Garmin nüvi 750 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator with Portable Dashboard Mount Included
Posted by admin in Garmin 010-11280-00 Portable Friction Dashboard Mount for nüvi Portable GPS Monday, 9 November 2009 07:58 5 Comments
Product Description
Garmin nüvi 750 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator with Portable Dash Mount… More >>
Garmin nüvi 750 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator with Portable Dashboard Mount Included
Got my wife a Nuvi 750 for Christmas but it’s going back!
We live in the rural NW and my wife is a geologist and cartographer. We’ve had both an old Garmin 12XL as well as an Etrex Vista C with topo US 2008 which we are very happy with. While the Vista C is optimized for backpacking & trails and doesn’t have as sensitive a receiver as the newer units, we found it very versatile with one screen which can be customize as to to data it shows.
I don’t know if this is true of all Nuvi’s but what we didn’t realize despite much research is all it won’t do. The 750 is for those who want to be routed to an urban address period. It’s much akin to to having “Idiot Lights” on your dash rather than gauges. It’s obvious from reading reviews that on occasion all these units will give foolish and downright wrong directions which one can’t afford to blindly follow. The 750 fails to offer the kind of basic info that would help you figure things out with an old fashioned paper map, like: am I headed north or south on main street.
We have tentatively replaced the 750 with a Nuvi 500 multi purpose unit which cost $100 more but at least offers a screen under “tools” which gives you a compass rose with an actual degree heading ie south= 180 degrees. It remains to be seen how the 500 does off road especially in our sailboat.
The “compass” function is a simple calculation of the direction one track point is from the previous one and is easy to implement in software at little cost to Garmin. Speed is already calculated by the time it takes to cover the distance between tracked points.
While this may seem unimportant in an urban setting, in rural areas like ours where the NavTech map data has many back roads either wrong or more often just entirely missing, such a feature is essential as is the ability to mark a location with lat/long coordinates and return to it.
Several times a year we find ourselves visiting in large urban areas were it is most helpful to have a unit guide you to an address. But for most of the year while close to home the Nuvi 750 would just be a distraction taking up space on the dash.
Lastly, after having purchased 3 Garmin units this holiday season, I found a no name Plenio VXA-2100 with a 7″ touch screen for under $100! I took a chance a ordered two for less then the 750 cost me. While not perfect they run circles around the Nuvi 750. They use TeleAtlas map data rather than Navtech which in my area is much more complete and I can actually read the 7″ screen without reading glasses! They also give accurate voice directions, have an FM transmitter, play videos and MP3′s and even has an aux composite video port for a back up camera.
Rating: 2 / 5
When you turn this unit on, you watch the screen say “Loading Maps” for several minutes. Then it finally says “Acquiring Satellites” which it displays for another five minutes before the unit finally starts working.
So you’re driving for up to ten minutes before the device even knows where you are.
In a previous comment someone suggested this is not a problem … just turn on the device before you leave the house! How about just leaving it on all night???
If you want to get a device that works when you turn it on (a novel concept, I know) buy a TomTom.
Rating: 1 / 5
Lock time varies from instant to about two minutes but more normally around twenty to thirty seconds. Maps are a disappointment because neither my street nor several connecting streets are shown on the map. My route to work consists of several apparent off-road excursions. Many of the connecting roads are at least 15 years old and the local roads are at least 4 years old. There are no updates on the website. I live in Phoenix, about 5 minutes from the center of town so its not a case of living in the wilderness…
On the bright side the POI’s aren’t bad at all. My local chinese food store and ethopian restaurant are in there, along with places that I was sure wouldn’t be!
It is easy to input destinations direct from GoogleMaps and MapQuest to the GPS via the USB connector to your computer.
MP3 is reasonable and the controls are quite intuitive.
It is very annoying to get the warning message for idiots that comes up every time I power-on the unit!
I have no comment on the connectivity to mobile, since I disapprove of any use of mobile (even hands free) whilst driving. Maybe that’s why I’ve never made an insurance claim?
So despite the gripe about the maps in my area of the country, I’m very happy with this unit. Map routing is adequate but useful only in quiet traffic conditions. Where I live does not demand better routing so I can’t complain; but I advise if you need to find “fastest” routes in peak traffic times, and on a daily basis, this isn’t the unit for you.
Rating: 3 / 5
Greetings
I purchased this product a couple of weeks ago. I have used it locally in the VA/DC area and although the first day it was slow to get the sat connection – it is timely now. I have to admit that it places me (while outside at home) a house or two away but that is ok. I tested the routes and most of them in the local neighborhood make sense what it selects. Even in DC the signal was find in this not so sunny and clear days.
We will be driving to NY and testing it there both on the driving and the pedestrian mode. Will update this upon return if I find anything worthwhile mentioning. The prices on it are definitely getting better.
Rating: 4 / 5
I had to purchase this GPS since my nuvi 360 was stolen. This is a newer model than nuvi 360, but text to speech functionality is very poor in this model compared to nuvi 360. The voice breaks and speech synthesis is not smooth. It struggles in converting text to speech, which is quite surprising considering the fact that older model did not had this problem. The screen is bright but at night time the brightness drops to 20 percent. I thought it should have been atleast 40 percent during night. I returned the unit and got the other, but that also had the some problem, so it was nothing to do with a particular unit. Other things were fine, it gets satellite without much delay. The screen is better than older nuvi.
Rating: 3 / 5