Automotive GPS Systems

5 comments

1. 

   R. Kintner says:

   August 30, 2010 at 11:20 am (UTC -5)

   Review by R. Kintner for Garmin nüvi 850 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator
   Rating:
   I recently bought a Nuvi 850. Here’s my advice for what it’s worth.

   The real value of a Nav system comes from the fundamentals.
   
   * Receiver
   
   * Maps
   
   * Routing Engine
   
   * Display
   
   * User Interface

   Garmin does a solid job in all these areas. But that’s not why you’re paying a premium for an 800 series Nuvi.

   This model has a couple of “nice to have” features that were introduced on the 700 series of Nuvi’s.
   
   * Where Am I
   
   * Where’s My Car
   
   Both are very well implemented and can be very handy. But again, all of the stuff I mentioned so far can be found in a Nuvi costing $300 less.

   So what are you paying a premium for?
   
   * Voice Recognition
   
   * User Replaceable Battery
   
   * Front Mounted Speakers

   Well, the front mounted speakers are still drowned out by moderate road noise. So, I wouldn’t pay a nickel for that. The only real sound solution remains the FM transmitter that everyone complains about. It works OK for me, in my car, in my area. Your mileage may vary.

   The user replaceable battery is excellent. For $30 you can carry a spare battery and go totally wireless in the car or use the Nuvi for 8 hours of walking around a city. I’d pay for that. In fact, every portable device should have user replaceable batteries.

   OK, that leaves the “Big Kahuna” feature, voice recognition. Don’t believe the hype from the professional reviews or some of the hosanna’s being thrown around in Amazon reviews.

   Does it work? Yes, it works amazingly well. In a dead silent environment.

   With moderate road noise or even indoors with a TV at low volume 15 feet away the thing to gets confused about what it’s “hearing”. It should have a microphone with low sensitivity and high directionality to screen out spurious noise. A little DSP noise filtering wouldn’t hurt either. Unfortunately, the standard piezo mic that Garmin also uses for bluetooth phone calls will pick up any sound coming from any direction. The result is that voice recognition becomes an excercise in frustration.

   Still, I’m gonna keep the darned thing. I’ll simply enter destinations in the quiet of my home, office, hotel room, or a restaurant before heading out on the road. The remote will live in my briefcase. It does save you from a lot of tedious keyboard entry. But, it is not the mobile safety feature that reviews would have you believe since voice commands are all but useless in a car. You can get essentially the same features in a Nuvi 760 and save yourself $300.

   Your decision.

   EDIT: Update…..OK maybe I was a bit harsh first time round. I have found that the unit will respond with moderate background noise…..some of the time…..if you yell at it. It appears to have the ability to lock in on the loudest sound it “hears”. So, if you are relatively close to the microphone and speak really loud (yell), it does respond some of the time.

   On the upside, connecting to the Garmin website was very easy. I registered the 850, downloaded the newest firmware, and downloaded/installed the latest maps (2009), all in about ten mintues without a glitch.
   

2. 

   LaurenW says:

   August 30, 2010 at 12:09 pm (UTC -5)

   Review by LaurenW for Garmin nüvi 850 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator
   Rating:
   I am a Realtor and have been using my Garmin GPS for almost four years. (It was the 2720 and had cost $999 when I bought it.) It’s invaluable to me in my business. Today it died as I was previewing a dozen homes and I went back to where I bought it originally and picked up an 850. Boy, am I disappointed!

   The new graphics will take some getting used to, but that’s not the problem. With the newer technology and all the bells and whistles, I had expected this unit to be MORE intuitive than my old one. Turns out it’s not. Twice it told me it could not find addresses in older neighborhoods where my old Garmin never had a problem. I had to guess my way across unfamiliar areas to find them and, sure enough, once I got there, the street names registered on my screen. I immediately saw what happened but was shocked that Garmin hadn’t picked up the slight differences.

