Customer Reviews

Better than the nuvi 660
I own both the Nuvi 660 and the 760, I'm writing this review for people having trouble deciding between the two as the price difference between the two products at the time of this review is about 100 dollars. I'm not going to focus on the feature differences, as that information can be easily obtained from specifications and online reviews. The 660 was a fine product back in 2005-2006, but the new 760 outdoes the 660 in practically everything, but there are some key usability fixes that make the 760 a better buy for the frequent user.

1. 760 has much better fonts for street names than the 660. This may seem like a trivial update to some, but the 760's fonts greatly improve visibility. The 660 uses all capitalized text for street names on the map, and the font is incredibly cartoonish and unaligned, something like the scribbling Comic Sans font on the PC. The 760 uses your standard Verdana-like font with street names in capitalized and lowercase letters. The fonts on the 760 are smaller, cleaner and surprisingly much easier to read while driving. The maps end up looking professional, and not some cartoony children's video game.

2. 760 has better rendering in 3D map mode than the 660. In the 660 when you are zoomed in under 3D map mode, the roads close to your car are displayed incredibly large, so large that they run into other roads, making the zoom function essentially kind of useless for dense roads. The 760 does not oversize your roads just because you zoomed in to view smaller roads in detail. This fix is very nice for those who drive in places with dense roadways, like New York City.

3. No antenna on the 760 makes hooking up your Nuvi to the cradle one step easier. On the 660 you need to flip up the antenna before attaching the cradle. For people who park their cars on the street overnight, removing the GPS from the cradle for storage in the console or glove compartment is a must, and it's a lot easier hooking up the 760 to the cradle than the 660. It's hard to aim the 660 to its cradle in the dark as you have to align both the bottom edge and the charge port under the antenna. In the 760, the charge port is directly on the bottom of the unit; you can attach it to the cradle with one hand in the dark easily on the 760.

4. It takes the 660 a good 45 seconds on average (sometimes longer than 2 minutes) after boot up to locate the satellite on a cold start. If you have firmware 2.6 installed on the 760, the satellite acquisition time after boot up is between 10-20 seconds. After the firmware update, my 760 also holds a stronger lock to the satellites than my 660, I can get satellite lock inside my house with the 760, whereas I can't get a lock with my 660 (adjusting the antenna does very little).

5. The ability to set multiple ad hoc viapoints on the 760 means it's a lot easier creating alternate routes (very handy to avoid a specific interstate or a high traffic road). Whereas the 660 gives you just one viapoint.

Recommended over TomTom 920T and Magellan 4250
I feel a great amount of sympathy for consumers shopping for a portable GPS systems or any sophisticated electronic product for that matter. There is such a dizzying array of models/brands/functions that it is both a blessing and a curse. I am very tech oriented and enjoy researching and evaluating new electronic gadgets. After a few days of reviewing GPS brands and models, I narrowed my selections down to the Garmin 760, Garmin 680, TomTom 920T and the Magellan Maestro 4250.

I am not going to dive deeply into the features and benefits of each model because many of the reviews on Amazon and other websites do a great job of that. However, I will summarize my thought process for finally choosing the 760 as the best GPS for me. Let me start by stating that there is no perfect GPS system and therein lies the challenge. Every model that I looked at had strengths and weaknesses and there wasn't a product that made it a clear cut decision. What I did (and recommend) is to make a priority list of the features and functions that are most important to you and to pick the model that best fits your requirements. This sounds like an obvious approach but it was a lot harder than it sounds.

The single most important aspect for me was the accuracy and capability of the routing engine. That seems simple enough but when you throw in the all the other features offered in today's GPS models the decision making process becomes much muddier. In staying with my original strategy, I determined that the Garmin 7xx series had the best routing engine for North America. My conclusion is based on consumer and professional reviews, discussion boards, and my own testing. With that being said, the 760 is not perfect and I have experienced a few quirky directions but nothing that was of great concern.

How do I like the 760? For the most part, I am extremely pleased with the performance and functionality of the 760. Like most people I do have a list of my personal improvement and enhancements for the system but they are not deal breakers. When I first received the unit, I tested it on a trip to Palm Springs and Joshua Tree National Park. The directions to and from the Park and Palm Springs were flawless and the GPS recognized all the main roads within the park. We actually encountered some road construction on one of the main highways and the traffic receiver recognized the jam but gave us a strange recommendation. It directed us to go down the off-ramp and immediately get on the next on-ramp. We did this twice and it actually moved us ahead in traffic. I'm not sure how effective that strategy would be in other similar situations. The speaker volume could be louder but I could easily understand the commands traveling at 80 mph. I have also tested the system on several routes throughout Southern California and the system performed very well. All of the main features worked as published with a few exceptions noted below. The user interface is very well designed and I was able to operate 80% of the functions without reading the manual. In addition to the 760, I also purchased the Garmin Friction Dashboard Mount which I believe is superior to the glass suction mount provided.

