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Technical Details
- Sleek, ultra-slim design fits in a pocket; High-sensitivity GPS receiver for fast satellite lock- Pre-loaded with City Navigator NT maps for North America, including more than 6 million points of interest
- Speech recognition allow you to speak menu options and keep your eyes on the road; Bluetooth-ready for hands-free use of compatible phones
- Features text to speech for spoken directions with real street names, MP3 player, photo viewer, multi-destination routing, "Where am I?" and "Where's my car?"
- NOTE: Model number on the box is 885T because the traffic receiver is included; however, the model number on the device itself is 885 as the "T" in 885T refers to the additional component
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By Shinigami (Los Angeles California)
BE WARNED: I chose this for the MSN traffic, but this service is being cut by Microsoft! I will end up buying a FM traffic device after my MSN traffic expires. So I just bought a nuvi1490t.
Previous owner of nuvi760, I bought this (in Amazon Sept2009) due to good reviews in numerous websites including Consumer Reports, but I got a bad item. I sold it and got a nuvi 1490t and very happy with its performance.
CONS:
- HANGS/FREEZE - even after software updates, this is an annoying problem especially during driving. It is hard to reboot when you are driving, you have to take off the battery to reset the device.
- HOUR GLASS OF DOOM - when searching for POIs this means your device is freezing again....just have to reset device.
- DIM SETTING - hard to change from dim display setting to normal, I just end up resetting the item by taking off the battery.
- LOW VOLUME - can barely hear it at 100%
- ALWAYS ON - even when I turn it off apparently it only shuts down the display but the device is still on, draining all the battery
- VOICE COMMANDS - useless, barely understands me. Only knows 1 clear command "GO HOME". Other commands gives me gibberish results.....
By KenSch888 (Florida)
Don't wast your money on MSN traffic, it poor at best and MS says they are going to discontinue the service.
I purchased the Nuvi885T for a trip from Orlando Florida to McMinnville Tenn. The directions were great. The approaching a turn warning was extremely helpful, especially going through the east coast's nightmare city, Atlanta.
The extra I used was the headphone output along with the MP3 player and plugged it into my radio's Aux input. I had music and it lowered for directions. It is much clearer this way.
A small issue was when the unit froze. I had to remove the battery to get the unit back up and running. I thought it had died and was grateful it was resettable by removing the battery. BTW - I have the latest software loaded.
The one BIG drawback is MSN traffic. It told me about an accident after I was stuck in non-moving traffic on I75 for a half hour; then it predicted a 20 minute wait (like Vista, can't get anything right). Also, MSN only updates when you have been in a city for at least a half hour. I was constantly seeing yesterday's gas prices or the gas prices 100 miles ago.
Garmin ships the NUVI 885 with the MSN antenna, if they change and ship with a lifetime NAVTEQ traffic antenna, it would be great. Otherwise you have to purchase the NAVTEQ for about $120.
By M. Duhamel (Lemon Grove, Ca United States)
I purchased this unit several months ago and paid the extra $99 from MSN Direct for lifetime service which is 4 Years. Today I recieved an e-mail from MSN Direct reporting they will discontinue sevice on 1Jan12 due to low sales and that they would prorate a refund based on a 3 year service. If I had know this I would have bought a unit with the free FM service for lifetime. Now I wonder how reliable the service will be since they will be out of business on 1Jan 12.Could not recommend this unit because of that fact.
By Bobcat44 (Ohio)
I read though all of the information on the Garmin 88T and thought it would be a great GPS. When I received it I called MSN for my free three month trial and was told that MSN was not supported in my area. I was also told the $129.00 life time MSN package was no longer available. The customer service rep. suggested I could go to Best Buy and get a prepaid card for the lifetime package if they still had any (made me wonder why I bought through Amazon instead of Best Buy). When I tried to exchange the Garmin 885T for a Garmin model 1490T which does have a traffic receiver that works in my area I was told I can't exchange I would have to return it, wait for a refund from Amazon and buy the other Garmin. I was also told my refund could take up to four weeks. I really feel like Amazon let me down with this and I wanted others to BEWARE.