   One street is named McLain Road. I typed in Mclain (small “l”) and it couldn’t find it. The old Garmin used all upper-case letters, so it found every address regardless of upper or lower case. This one obviously needs you to know which to use — very frustrating. The second one is spelled Hollowbrooke Lane. I typed in in every which way I could think of — Hollow Brooke Lane, Hollow Brook Lane, Hollowbrook Lane, etc. Now that I’m home and could play with it a little, sure enough, it found it. I should have typed in “Ln” instead of Lane and it had Hollowbrooke without the “e.” When I had typed in Hollowbrook Lane, it couldn’t find it because I spelled out the word Lane. Again, the old Garmin knew that Lane and Ln were the same thing.

   Another very annoying thing I found missing on this new one which was on my old Garmin was the display of streets. Typically, each street will show up as I get near it, whether I’m turning onto it or not. With the 850 it doesn’t show streets unless they are major thoroughfares. I finally clicked on the “plus” button twice in succession and it started to give me lines (which represented streets), but it rarely showed the name of the street. Again, the old Garmin showed every street you came up to.

   The voice prompts are also unreliable. Several times the voice prompt did not match up with the screen and if I tried to answer based on what I saw on the screen (for example, a city was on the screen and the voice was asking for a street address), I could not get it to sync and had to start all over or (more often than not) just gave up and tapped the information into the GPS. Again, a nice concept but frustrating if it’s not working properly!

   I can’t figure out why this newer model would be LESS intuitive than the old system. I’ll play with it for a few days, but at the price I paid, I won’t be keeping it very long if I can’t figure out how to make this work better.

   And, not to beat a dead horse here, but I’m shocked that the unit doesn’t come with a carrying case. I just bought my daughter a nuvi 350 last week for her birthday and it cost a fraction of what the 850 cost — and it had a carrying case! SHAME on you, Garmin!

3. 

   Edward L. Cole says:

   August 30, 2010 at 12:26 pm (UTC -5)

   Review by Edward L. Cole for Garmin nüvi 850 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator
   Rating:
   This unit functions perfectly as it is described. The voice-activation is nearly perfect. Probably one of the best implementations to date that I can remember. The map is a bit under-detailed for the price but it gets you where you need to go. Voice commands from the unit are very easy to understand. Controls are easy to navigate as are the menu options. One thing that I think is a bit ridiculous is the absence of Bluetooth Hands-Free calling. For $800 they could have included that and it is the reason that I gave it four stars instead of 5. Many of the options included with the device are useless to me to be honest. Games? Picture viewer? MP3 player? I don’t need any of these but the voice-commands for unit control are awesome.

   If you have the money to buy this unit, get it… if not look at some of the lower-priced 700-series Nuvi’s

4. 

   Sam says:

   August 30, 2010 at 12:38 pm (UTC -5)

   Review by Sam for Garmin nüvi 850 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator
   Rating:
   [Feb 28, 09 update: I've had the unit for several months and have grown increasing more frustrated with the unit for several reasons

   1. The screen update is "laggy". I've turned off everything that could slow down the system (e.g I've set map details to normal and lower) and the map is about 3-5 seconds behind. I live in a near dead-flat area with no hills or buildings. The unit obtains 6+ satellites at full strength. It says that I have 10 feet accuracy but too often it doesn't seem to know where I am. Because of the delay, it'll tell me to turn a bit too late and when traveling at 65MPH on a busy highway with multiple exits, even one second is way too long let alone several seconds. I've tried every option. I reloaded the firmware to an older level. Same results.

   2. Too often I get poor/useless directions. I keep getting "Recalculating, recalculating, recalculating". I was speaking to someone who was driving in in a car I kept hearing "recalculating...". Yep, he also had a Nuvi and he said the Nuvi drives him around in circles. I didn't tell him that I experienced the same problem myself.

   3. I'm walking along and am using the Nuvi to get me back to the hotel. Even though I'm right next to the ocean withe the battery nearly full charged, it just wouldn't find any satellites. I kept turning the unit off for 8+ seconds, taking the battery out, holding it up to the sky (either hoping to get a signal or maybe I was praying). After 5 minutes, I asked someone for directions.