So why did I only give it 4 stars? The one big annoyance for me was that if you directly input the POI name, the search can take a long amount of time (greater than 5 minutes)if it goes outside of your vicinity. This is extremely slow compared to our in-dash GPS system. The touch screen could be more responsive and is not that sensitive especially with the browse map option. The 760 bluetooth pairs consistently and quickly with my Motorola KRZR phone but the receiving and transmitting sound quality is very poor. The FM transmitter is unusable.

I really wanted to like the TomTom 920T especially with the voice recognition, user updates for maps and a long list of customizations. However, the routing engine seems to produce more inconsistent performance than the Garmin and I could not find enough information on their mapping data to understand how accurate it is today. The two main providers of map data are Navteq and Tele Atlas. Garmin and Magellan use Navteq and TomTom uses Tele Atlas. In the past, Navteq has been considered more accurate and complete for North America but Tele Atlas has made significant updates in recent times. Interestingly the 760 uses Garmin's 2008 North American maps but the source data is 18 to 24 months old which shows there is always a large lag in map information. Garmin has been very good at providing updates more frequently than the other manufacturers. My impression is that TomTom is much stronger with the European maps than the NA maps.

Here is a quick rundown of how I view the models:

Magellan Maestro 4250:
Pros: multi point destination routing with optimization, great address and text input system
Cons: questionable routing engine, outdated map data, inconsistent voice recognition, cumbersome POI interface, poor text to speech quality, poor customer support in US

TomTom 920T
Pros: voice recognition, enhanced positioning technology, map share, excellent customization options, multi-destination routing
Cons: questionable routing engine, outdated map data (although this is somewhat offset by map share), no routing optimization, cumbersome user interface

Garmin 760
Pros: routing engine seems very good, multi-destination routing optimization, good POI database, more map updates compared to competition, great user interface
Cons: touch screen is not very sensitive, outdated map data, FM transmitter is useless, expensive

Garmin 680
Pros: most of the same features and functionality as the 760 but with MSN Direct, louder speaker volume than 760, much better value than the 760
Cons: no multipoint destination, older look and feel than the 760

I have only listed a limited set of the pros and cons for each of the different models but these were the areas that stood out the most to me. When it's all said and done, I probably would have been happy with any of these models but if you can afford the 760 and routing directions in North America is your most important requirement then I would highly recommend the 760.

I have seen questions about whether the 760 comes with the SiRF Star III chip and the unit that I just purchased from Amazon did come with that chip. The SiRF is a high performance GPS chipset that can quickly acquire and maintain a lock onto satellite signals for position information. It is considered the chipset of choice for the higher end mobile GPS devices. All of the models I have described above have the SiRF chipset. I also have seen questions about how quickly the 760 can lock onto satellites. I updated my system firmware to version 2.6 and the satellite acquisition time is lightning fast. I have found in outside environments, my 760 can consistently acquire a signal in under 10 seconds even first thing in the morning.

There are a couple of other useful features that are not described in the instruction manual. If you hold down on the signal strength bar in the top left corner, you will get the satellite acquisition screen which shows the position accuracy. If you hold down on the battery indicator for a few seconds, this will allow access to the diagnostic screen which is where you can identify the GPS chipset among other information.

Bullet List of What Isn't Good
Lots of reviews here that cover the bases. So I'll limit this to a bullet list of some items I found annoying:

1. Hands free calling is not as good as my BlueAnt gizmo. Callers on other end said my voice sounded muddy and uneven. When I tried the Garmin 670, callers on the other end preferred it. But overall the Blue Ant was best.

2. The speaker on the 760 is tinnier than on the Garmin 670 and annoying. The 670 is a thicker model, and I suppose they were able to fit a better speaker. If you're just using maps and guidance this is not a big deal. But if you use hands free dialing, it is terrible.

3. I disagree with another post about the font. I think the font on the 670 is sharper and easier to read than on the 760 model. Much of the time (not always) the font is larger on the 670 model.

4. The MP3 on both models is rudimentary at best. The playlist function does not work very well.

5. The supposed ability to play sound through the FM is a joke. Neither unit works well enough to use...ever. Sometimes nothing comes through. When sound does show up, it is scratchy and irritating beyond belief. If Garmin is going to list this as a feature, they need to go back to the drawing table. As of now, the implementation of this feature is pathetic.

6. Both the 760 and the 670 lock GPS about the same speed...perhaps the 760 is a touch faster...but not to the extent anyone would really notice.

7. 760 is thinner and doesn't need to open the antenna. So it is much easier to use in pedestrian mode. On the 670 with the GPS antenna up, it's tough to fit the unit in your pocket. So pedestrian mode isn't realistic on the 670.

8. Garmin got ridiculously cheap on the 760 with respect to accessories. NO AC Adapter; no disk for PDF Help file; no case. All three are standard on the 670 model.

Garmin's Maps and POI are both great. The guidance works very well. So bottom line, is that it is the hands free phone use, playing sound through FM and MP3 that I'm critical of.