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Garmin Nuvi 850
Does everything as advertised, yet some features not as thought out as Magellin products. A remote control button is needed to access voice commands? Why not just have that built in all the time? The menus get too many layers deep to do many of the functions. So many features that you can get lost in the menus trying to do the simple and frequently needed items. The voices available give you lots of choices, but none are really clear and easy to understand. The data is missing some pretty important info (LAPD's stations near my place, several of my fave restaurants). But the screen is a jim-dandy winner, music and book playback are great on long trips or just waiting at the airport. The built-in FM transmitter could use a wee bit more power to be useful in a dial-crowded city environment.sweet gps for the price i paid off online seller
One problem is known to exist on this model , and that is it doesn`t turn off sometimes when you think it does and the battery dies.But sense its for the car it plugs in and charges itself while you drive, so unless you use it on foot there is no problem.This gps will find anything if your looking in the right catagory.(THE RIGHT CATAGORY IS KEY). ok voice rec system (one of the best i`ve seen) ........FM reciver mp3 player etc is static full so you won`t be using that ethier, but who makes a gps thats better then that..lol ..gps is what its called and that is what it does...POI severely out of date. Voice recognition turns itself off. Crashes.
I bought the 850 nuvi last night. Before taking it out on the road, I spent a few hours learning how to use it and read the forums. First off, I installed the latest firmware. The new Garmin software makes that extremely easy. Here's my major gripes so far: 1) The speech recognition turns itself off after entering several voice commands and I have to keep turning it on every few commands. THIS DRIVES ME NUTS AND IT'S NOT SAFE. There's nothing in the manual that explains that. Yes, I read the entire manual. I reset the device by turning it off for 8 seconds. That didn't help. For me, voice recognition is extremely important. I nearly drove off the interstate once when I was using my fingers to access an old GPS navigator. I stopped using it that day and never used it again for driving. 2) The POI are seriously out of date. I asked where the nearest hospital is and the nuvi returned hospitals 5+ miles away but there's a hospital one mile away that's been there for over 4 years. I asked where the nearest police station was and the nuvi returned just a few of the major police stations. There are numerous police substations here, one is nearly within walking distance. I'm guessing that the maps are about 5+ years old. And Garmin wants *me* to pay for a map update. No, I don't think so. 3) The nuvi 850 CANNOT be used when it's plugged into the USB port. 4) The accuracy of location is woefully lacking. I have 7+ year old Garmins that are accurate within 10 feet. The Garmin nuvi 850 says that my house is 200 feet away from where I set my home location. We have very good satellite access due to lack of mountains and buildings. The satellite indicator has all bars lit up. 5) Keeps crashing. This has already happened several times. The system is completely frozen and I have to reboot or it reboots itself. When this happens, some of the values that I set are reset to the default values. This is unforgivable. 6) When navigating, the unit doesn't display the destination. If I accidentally enter the wrong address from my favorites whose locations are somewhat near each other, I won't know about the mistake until I'm there. I've tried every button to find to display the destination location but it's nowhere to be found. If it's a matter of knowing a secret set of steps, then the product was poorly designed. This too is unforgivable. 7) The screen dimmer intermittently goes bright then dims again. I have the unit sitting untouched on my desk and it alternates between dim and bright. Minor gripes: My last two old Garmins came with cases, manuals and wall-plug rechargers. This came with nothing. I searched on the Garmim site for the manual and couldn't find it. Eventually I found it by using "Garmin 850 manual download" into Google. The web site sucks. I wouldn't have a manual if I didn't have access to a computer. I found a location on the Garmin site where I download vehicle icons. After an hour of searching, I never found that location again. I should have bookmarked it. On the positive side, it seems that the voice recognition is pretty good (at least in my quiet office). I can mention part of the street name (e.g. just Northway instead of Northway Court or Northway Drive or Northway Street) and it will bring up all of the possibilities. Still, that requires you to look at the menu instead of the road. Volume and clarity seems pretty good (at least in my office). By accident, I came across a feature that I didn't find in the manual: You can scroll the screen with your finger like an iPhone. Move your finger across the screen and the map moves but it's not nearly as smooth as an iPhone (and the iPhone is a lot less expensive). On another note, I've been reading the debates in the forums regarding the practicality of the "anti-theft" mechanism (a misnomer since the thief is going to steal it anyway if the unit or mounting bracket is visible). I decided to use the PIN since I don't have to enter my PIN if I'm already at home, BUT, it takes quite a few seconds for the Garmin to acquire enough satellite data to know that you're at the "security" location so it's faster to just manually enter your PIN. While the PIN won't deter theft, it's nice knowing that they only stole a useless brick.Worth the money...