   4. I'm tired of screaming at the unit.

   I'm asking myself why I paid over $500 for something that isn't helping and even taking me longer to get somewhere.

   I'm going to bring the unit back and try again when they update the unit; whenever that might be.]

   — Original review —

   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.

5. 

   The Green Mountain Boy says:

   August 30, 2010 at 1:21 pm (UTC -5)

   Review by The Green Mountain Boy for Garmin nüvi 850 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator
   Rating:
   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 have been overlooked. 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 a liability. If you rely on it, it will get you lost. For whatever 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. Just like other reviewers, I find it hard to hear the directions on the built in speaker unless it is silent in the car; no talking, no radio, fan on very low, etc.

   The logic for routing you to your destination seems good, but one time it did a very strange 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)

   Traffic lights seem to create two problems for the user. First of all, the 850 doesn’t seem to consider any time you might be stopped at a traffic light into it’s calculation for your ETA. That’s a fairly minor quibble. However, I think (though I’m not certain), this failing also affects the route it creates for you. I always have my routes selected for shortest time, not shortest mileage, which means a longer but faster route is better than a shorter but slower one. Because of the lack of consideration of being stopped at lights, the 850 can’t accurately measure the time spent on routes with traffic lights. On a recent trip, as a result of having to stop for three traffic lights in the span of about 2 or 3 miles, my ETA got worse (later) by five minutes. When you see how much speeding you have to do over hours of driving to get the ETA to improve even a minute or two, you know a five minute addition in such a short span is due to a huge error in calculating.

   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 accelerometer (like in the iPhone!) in the unit itself to estimate accurately enough where you are in the tunnel. I have heard of (but not experienced) a similar phenomenon when traveling on elevated highways where there are multiple roadways stacked vertically. The units aren’t accurate or smart enough to know which of the roads you are on.

   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[..] 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.

   Update 1/8/09
   
   It looks like Navteq does make a good effort to update their maps based on consumer input. As to when this might trickle down to Garmin is anyone’s guess, but at least we can help.

   Update 2/16/09
   
   In July 2008 I paid $700 for this from an amazon partner store; amazon’s price was $750 or $800 at the time. Today, seven months later, I see the price is $321. That will mark the last time I by an electronic device, especially a Garmin, on amazon that isn’t already steeply discounted. I know prices on electronics come down quick, but that’s offensive.
   
   Also, with continued use, the 850 isn’t growing on me, in fact the opposite is true. It’s flaws are too glaring to ignore, and more flaws continue to pop up. I’m sorry for the negative tone; I’m usually quite the optimist, but this whole product experience with the 850 is hard to take with a smile.

   Update 2/23/09
   
   The adventure continues. (The day before the following trip I updated my 850 on Garmin’s website) This past weekend I was in the city I went to college in over a decade ago, and while parked at a movie theater I asked the 850 to find me a Wendy’s restaurant so I could get a Big Bacon Classic. No matter what spelling I used (Wendy, Wendys, Wendy’s) it couldn’t find any Food or Drink establishment with those words in the name. Oh well, I thought, maybe there isn’t a Wendy’s here. So I went on my way and, no exaggeration, drove right by a very busy Wendy’s restaurant within a half mile of the theater. By this point the 850 is a joke in my head so I just laughed.
   
   On my trip home I followed my usual route which follows as many interstates and large highways as possible. Now, I mentioned before that I have my 850 set up to give me the fastest route, and I double checked that I had it set up that way on this trip. On one stretch of road the 850 desperately wanted me to exit and follow a different route, a route that presumably it calculated to be faster than the route I was following. Whenever I ignored it’s request for me to exit, it would quickly recalculate the route and give me a new ETA based on the new route. Logically, that route should be slower than the original route it calculated, so my ETA should become later, right? Most of the time that’s exactly what happens, but one time I ignored the request to exit, and the recalculated route was actually four minutes quicker than the original route.

