Garmin continues to build up its nüvi 7xx series portable GPS navigators with its nüvi 775T, which adds a number of handy routing and communication features to an already impressive list of specs, including a 4.3-inch widescreen display, text-to-speech capabilities, media player, and FM transmitter for transmitting audio–including directions and MP3 music and audiobooks–from the device to your car radio. Garmin’s nüvis pack top of the line features into a slim form factor.. New to the nüvi 7×5 lineup is Garmin’s HotFix satellite prediction (which locates your position quickly and precisely), Lane Assist (which provides lane guidance and junction views when possible), automatic time zone transitioning, and 3D Buildin [Read More...]
Buy Garmin nüvi 775/775T 4.3-Inch Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator with Traffic at Amazon
Garmin has a somewhat confusing product line, which is somewhat alleviated by a reasonably good online guide on the manufacturer’s web site (you select the features you are looking for, and it narrows down the choices to fewer and fewer models until you find what you are looking for);
I was specifically looking for a model with both North America and Europe maps, capable of supporting multiple languages for speech synthesis (so that my non-English speaking parents could use it as well), traffic information, lane assist, and pretty good UI.
I had narrowed my choices down to the Garmin nüvi 775T and the Tomtom 930T, but eventually went for the Garmin for a couple of reasons. For one thing, I am a little biased, having used their aviation panel mounted models for a few years and I knew that Garmin makes excellent units. I was also impressed by their customer support: they replied to a couple of questions I had about their products pretty quickly, even though I hadn’t bought the 775T yet.
This is a feature rich device; I haven’t had time to play with all its functions yet; it is able to get a satellite fix even in non optimal situations (such as tree coverage, tall building, even indoors if a window is nearby); the routes it picks look quite reasonable (by the way: do not try to make it compute ’silly’ routes, such as asking it to compute a driving route from some place in California to some place in Europe… the unit will get stuck and might require a hard reset). The user interface is very intuitive IMHO and presents the information in a very concise and effective manner (important while driving!)
So overall, I am very satisfied with this purchase, especially at the price that was offered on Amazon (significantly cheaper than what I had found elsewhere).
A couple of things in no particular order:
The safety lock feature is neat (you can protect the unit with a PIN, and if you dial the PIN wrong too many times, the unit can only be unlocked by returning to a ’safe location.’ Sounds neat, until you realize that it is easy to misdial the PIN (until you get used to the touch screen I suppose), which might be a snag if you do that many miles away from said ’safe location’, for instance, when on vacation. I disabled that feature as a result.
The manufacturer’s web site was not specific enough IMHO about which voices were provided ‘out of the box’ for the speech synthesis function (where it speaks the instructions and street names); it turns out that the nice customer service representative answered that question promptly. Note that not all the voices / languages provided can speak the street names (e.g., the various English, French, Spanish, etc. voices can, but the one Arabic voice cannot)
If you choose a voice of a different language than the locale, its pronunciation of the street names can be a bit puzzling at times
it does however a remarkably good job most of the times (I went out of my way to try to confuse it 
).
Finally, don’t forget to download your one free map update (you’ll have to choose between either the North America or European map for this free update), and the free firmware updates. There are also pretty neat applications available (which combined with some Google Maps features, e.g., possibility to overlay the contents of GPX files that the unit can export onto Google Maps, increase the possibilities.)
Okay, I got lazy and bought the 775t from Amazon. I must say, this is a huge improvement over the built in nav system in my car and even more so over the $100 issue of a nuvi I purchased retail for my wife last year.
I will be traveling to Germany, so paying extra for the built in maps was worth it to me. Amazing detail there, by the way. Even walking paths I used in Bad Homburg were on the map.
As an aside, I’ve learned that the built in nature of the European maps is an improvement to my uninformed suggestion below. Yes, you can save a few dollars by buying the 770t and purchasing additional maps on SD chips, but I suspect this will slow the map retreival process somewhat. The convenience of having the maps preloaded may be worth the extra cost of the 775t.
The 775t is amazingly intuitive. There really is no user’s manual to speak of (unless there’s something online at Garmin, which I haven’t checked). The quick start pamphlet that comes with the unit is all you need to start using this device.
