
