Unbiased Garmin nuvi 775T Auto GPS Review

One of the latest widescreen GPS units is the Garmin 775T. (Announced in August in the Nuvi line at this writing and offers many key upgrades over the Nuvi 770 offering that I think are useful and worth considering when shopping for a GPS. I firmly believe that text to speech and widescreen GPS units are worth paying the additional cash for, and being at the high end of the Garmin line, the Nuvi 775T provides both. That’s not all though, as Garmin has seen their way to adding in a few other goodies to keep people interested and enticed them enough to put the Nuvi 775T as priority on their list. The reason to spend a little more on the Nuvi 775T is to get both North American AND European maps pre-loaded on the device. If you are heading to Europe and want a GPS, this is a fantastic high end selection.

Let’s explore the features of the Garmin Nuvi 775T to see what it has to offer.

The main Garmin 775T features that the Nuvi 775T has that are above and beyond the Nuvi 760 are:

Free Lifetime Traffic - The “T” designator gets you lifetime traffic on the units. The main change for Garmin who has had a subscription model on their units until now. The Nuvi 775T has TMC Traffic. The Free traffic is supported by ads that appear on your GPS. Now before you say “I don’t want any ads on my new GPS!” you should understand that they are pretty unobtrusive and only show up if you are sitting still for more than 10 seconds.

Lane Assist - “Know the Lane Before it’s Too Late” - Garmin brings Lane Assist to its line, which I think is great. It helps you decide which ramp to take when you hit complicated highway situations. I like this a lot and I think that on any intersection that is slightly more complicated than a standard exit ramp, the image that reflects reality makes a big difference when you are navigating in unfamiliar territory.

3-D Buildings - Garmin is now bringing 3-D buildings to the Nuvi 7X5T line with semi-transparent representations of the actual buildings that are there. Cool stuff; a fun new development that will continue to make the GPS view look like the view out your windshield.

Faster Route Calculations - Garmin has defined itself in this release. The routes are calculated sooner - like when you select a Point of Interest, and so when you hit “Go” it is probably mostly done with the calculation. It makes for a much better experience; a LOT less time tapping your fingers at the end of the driveway for longer routes.

HotFix - This is Garmin’s terminology for a technology that speeds satellite acquisition times. This technology has the unit remembering where the satellites will be several days into the future so that when you turn it on, the time to satellite lock is a LOT faster.

Other Great Features:

Text to Speech - of course this more expensive end unit has text to speech, and it offers a good set of voices that you can use with different accents, etc.

North American AND European Maps - The Nuvi 775T comes with Maps of the US and Canada as well as Puerto Rico then adds maps of Europe. Western Europe has detailed coverage down to the small roads, while Eastern Europe is covered with increasing detail, but sometimes covers urban areas with connecting roads. By the time you get to the Ukraine coverage is for major roads only.

Bluetooth HandsFree - This allows you to use the Garmin as a handsfree unit for your Bluetooth enabled phone. This capability is added to the Garmin 765T, and stays for the Nuvi 775T.

Optimized Routes - The Nuvi 700 series offers a nice feature that allows you to enter in several stops along a route, and get the Nuvi to optimize the route for fastest travel. This can be very helpful when doing a lot of work or shopping or house hunting in an unknown area.

Garmin Garage; Download fun car icons - Garmin has opened up the Garmin Garage where you can easily download new “car” icons to your computer and load them into your Nuvi 775T. The process is easy and they offer everything from a kid on a tricycle, a flying slice of pizza to space ships…. oh yea, and a whole bunch of cars too.

Garmin will add Garmin HotFix technology to the line which lets the GPS units predict where satellites will be and grab a signal faster when you turn it on.