Garmin Nuvi 770 GPS Review

Garmin Nuvi 770 GPS Review

Published August 25, 2008 at 01:16:13 PM, by Blair Mathis

Design & Features

There are literally hundreds of GPS units available on the market today, all of which have their advantages and disadvantages, but Garmin continually pushes the envelope for their products to provide a great user experience, navigation, and ease of use. The Nuvi 770 is one of their products that offers a large 4.3' touchscreen, Bluetooth for hands free calling on supported cell phones, displays maps for both North America (minus extreme northern Canada and Mexico) and Europe, and has an expansion slot for audio files or even to browse photos. It's feature rich, but does how does it fare with navigating? We put the Garmin Nuvi 770 through the miles to bring you this in-depth review.

Power adapter, mounting accessory pad, Nuvi 770, mounting cradle and USB cords are packed with the Nuvi 770 box.

Design

The Nuvi's design is reminiscent of a large PDA, spanning 4.8" x 3.0" x 0.8" and packs a 4.3' widescreen 480x240 pixel touchscreen display, much like the TomTom XL we reviewed. Weighing in around 190g (.41 lb), this unit is button-free - only having an on/off switch and otherwise relying entirely on the touchscreen.

The display is a nice, clean WQVGA display offering 10 different brightness settings (10% to 100%) and can light up the car interior pretty good when on 100%. The front also houses the microphone for your Bluetooth hands free calling.

The bottom of the unit sports the connector for the car power adapter and a USB port to connect the unit to your computer to upload/download pictures, music, maps and audible books.

The rear of the unit features a single speaker and external antennae connector. The rear also has a non-user replaceable rechargeable battery, and docking lock location.

The left side of the unit houses the audio line-out port, and an SD media card slot to load up music or pictures. Notice the depth difference between the Nuvi 770 and 350 isn't that much more, thankfully.

There's not much to say about the design: it's simple, clean, thin and elegant - we give it a 4 out of 5. Our major gripe with the current setup is that when you want to recharge the Nuvi, you have to leave it plugged into the car, as there is no option (supplied out of box) to charge it inside the home plugged into a wall. It does however recharge when connected to a USB port, but of course you need a computer to have that happen.

The supplied mount works pretty well, but beware if you live in colder climates. In the Midwest, the temperatures got around to a balmy 25 degrees, which is acceptable for a device like this, so I attached it to my car's freshly cleaned windshield and left the unit in there while I was driving around. As the day went on, it went a bit colder outside, but my car's heater was on making sure that the unit was in at least 50 degree temperature. When I was done with my trip (well guided of course) I removed the Nuvi from it's windshield mount and proceeded to have a good time at the new Irish pub that recently opened up. I came back to my car only to find that the windshield mount had 'unmounted' itself from the windshield! This is without a unit attached! My conclusion is from the temperature adjustments and the rubber suction cup that is used to connect the mount to your windshield. It doesn't like it. So, beware of that if you leave your Nuvi in your automobile in massive temperature adjustments attached to your windshield, it may fall and severely damage (if not destroy) the device or touch screen.

Features
With a unit like this - it's almost impossible to cover everything that everyone might want to know. The Garmin Nuvi has a lot of features and expansions that prove it to be very versatile in its functions.

It can operate as a Bluetooth hands free kit (which is important for states that require this by Law for using a phone in the car). And depending on your phone, it can offer many useful hands free features.

The Nuvi 770 also has a media player, photo viewer, and if you actually need it - a currency convertor, calculator, and world clock. Not to mention, it is a navigation unit - which should be noted first and foremost. It carries a decent 4 GB of internal memory, but a lot of that is dedicated to the operational function of the unit itself leaving around 2 GB for user items such as audio or extra maps and POI's.

The Nuvi 770 supports text to speech output, meaning it will speak the names of streets, avenues, etc. It also 'talks' to you to - 'turn right on 18th Avenue South in point 4 miles.' However, this model does NOT accept voice commands. That is reserved for the 800 series (shucks) - so, no fancy talking back to the Garmin, unless you have your cell phone connected and wish to do so to the lucky person on the other end of the phone conversation.

Additional navigation features include multiple route memory, auto re-route and fastest/shortest distance ability. You can input circumstances to avoid, like highways or tolls.

It also sports an FM transmitter for your phone calls / navigation, allowing the audio to play over your car stereo, but as with all FM transmitters you run the risk of interference from local radio stations. FM TMC traffic updates are available, but not XM Navtraffic updates. What is TMC? TMC Traffic is a proprietary FM transmission that is owned by Clear Channel radio stations, and feeds data to your GPS and can display this information onto your current map. It can report speed ratings and incident reports. The TMC plug-in is incorporated with the 12-volt plug. You don't need a subscription to utilize the GPS features, but you will need to pony up a few extra dollars for the TMC Traffic updates once your 3-month free trial period expires.

Garmin included a neat little feature that takes unique advantage of the GPS - a 'car locater' feature, meaning that if you park your car and remove the unit from the mount, it remembers that location and can be used to find your way back from a very lively night at the local pub. Trust me, I know.

The media features on the Nuvi 770 are also impressive, but some are kind of thrown in there just for the sake of having it. For example, who wants to watch a picture slideshow when they are trying to navigate? Not me, but it does have a picture viewer that accepts JPEG files. We also noted that the time it took to load pictures from my 12mp Fuji Finepix F50 were atrocious, even using a high speed Ultra II card. It might be safe to say that viewing pictures is NOT what this unit meant to do. Also, when I tried to view the picture 'FULL SCREEN' it would take a long time to load, show the picture for about 3 seconds, and then bring back to the picture selection. Hopefully it is just a software bug.

The media player supports MP3 audio playback, and also features the ability to play audio books from Audible, with book marking features. This is a cool addition, for those that listen to those items.