By Carlos Perromat (Lompoc, CA United States)
This is my third Garmin GPS. I wished I loved it but I don't. Regardless, I won't return it. I mainly bought this unit for two reasons: I wanted the voice recognition and the lane display. I've found myself too often both not knowing which lane to take (I am thinking Seven Corners in DC) or looking for a restaurant in the middle of a drive and having to just take an exit only to search for the place in my GPS. I'll comment on those features first. The lane display works quite well, at least where I do my driving, both in DC and Southern California. While it is my understanding that the feature is not available in more rural areas, I also think that probably in those areas it is not all that necessary. I feel a little cheated though. The feature is both a combination of new map information and the software to display the icons showing the lanes in the freeway. This feature could have been implemented in my older Garmin unit without problems with maps and firmware downloads, but obviously Garmin has no interest in that. Another useful improvement that lets you group favorites by category could also have been an easy fix in old devices. The voice recognition receives a mixed review. It only works when everything is very quiet, and even then I find myself yelling at the device. Granted, I have an accent, but the unit seems to be able to deal with it at some times and not at all at others. My main issue with it, however, is that it still forces you to look at the screen when using it, which sort of defeats the purpose. However, the activation through a control attached to the steering wheel works very well, it's quite clever, and you end up knowing what options to select out of habit. The search by spelling feature is perplexing, because it works reasonably well in spoken mode. It's a mistery why the device can understand me saying a random word and not one of the preset options in the menu.
I do have serious concerns about the unit. First, the speaker is, as most reviews say, extremely underpowered. Makes you wonder if the people at Garmin ever test their products. I know that somebody at that company made the decision to go with this particular speaker over what they were using before. It's infuriating because the effect is very obvious. This leads to a second issue, and a more important one. Because the volume is so low, I can't use the device with my cell phone like I did before. A conversation becomes impossible. Another annoyance is that when I used to pair my previous Garmin with my phone, it would upload my contacts and allow me to use them for dialing. No more. This Garmin forces you to dial by number every time. If you are like me, you no longer remember any numbers. I honestly don't even remember my home or office number. You could try to supply the sound to your car audio system by using the integrated FM transmitter. In my experience it doesn't work very well. Even if it did, I don't want to spend my trip listening to static and the annoying synthetic voice from the unit. And I like NPR.
The MSN service... what to say. I've mainly used the traffic feature. I've played with other information, and found the movie times complete and precise. The flight information provided only departures, not arrivals, don't ask why. My main gripe is with the traffic information, though. It is quite useless. For example, the freeway that takes me to work always appears in the unit as heavy traffic. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn't. The problem is that the unit will try to route around this supposed traffic. In my case that means taking a parallel highway with traffic lights. What the unit doesn't know, but I do, is that when traffic is heavy on the freeway it is also heavy on that highway. There is no traffic information for anything other than major freeways. The unit can perfectly route you from a fluid freeway to a congested road. So much for help. The information is so bad that I've learnt to ignore it. Got tired of seeing supposed congestions where there were none, and stuck in traffic with the unit happily displaying fluid traffic conditions. The one neat feature is that you can send addresses to your GPS from the Bing search engine wirelessly. That saves time. But you could always plug the device and send the address through the USB port. I still don't know if I will sign up for the service once the 3 month trial is over. But that is just the geek in me not wanting to remove any features. I don't think the service is worth it as it is now, but they could fix the traffic information in the future. This issue was exactly the same with my old unit, which also had MSN service.
In conclusion, this model is larger than my Street Pilot, it does have the two features that I wanted, and mostly they work. The negative part is that things that my Street Pilot does very well, like connecting with my cell, or routing, are not only not improved, but actually made worse by two years of development from Garmin and Microsoft. And all the other novelties don't really make up for it. I don't expect progress in every feature from one generation to the next, but I also don't expect things to get worst. Next time I will start looking at the GPS units from the competition. I can't recommend this product, but I was such a Garmin fan that I don't really know what the competition looks like. What I can tell you is that if you are just looking you might want to wait for updated units, where Garmin might return to do what they used to do very well. Right now they seem to be more worried about competing with the GPS service in your cell phone (yes, they have developed a cell phone). If you do need a GPS unit, and you do want hands-free operation, then this will take you there. If you only want the lane display, that functionality is common in other much less expensive devices. If you don't care about either, but you want the GPS unit to double as a bluetooth receiver for your cell phone, look elsewhere.
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