The bluetooth implementation works flawlessly with my Motorola Razor cell phone and is MUCH easier to use than the blue tooth implementation in my car. All the phone numbers in my cell phone transported (transparently) over to the nuvi, and how all I have to do is pick the number out of the nuvi’s phone book and have the nuvi dial it. I’ll be getting another one of these to replace my wifes unused “budget version” nuvi, just to get her telephoning hands-free in her car!
Speaking of my wife’s car: It has an “aux in” port that she can connect this nuvi to. I copied a couple hundred of my favorite mp3 files to the nuvi and these play beautifully over her mom-bomb’s stereo system. The media players functions are minimal, so don’t expect this to replace your i-pod or other mp3 player. Still, it’s nice to have.
The traffic feature may work well, but since we don’t live in the middle of a major urban area, we don’t seem to ever find ourselves in a situation where we’re re-routed because of taffic delays. The construction zones we negotiate don’t flag traffic delays. I like that this nuvi comes with permanent access to traffic info vs the 30 day trial her budget version did. The traffic signals come to the nuvi via fm receiver - no accessories or contracts required for this, unless you upgrade to a different service. This may suggest that the free included service may not be around too long, but consider yourselves advised.
I still can’t give the unit 5 stars because diverting to other features requires the user to step back repeatedly (via Back button) to return to the main menu. There you have to touch the Map icon to return to the mapping function for the route that’s being plotted. Seems to me there should be a simplified function to return you directly to the map from just about anywhere you divert to in the unit.
For example: You’re driving into the city to a friend’s house (the nav system is guiding you there). Enroute, your passenger decides to look for an Asian restaurant near your friend’s house. To return to the map displaying your route guidance can take as many as 5 or 6 steps “back” to get to the main menu. There you have to touch the map again.
But as for finding that asian restaurant, it’s pretty slick. If you know the name of the place you’re looking for, you can type it in (Spell) and viola, the unit hunts for all occurances containing that name. Be sure to select the one you’re looking for though, because the unit will continue to search ad infinitum to find more matches in the data base. Once found, it returns the address and telephone number of the place. You can choose to have the nav system take you there. But if you do it on the fly, I think it will override the destination you are presently being guided to. You can program in a sequence of destinations beforehand to get around this.
I’ve used this simply to get a phone number of a restaurant and love that aspect of it. The savings in terms of directory assistance charges alone may help defray the cost over time.
Another potential flaw is that, despite my powering the unit off, I’ve come back to my car to find the unit on. I don’t know if screen burn is an issue on these units, and I don’t know how, when or why the 775t powers itself back on. If it’s smart enough to know the car door is opened upon your return, then it’s a great feature. It it starts up on its own minutes after I park the car, it’s a flaw. I suppose I could always unplug it overnight while parked in the garage, but I would prefer if the unit just stayed off. Perhaps I’m doing something wrong and a visit to Garmin’s website will clear this up for me.
I recommend this unit despite the minor flaws I’ve encountered in its programming logic.
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original (hasty) review follows:
The 3 star review (which I can’t change as I revise my review) had more to do with Amazon pricing practices than the actual product.
I’ll probably buy this unit elsewhere because Amazon mis-states the Garmin list price at $849. Garmin lists this for $699. Granted, Amazon’s price of $565 reflects a decent discount from list, but other web sites offer it for considerably less (as low as $440 last time I looked). Now as a long time Amazon shopper and Amazon Prime member, my first choice is always Amazon, but this is the second instance recently where Amazon was considerably more expensive than alternate web sites. Where pricing is close, I usually give the business to Amazon as they have treated me well over the years. Even so, this time, I may shop elsewhere.
Another tip. Even at Amazon you can save money by buying the 765T ($407) and the Garmin City Navigator Europe NT SD card (010 10680-50) ($110) instead of the 775t with maps already loaded. If I do buy at Amazon, this is the route I’ll take. ($517 vs $556)
Good luck.
NOTE: I tagged this to other Nuvi units affected by a killer firmware bug as per Garmin web site: See update at bottom. It was originally writted for the Nuvi 775T I purchased.
