Garmin are always releasing new GPS products and recently we got to review the Nuvi 1410 device and overall have been very impressed with it. One of the stand out features of the Garmin Nuvi 1410 is the fact that it can receive live traffic updates via a SIM card in the unit – quite ground-breaking technology when compared to TomTom and Garmin GPS products of just a couple of years ago.
The casing is a glossy black finish so it certainly looks good when sat on your car’s dashboard, and connects to the car charger with slim lead that you can try and conceal if you really want the minimalistic look. The Nuvi 1410 has a wide and colourful touch screen display with very large buttons, and the most important screen off all, in other words the map – is very clear, concise, and easy to understand.
One thing to point out, and that’s the fact you can get free Garmin GPS map updates for the 1410 as soon as you remove it from the packaging via Garmin’s nuMaps Guarantee program which is available on their website. Definitely worth taking advantage of especially considering that the free map download will only be valid for your first three months of ownership – which is why we advise that it’s the first thing you do.
Some reviews have pointed towards the GPS mount not being very secure, but on the Garmin Nuvi 1410 this seems to have been rectified, with the suction cup keeping the GPS in place throughout the entire test drive.
The Nuvi 1410 comes with some rather cool functional digital features as well, for example you can plan the fastest route between multiple stops – this is called multi-point routing and would suit someone who drives for a living or who leads a busy lifestyle.
For the green eco-friendly customers there’s also something quite unique called ecoRoute. This lets you calculate the most fuel efficient routes, plus lets you compete with your previous drives using an eco-rating score that tells you how economically you are driving at that time.
Where Am I? A question you might have asked before when using your Garmin GPS, and by pressing this button it will save your location – plus give you real-time information on where the nearest hospitals, police stations and gas filling stations are – very useful for when driving in unfamiliar territory.
The map versions pre-installed on the Garmin Nuvi 1410 are City Navigator NT for North America if you are based in the United States or Canada, and City Navigator NT for Europe if a UK Customer. It’s worth noting that the Garmin Nuvi 1410 does have a larger memory than most GPS devices so you can load additional map regions on to it, which can be handy when taking advantage of the free Garmin map updates we referred to earlier in this review.
To conclude on the 1410 GPS, it’s a user-friendly product that includes some very rich features not all of which we even managed to start exploring. You can add an optional GTM 25 traffic receiver to it as well to really make your driving experience complete – but for us, that’s an un-necessary cost for people who just want to get from A to B with minimum fuss, and don’t mind the odd traffic hold up here and there.