I purchased my Garmin on ‘black friday’ and have not been able to put it down since. This thing is really all I thought it was going to be and more. Besides the Garmin 770 which includes European maps, the Garmin Nuvi 760 is the top of the line GPS that Garmin has to offer. It has nearly all of the advanced features GPS enthusiasts look for, a widescreen display, Bluetooth hands free calling, live traffic reporting, and an FM transmitter. It also comes with an expensive price tag. If the success of the Nuvi 660 is any indication, of how the 760 will do, then we will definitely have something here. I’ve had it since ‘black friday’ and this is what I’ve found.
Physical style and Design
The Nuvi 760 is a beautiful GPS device. A few obvious differences are seen from the previous top of the line 600 series. First, the face of the device is black. I think, this is an improvement over the previous Nuvi devices not simply from an aesthetic angle, but it also makes the screen appear slightly easier to read against the high contrast surroundings. Another reason its better than the 600 series is that the flip-up antenna is non existant. No more pulling up the antenna to activate the GPS chip. It does seem to take a noticeable amount of time longer for the 760 to get a GPS signal each time I turn it on compared to our 300, and 600 series Nuvi models. Across the top of the device is a slider which turns the 760 on and off, and can be used as a “hold” switch directing the device to ignore touch screen input. That feature can be especially handy for pedestrian use.
Routing to an Address
Navigating to an address is really simple. Power on -> Where to -> Address -> State -> City -> Street Number -> Street Name -> Go. But to be a nit picker, there are a few things I’d like to see changed. I’s reather enter the street name first, then number. And why, oh why, does nearly any GPS on the market today not know that I type “LA” in the state field I want…… you guess…. Los Angelos! Again, to be fair most other GPS devices on the market are equally dumb and can’t understand state abbreviations. Instead I’ll just keep having to type L-O-S-A- before it knows what the hell I want.
Navigation
The navigation screen hasn’t changed much. The top still has a Green bar with the Next Turn information. At the bottom left is your estimated arrival time, bottom center takes you to the Menu, bottom right shows the distance to the next maneuver, and there are zoom buttons at the top left and top right. Also, I can look at the estimated arrival time and compare that to the current time.It would also be nice if the screen would zoom in a little more when there are side streets. Sometimes “straight ahead” isn’t always obvious and in densely packed streets that are not always parallel and perpendicular it is sometimes necessary to zoom in to find which way I want to go. There are nice big zoom buttons though so it isn’t too big of an issue. I know looks aren’t everything, but the Nuvi series models including the 760 have an outstanding looking, easy to read and user friendly map. The colors are bright and vivid, and the font anti-aliasing and shading of elements makes many other models look like they were drawn by a child with markers. What I didn’t like as much is that those gorgeous graphics seem to come at the expense of a slower screen refresh rate. In contrast to other models on the market your car icon tends to “hobble” down the street a bit more rather than the graceful slide. Although, you won’t think much of that issue if you haven’t compared it to other faster models and I don’t find that it takes away from the navigation aspect.
Overall thoughts
To put it plainly, it is really difficult to go wrong with the Garmin Nuvi 760. It it just has too many great features like Bluetooth hands free calling, an FM transmitter, included and semi-integrated traffic receiver, Text to speech, and multi destination routing in a product that is designed superior physically, and attached to a mount which is second to none. While I have a couple complaints with the interface here and there, the issues are small and often amount to little more than personal preference. A product like this has great expectations and is held to a higher standard than many others.
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