You can also turn on the unit's FM transmitter and tune your car's stereo to an unused FM station, allowing you to hear the navigation directions or hands-free calling through your car stereo.

And, blessed be the operating system gods - the Nuvi 770 works both with Windows based computers and Mac OS X (10.4 or later). It basically loads as a UMS device when plugged in, making drag and drop without cluttered proprietary software a delight.

The unit is NOT waterproof or water resistant, so be forewarned if you plan on using this on your bike or walking around while singing 'dancing in the rain.' It's also not made for motorcycle use, although I'm sure that won't stop a few from using it for that reason.

One feature, however, that the 770 is missing is 'Dead-Reckoning' which basically 'guesses' a user's location when GPS signal is lost or extremely low. An instance of this would be going through a large tunnel system. Dead-Reckoning utilizes certain internal measurement devices (gyroscope, accelerometer, etc) to estimate your location, and more often than not - gets worse and worse the longer you go without a GPS signal to help it re-acquire location. It is however, useful and would have been a nice feature to include.

Performance & Usage

Startup time
From the time you hit the power 'button', the splash screen for GARMIN pops up and you're up and running into the main screen within 40 seconds. I averaged about 32 seconds on a unit with no extras loaded, about 20 mp3's and a few more photos - so your start-up time may vary.

Acquiring satellite
The satellite acquisition was amazing. This model sports a Sirf chipset and has great reception, even inside of my lead paint laden old apartment. (Hey, being an editor for LL doesn't mean we're loaded!) From a cold boot up and 10 miles from the original boot-up location, it took the Nuvi 770 about 20 seconds to fully triangulate my position. I'm sure if you were to put this up to the task of acquiring signal in a cement parking garage you might run into troubles, but from what I've observed, the tracking and satellite acquisition was amazing.

Accuracy and Navigation
Accuracy and Navigation were flawless. They were spot on with most everything, and the POI locations worked well - like most Garmin Units are. It spoke the names of streets clearly and concise, with respectable timing to make the turns. Of course not all of the latest POI's may be loaded, requiring a software update, but they do have a handy POI entry system software available for download on their website.

Traffic data was updated pretty well - although, living in the mild Midwest, I wasn't able to test the full on 'traffic' features. If you are in traffic a lot, having the unit automatically re-route due to traffic jams might be a handy feature and I'm sure it would be used quite frequently, but for me, I am unable to comment on that feature to much. It did save me on a Saturday evening on my way to a friends place, rerouting me due to traffic occurring to a somewhat obscure concert happening that night, but it was a route taking me down a slow by-way, when I knew better. But - truth be told, this feature did save me the grace of dealing with the traffic on the original route.

Ease of use
Garmin has really nailed usability, which is key when you may be dividing your time between driving and tapping on your touchscreen GPS. You can easily choose to cancel the route you're on, or hit the detour button if you are faced with an obvious detour and can reroute within the specifics you define (skip tolls, no highways, shortest distance etc.). While this may not sound like much, some manufacturers bury the cancel route feature for some unknown reason - kudos to Garmin.

Here's the main screen, connected via Bluetooth to my phone, and no route entered. The top bar lists GPS signal strength, Bluetooth icon (if enabled), battery meter, and time.

Clicking on the 'where to' icon, brings up a simple interface to input an address, head to your designed home location, POI's and even specific Recently Found locations.

The second section titled 'Where To' offers an extras, cities, routes, browse map, and even coordinates entering - which might be useful for all you geocachers!

Selecting the 'Where To' and then 'Address' - you are opted to find a location within a state, and then you need to spell the city. So, clicking on 'Spell city'

Brings up the QWERTY or ABC keyboard (your choice offered by the mode selection). Enter the city, and after a few characters, if it recognizes it, it will complete the word almost T9 fashion and you are opted to select it.

However, if you want to find something 'NEAR ME' in the 'Where To' selection options, you can do just that, as shown in the above screen. After selecting that - you are giving your selection options (food, fuel, hospitals, etc.).

When you have chosen your destination, and then touched the 'GO!' green icon - your route is calculated and you are on your merry way. Simple!

Pressing the menu again - offers the glorious stop route, detour, and normal menu icons. Simple!

Battery time
A fully charged battery will last 3-4 hours, depending on screen brightness and whether Bluetooth is enabled. It also took me about 4 hours to fully charge the 770 from a zero charge. For longer trips, make sure you utilize the power adapter (which also supplies the unit with TMC traffic data), but if you just have a short jaunt to a new Thai restaurant across the suburban way with a hot date, using it on battery power should suffice (unless, you plan on going a few other places and don't want to get lost with that hot dateunless getting lost is what you want.)

Conclusion

The Nuvi 770 is an impressive navigation device that is feature rich with a nice display, good tracking, and decent Bluetooth implementation. Audio quality was good, spoken street names were excellent, and maps and routing proved to be very good as well. However, there are some features that didn't make it in to this specific model range and at the price points, is sort of disappointing.

Pros

• Great Mapping Detail
• Excellent GPS signal Strength
• Decently updated POI out of box
• Bluetooth Capable
• Simple Interface and routing features

Cons

• Slow battery recharge time
• TMC receiver requires 12-volt adapter
• Supplied mount is finicky for temperature range
• No wall charger supplied out of box
• No 'Dead-Reckoning' ability
• Spendier than others (but worth it for the Navigation performance)

Had it not be a steeper choice for most consumers, the Garmin Nuvi 770 would be a dead ringer f or Editor's Choice. However there are some features that should be included at this price point (speech input, Dead Reckoning, etc) which are missing, but we do award it Highly Recommended for its performance and capabilities.

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Technical Specifications

No specifications are available.