   Update 5/27/09
   
   I took the 850 on another trip this past Memorial Day weekend, and came across a number of very annoying problems. Problem number one; this unit is almost worthless for getting around a city like Boston. If you don’t know what Boston is like, it’s not a simple grid pattern like Manhattan or most cities west of, well, west of Boston. It has streets going in all directions, and has some staggeringly complicated intersections. The intersections are so bad that half the time the 850 basically hangs you out to dry and says “get on X road” without telling you how. Thanks Garmin. It also, on occasion, used street names which were inaccurate. Like I’ve said earlier in my review, it’s calculations appear to not consider being stopped at red lights.
   
   Second problem; say you’re driving along the interstate, and you need something like food or gas or whatever. I needed gas so it shows me a list of gas stations by distance, starting with the closest. Seems reasonable right? Nope. In a situation like that I want gas that is in front of me, not behind me. On the interstate things behind you might as well be three or four times as far away as they appear. Each listing that it shows you has an arrow that tells you roughly in which direction the point of interest is in comparison to your current position, so fortunately I was able to scroll through a few pages and find what I needed in front of me. So I added that gas station as a stop and it directed me right to it which was nice. Well, it would have been nice if the gas station was still there. In fact the gas station was so long gone that there was no structure and no pumps to tell me a gas station used to be there. Thanks again Garmin.
   
   Last smeg-up from this trip. Without asking the 850 for permission, I exited the interstate, took two right turns, and within a quarter mile from the interstate I was at a gas station. When I started my car back up in order to get back on the highway, the 850 calculated the route back to the interstate. You would expect to leave the gas station, take two left turns, and in about a quarter mile be back on the highway, right? Nope. The route it showed me had me taking a right out of the gas station, and going off somewhere I hadn’t been getting to the gas station. Well, sometimes the entrance ramp and exit ramps aren’t in the exact same location, so I decided to follow the 850′s directions. When it took me onto a very small road in a wealthy neighborhood, and I still didn’t appear to be within a mile of being back on the interstate, I decided to turn around and go the way I would have assumed. Sure enough, two left turns and a quarter mile from the gas station I’m back on the interstate. Wow.

   Update 6/18/09
   
   Another trip, further aggravation. Trying to find a convenient gas station using the 850 while cruising down the interstate is like pulling teeth. I’ve previously mentioned that it will bring up a list based on distance, but it will include things behind you which is terribly inconvenient. It makes no sense to drive two miles further to an exit so you can get back on the interstate going the other way so you can drive three miles to the gas station that was the nearest 10 minutes ago. The best feature would be one where you inform the gps unit (probably by pushing one of the preselected distances) in how many miles you need gas; do you need it in the next 50 or 60 miles? Or is it pretty urgent and 10 miles would be better? Then, once the unit knows that, you ask for the gas station with the least disruption to your current route. If you’re like me and have a gas card with a specific brand (Exxon/Mobil in my case) then being able to request that brand specifically would be icing on the cake. At least at this point it feels like it would be icing on the cake, maybe it should be a reasonable thing to expect.
   
   The speed limit on most of the interstates around me is 65 and the 850 knows that. I tend to speed, usually doing between 75 and 80 in these situations. Over two hours solid of speeding by this much and my ETA usually does not change, if I’m lucky it improves by a minute. But if there is construction and I have to slow down to 60 for a mile you can be sure my ETA worsens by at least a minute. Is Garmin really calculating that people speed that much?

   Update 9/27/09
   
   Two times within the span of two blocks the 850 directed me to go the wrong way on one way streets. Tell me Garmin, why would a reasonable person find this product acceptable?

   Update 9/30/09
   
   Today, the 850 tried to direct me onto a road that doesn’t exist. I would have driven right into a farmer’s field. I took a look at google maps and google earth and there was probably a road there 50 or 60 years ago.