nuvi 760 GPS

Pros: Love the Garmin nuvi 760 - great for finding places while traveling and much more.

Cons: When finding a place one has to add the street number. Would prefer to search by street. Cannot find rural addresses. I assume since the product is new it may take a few years to find rural places.

Summary: Shipped by FedEX.......got to me by appropriate time. The Garmin is very user friendly. I had a friend play around with it without reading the instructions and she was amazed how easy it is to operate. Great Buy!

Pros: Excellent database. Easy to use. Excellent mount. Includes traffic, Bluetooth, MP3 player, lots of extras. Compact design.

Cons: Imperfect routing. Does not take traffic lights into consideration. Bad FM transmitter. Too many zoom levels. Expensive.

Summary: I had read some very positive reviews on this product and was very excited to get it. Unfortunately, having set high expectations set me up for a couple of let-downs. But it's a very good unit, with a few areas for improvement. Starting with the physical unit, it is sleek, compact and quite portable. The antenna from the 6XX series is gone, which is nice. If you are looking for a case to put it in, it is the same size as a Nintendo DS, so I got a hard, zippered DS case that fits it perfectly. It comes with a dashboard mount, windshield mount, USB data cable for upgrading and transferring files to/from a computer, and a cigarette-plug power cord with integrated FM traffic, with a 90-day trial. The subscription after that is $60/year. The windshield mount is very secure and easy to install. It's the best one I've seen on a GPS unit. Once I power on the GPS, it usually only takes about 30 secs. for everything to get initialized. The traffic info is usually up to date within a couple minutes. A couple of cool features...if you take the GPS out of the car, it remembers where you parked...a nice feature if you get lost in the parking lot. Also, you can lock the GPS with a PIN, making it useless to a thief. But if you forget the PIN, you can set a location where it will unlock automatically, allowing you to reset the password. Once the unit is powered up, you can either just look at the map, or do some navigating. The database is quite large and comprehensive. I wish it was easier to find things. You can search by name or by category, but not both. For instance, if you want to find a restaurant, you can specify the type of restaurant only. It will list the restaurants of the specified type, in distance order. If you want to find a specific restaurant, you have to search by name, but it will list every single thing (gas station, restaurant, store, etc) with that name. Also, I wish that it would predict what you are typing. If you want "Cafe Adobe", but type "Cafe Abobe" by mistake, it will let you type it in, even though there is no such place. Routing is quirky, but navigation works well. I work on the other side of town, and there are 4 ways to get there. Even though I set it to take the fastest route, it takes the slowest route. First, from my house it picks a more direct way that is slower due to traffic lights, vs. a slightly longer route that is mostly highway. Traffic lights must not be in the database, because it assumes you will go nonstop on the shorter route. Then the highway splits, and for some reason it picks the road that is 3 miles longer than the other road, even though both have the same speed limit. As soon as I take the way I know is faster, it recalculates the route, and sure enough, it even acknowledges that it's quicker. On the plus side, it takes into consideration traffic problems. If there is a slowdown, it shows the delay in minutes. If there is a major accident, it will detour around it. Also, it "locks" onto the road very well, and can figure out if you are turning or ignoring the route very quickly. As you approach a complicated interchange, it will automatically zoom in and show you more detail. That's the good part, the bad side is that there are too many zoom levels and the zoom level you choose doesn't stay put very long. It shows the speed limit of major highways which is handy. Voice directions are good, and it converts road names to speech surprisingly well. The speaker is a bit tinny sounding, but adequate. The FM transmitter is very weak. If your radio antenna isn't within a couple feet the GPS unit, it isn't going to work. My antenna is in the back, so it doesn't work at all. There is a stereo plug in the unit, so I hooked it up to my radio using a cassette adapter. If you can get it to work with your stereo, you can hear the directions much better, and use the GPS as a MP3 player and speaker phone with your cellphone. It supports the newest Bluetooth profiles, allowing downloading of your phonebook, voice dialing (if supported), and you can call places in the GPS database. I had problems pairing it with my Treo 755p initially, causing my phone to reset and crash. Garmin emailed me a fix, so it works now. There are a ton of other features that I don't use, but others might find handy, such as multiple destination sorting, speedometer, compass, currency converter, language dictionaries, audio book player, picture viewer, additional maps, tour guides, etc. It's a very full-featured GPS. A little expensive, a little quirky, but pretty easy to use and enjoy.

Pros: Very easy to operate. Nice bright screen with good resolution. A variety of voice options available at Garmin site.

Cons: Dash mount pad VERY difficult to remove from dash. Better to use only suction mount on windshield.

Summary: The 760 is relatively easy to use, and I've managed to download Audio and MP3 files to it. I've also downloaded various voices and an additional POI file. I would recommend the 760 to anyone interested in a GPS unit.

Pros: sleek body and widescreen, integrated antenna, feature filled.

Cons: price

Summary: This is my first GPS unit. After an exhaustive search on many websites and in stores, I decided on this unit mainly for the number of features, and Garmin brand reputation. Although I haven't used all of the features yet, it is nice to know I have the capability (i.e. multi point routing, can save multiple routes). I also chose this unit for the bluetooth capability which works well with my phone. Quite happy so far. I would have given it 5 stars if the price were a bit cheaper.

Pros: Great viewable size, great visibility during nighttime, Bluetooth option, Text to Speech, portable, great accuracy.

Cons: Relatively expensive, occasional iffy satellite signal.

Summary: This GPS is one of the best Nuvi line products I have looked at. The 4.3" widescreen gives a large view of the map so you can see names easily. Despite the large widescreen size, it is fairly portable and fits in my coat pockets easily. I was comparing on buying this model and the 680 and this unit is quite slimmer than the 680. The Text to Speech is also a nice added feature and for the most part, the changeable voices are easy to understand over the units speakers. This unit also acts as a portable media player (MP3 player, picture viewer, also currency converter, languge guide, etc.), but I already have an IPod for that, so I can't comment on the media player. There is not a lot of memory to store MP3s though, so don't plan on using this unit as a main MP3 player, but it does have the option to used a SD card. My main complaint, which I knew when I bought this receiver, is that it is a little expensive (price has gone down to about low to mid $500's). I would have liked to have seen it come with the MSN Direct receiver for the price like the 680, but you can always buy the receiver later if you would like. The unit does come with an FM Traffic receiver however with a 3-month free subscription, but I have yet to use it. There are also times when it may take a little while to acquire a satellite signal, sometimes up to 30-45 seconds even though my location is in an open urban area with no tall buildings (this is with the Firmware update) Overall, I really enjoy this unit. I owned a Magellan Maestro unit before and believe the Nuvi line is quite better IMHO of course. This unit has helped me around parts of the city I am unfamiliar with, and the "Where Am I" feature is quite nice where it tells your exact location and can save it in case you ever want to go back to that location. If you don't care about the bluetooth function, I would go with the 750 since they are significantly cheaper, over a $100 difference.