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I recieved a 775T in late April 2009 for general use and for use during a month long business trip in Europe.
It worked great in Norway last week, a real blessing to have it and I was very pleased.
Awesome Unit When It Works: = Five Stars
I had a few minor issues updating the maps under the upgrade policy, but after a while (about 4.8GB data to download that took eight hours on broadband to get, plus a few hours for the unit to actually update) managed to get what was needed done.
There were not any dual map downloads available for dual map units. I had to go through customer support that helped me nicely, but took awhile to get to during limited access hours. Also, most large software system updates update the changed code and data instead of the whole thing, so that updated can be performed far more efficiently. Moral: start your updates early, especially if you have both NA and Europe to update.
Minus 0.5 stars for ‘hard to update’
= 4.5 Star Rating
Yesterday I turned it on and changed my country location to Germany. It started to acquire satellites and then just died. Ist Kaput. Looked up my problem on the web and tried resetting this on various chargers, as this apparently resuscitates most units with my symptom of ‘dead’, but this unit is totally gone. I have not abused the unit in any way.
Minus 2.5 Stars for Quality of Build THE UNIT LASTED LESS THAN 60 DAYS!
= 2 Star Rating
I called customer support four times over the course of the day today, from Europe, from my cell phone, during the limited hours that they are open. Each time, the support recording says that the hold time is ‘more than 30 minutes due to high call volume’. Hmm, my cell call costs almost $2.00 per minute to use from here, that’s already $60 before I even talk to someone.
I wrote an e-mail on their customer support e-mail. They say they will get back to me in about 3 days.
I am stuck with a dead unit, I won’t get my money back, and I already invested more than $500 in this plus about ten hours to get it upgraded and it is not built to last.
Minus one star for difficult to reach customer service that will do nothing for the dead unit in Europe but will probably replace it with a refurbished unit when I get home.
= 1 Star
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UPDATE: June 24th; I spent three hours yesterday at an electronics super-store in Germany where Garmin Germany support said I could swap out the unit. However, I could not do that because I bought it in the USA (even though support said I could). I also found out that the 7×5 units hava serious flaw in the firmware that kills the units completely. According to Garmin, they MUST be sent back for exchange.
Garmin will not Fed-Ex me a new unit, I can expect to wait ‘typically about three weeks after we recieve the old unit back’. Buying it for this trip was a waste and they do not provide good support for their high-end units even with bugs that truly kill the the units dead.
This from the Garmin site today (Dated June 24th):
<<<
” It has come to our attention that the Garmin nüvi 7×5 series has a firmware error that is causing some devices to perform an unprompted GPS software update and in some cases shut down [permanently - without any ability to start up again - reviewer]. We are aware of this issue and we are working diligently on a solution….”
And:
“Today, Garmin released a free, mandatory GPS software update to correct a software issue that has been discovered to cause select GPS devices to repeatedly attempt to update GPS firmware, and then either shut down or no longer acquire GPS satellite signals. The products affected are the nüvi 7×5 series, nüvi 800 series, nüvi 8×5 series, zûmo 660, GPSMAP 620 and GPSMAP 640.
Garmin nüvi 7×5 series products that are no longer able to acquire a GPS satellite signal may download a firmware update immediately that will correct the software issue. This firmware update may be downloaded using Garmin’s WebUpdater.
Firmware updates for other affected products will be available online through Garmin’s WebUpdater in the near future. Affected customers who have registered their GPS device will be notified about these updates through email.
Garmin nüvi 7×5 customers who are no longer able to power on their GPS device will need to visit http://www.garmin.com/support, and select the first FAQ titled “My nüvi 755T, 765T, 775T or 785T is giving me the message `Updating GPS Firmware’ or will no longer power on…” Customers will then need to follow the instructions to request a return authorization so that the device may be repaired under warranty.
“
>>>
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My one star review still stands due to:
1) Bad quality control that causes this to happen in the first place.
2) Garmin leaving me hanging with useless dead unit when they could easily Fed-Ex me a replacment. I even offerred to pay the shipping cost since that is cheaper then renting cars with NAV systems or buying a new Tom-Tom here.