I have a 2004 MB E500 that did not come with Navi, BT or Sat Radio as an option. Since that time, Mercedes has made them available as a after-market upgrade to the COMMAND unit... for $5,000!!! After many hours spent searching for the best alternative, I've decided to go with the nuvi 850, a jawbone earpiece and my Samsung Nexus 50. This is not the perfect scenario for me as I would have preferred an integrated solution, however, the unforeseen benefit is that each device specializes in a job well done instead of picking one device that does a mediocre job at one of the three. As for this Navi device. The speech recognition works fairly well in a quiet environment. This is common for any speech recognition software today. Most any new car with this technology will require the same. Functionally, I've had no issues. I travel often and have been impressed with the accuracy of the maps as well as the easy to use GUI. I would recommend this device to anyone looking for the best-in-class performance.Disappointing
This unit has some major flaws, most of which Garmin is aware of and seems to ignore because you see the same complaints on all their products. The biggest source of issues is the map. The points of interest are critically lacking; I'm not just talking about new points of interest that haven't been added yet, but also old points of interest that are omitted. For example, in my hometown the biggest bank in town has been here for well over 100 years, and in the EXACT same location for the whole time. The Garmin map doesn't show it. But the same bank has a smaller branch on the edge of town which has only been there for 3 or 4 years, the map does have that. Immediately adjacent to that bank is the towns largest gas station which has been there longer than the bank; the map doesn't show it. The largest grocery store in town is also curiously absent. I was waiting at a four way intersection in a neighboring state, the map showed no points of interest at the intersection, while in reality there was an enormous gas station with a mini-mall behind it. The fact that gas stations are missing is inexcusable. Before I got the unit my father asked if the only points of interest the map would show are of businesses that paid to be included, I hypothesized that a manufacturer which wanted to earn customer trust and loyalty wouldn't do that. Imagine if you were in a town you had never been to before and desperately needed gas. You ask the GPS for the nearest gas. Which answer do you want; the nearest gas is half a mile this way just around the bend, or the nearest gas is 10 miles the other way (because our map sucks), oops, sorry, you only had enough gas to get you 5 miles, tough luck. Whatever the reasoning, that is what you get with Garmin. The feature where the unit can talk to you and tell you directions is less than worthless; it's actually a liability. If you rely on it, it will actually get you lost. For whatever illogical reason, the voice feature does not mimick the on screen directions, it tells you much less so eventually it will forget to tell you about a turn you needed to take. The logic for routing you to your destination seems good, but one time it did an absolutely foolish route for me as I was testing it near home. I was driving on road A, and to get home all I had to do was turn on road B and drive a tenth of a mile to my house. Instead, the Garmin wanted me to drive past road B to road C, then drive down road C to where it intersected road B at the opposite end, then drive down road B a number of miles to my house. How it differentiates one road from another also leaves you confused sometimes. If you have a road in a town with a specific name, but once that very road leaves town it has a different name (usually a number) and that second name is how most people refer to the road, the Garmin will refer to the road by the wrong name. Also, sometimes it will tell you that you are getting on a different road, or you are exiting, when ABSOLUTELY nothing has changed from the driver's perspective. This even happened on a section of interstate highway where the road didn't even change numbers. Also, on a road with a fairly sharp bend, it will treat the bend as a "turn," this leads to more confusion as you spend time looking for an actual turn, not just a bend. This factor also changes distance measuring because the road after the "turn" is now a new measurement. The opposite has also happened; the Garmin has told me to "keep left" when I was actually turning from one road to another. Lastly, and I've only seen this once, it wanted me to drive on a road that has not existed for over 30 years! It was someone's back yard! (That could have been entertaining) For obvious reasons it doesn't work in tunnels. In most tunnels this doesn't matter because there are no turns or exits. But in some cities (Boston, for example) the tunnels have multiple exits and merges. It would be really handy if they could figure a workaround for this, as tunnels can perhaps be the most intimidating places to be lost. Two ideas would be short range auxiliary GPS transmitters attached to the ceiling or walls of the tunnel, or a simple gyroscope in the unit itself to estimate accurately enough where you are in the tunnel. Garmin has failed to win my loyalty, in the future I will try one of the other brands. If Garmin wants to keep me or win me back, they can update their maps DRAMATICALLY and give current owners free map upgrades. Update 12/2/08 Navteq does the maps for Garmin, and if you visit their site (navteq.com) they have a feature called the "Map Reporter" which allows you to submit changes to their maps. I've submitted a number of them today, so I don't know how they handle submissions yet. But it's certainly worth a try.Keyword : garmin
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