New Garmin KNA-G610 HideawayGPS Navigation by Kenwood

I would love to see what it looks like in the car.

Thanks.....

I loaded my latest collection of custom POI's into the new Garmin/Kenwood KNA-G610 GPS Navigation System using Garmin's POI Loader using an SD card yesterday and it was very quick and easy. I just selected the SD card as the destination instead of the Garmin like I had been doing. It automatically created the correct directories on the SD card and in a few seconds said it was complete. Went to the car and turned on the navigation and stuck in the SD card and a confirmation window popped up and asked if I wanted to load the custom POI's into the unit's memory and selected yes then it confirmed that it was going to replace all the current custom POI's and I hit yes again and in about 2 seconds a confirmation window came up and said the transfer was complete and I removed the card.

The whole process was very simple and worked great. So far I'm very pleased with the new setup and I love the huge 7" nav screen.

I highly recommend the new unit for anyone who likes the Garmin interface but wants a built in system with traffic that automatically hides away when you shut the car off. It acquires the sats almost instantly and shows 11 to 12 sats with a high reading and a 10' or smaller accuracy even while still inside the garage.

I will try to take some pics and post them on the weekend.

Just for the heck of it I checked my Garmin 1300WT GPS to see how many satellites it could acquire.. and what the accuracy was.

I was able to acquire 13 out of 14 satellites (#19 being the one I couldn't).. with the accuracy being 10 foot.

I guess that's pretty good.. considering.

Nuvi1300WTGPS

I tested today and found out some interesting things about the new in car nav unit. If I unplug the traffic receiver's USB cord from the nav unit and plugged in a standard Nuvi USB cord, started the car navigation, booted my laptop and plugged the USB cord into the laptop that a screen pops up on the Kenwood display that gives the option to put the nav unit into mass storage mode.

Then I used file manager on my Windows 7 laptop to access the in car navigation G610 unit and it basically looked identical to the files on my 885T. I then could do a complete backup to my laptop and load a new vehicle SRF file that I wanted to use on the built in unit. After I was done I went to the menu and was able to select the new vehicle and use it on the G610.

Basically you can do just about anything connected this way that you can do on a Nuvi except upgrade the maps from what I now know. From what I could tell I could have used POI loader to load custom POI's. The maps at this point can only be upgraded via a SD card.

You may be able to get a lifetime map update from Garmin. They currently offer lifetime map updates that are updated every quarter. The only thing is that they lock the maps down to the specific serial number on the Garmin unit. They send a key with the map that is specific to the Garmin unit, at least with the nuvi models I have seen.

Finally got around to taking some quick shots and getting them posted to my photo web page.

The photo montage shows the unit operating side by side with my Garmin 885T on a vent mount. The new Garmin/Kenwood G610 unit has a 7" screen and the 885T has a 4.3" screen. The screen surface area of the new unit is 2.5 times that of the 885T.

It also shows it closed and from the side. I also included a couple of shots of the G610 hideaway unit both closed and with the access door open so you can see the SD slot and where the traffic receiver's USB cable connects and where I connect the laptop using a standard Nuvi cable to copy and load files.

Link to photo montage:

http://home.comcast.net/~rjrsw2005/pwpimages/Kenwood%20Garmi...

Updates & Downloads
KNA-G600 Series software version 2.70 as of April 7, 2011

http://www8.garmin.com/products/kenwood/

Change History

Changes made from version 2.60 to 2.70:
Add Russian map road suffixes
Add support to prompt user to recalculate a route saved with a different map version than currently active.
Fix route line jittering issue
Fix reset issue when using junction search.
Fix blue line issues on Russian maps.
Fix reset issue when zooming out on the map.
Improve stree suffix support for India maps.
Fix Arabic text corruption on road signs with Middle East maps.
Improve support for PNX with SD card maps.
Fix issue with positioning when crossing map boundaries.
Fix reset issue when GPI files are present in multiple directories of an SD card.
Fix to not display information about 3D buildings on Map Info page.
Assign intersections a category of 'Map points and Coordinates' when saved as a favorite.
Fix issue where Thai dealer database names were cutoff.
Fix occasional reset issue seen when reviewing points on browse map.
Address potential system freeze due to long voltage dip during boot sequence.
Add unlock code backup mechanism.
Fix to prevent prepending an extra country code.
Fix reset issue when reviewing and recalculating a previously saved route.

I literally just installed the exact same system into my wife's vehicle this past Saturday. You answered my biggest question (POI's and Vehicles). I spoke with Garmin this morning and they told me I couldn't add anything from the Garmin Garage. Sounds like you found otherwise.

Thank you very much for this detailed and continually updated page. My wife will be very happy knowing she can have her custom vehicles and POI's.

Thanks again,
Landon

I was wondering about that myself just finished installing this unit in my car. Thanks for all your info on the G610