Electronics Garmin nüvi 780 4.3-Inch Widescreen Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator
Rating:  -
I purchased a Sony NAVU-83T, a Garmin 680, and a Garmin 780 to compare their features and routing capability. I kept the 780 and returned the others, but it was a very difficult decision.
The Sony unit [...] at Costco, and has a 4.8" screen (1/2" larger!). It has one of the best user interfaces on the market, primarily due to a few things: 1) you can always get back to the map by pressing one button, regardless of where you are, 2) you can always get to the main menu by pressing one button, regardless of where you are in the menus, 3) it has a split screen function that gives you lane guidance visually so that you know which lane to get into, well before the turn, 4) it has shortcuts, for instance to GO HOME you make a V shape on the screen and it takes you home...no menu navigation required!
On the down side, the Sony took FOREVER to calculate or re-calculate routes, and in many cases I missed the newly recalculated turn because it took too long to figure it out. It also took longer routes than the Garmin, would avoid commonly used roads for no apparent reason, and would not take me down roads that were shown on the map and clearly the shortest route. Last of all, the Sony took forever to gain a satellite fix once turned on. And the Sony mount was soooo very cool and useful! For $249 you got the cool mount and a nice carrying case. I did not get a chance to use the TMC traffic service.
The Garmin 680 ($349 at Costco) was a fine device, with very fast and accurate routing. It found points of interest quickly and accurately (the Sony often could not find them). However, I really liked the thin size of the 780 and the fact that the antennae was built in, so I kept the 780 in spite of the extra cost.
What do I like about the 780 (and the 680):
1. The MSN Direct is VERY handy and I use it every day for weather, news, fuel costs, and movie listings.
2. Very fast route calculations.
3. I have never looked for a POI that was not present.
4. The tour routes that you can download (for about $12 each) are cool. You can take car tours of a few hours that are laid out for you, telling you where to visit along the route.
5. The ability to sort points along a route is handy. If you have 10 places to go in one day, enter them all in and it puts them in the most efficient order.
6. It can find rest areas on interstates. The Sony could NOT do this, which is annoying when you are trying to figure out if you should stop at a gas station or wait for a rest area when you have three kids in the car on long trip.
What would I change on the 780? Many things, and most of them would cost Garmin no money to implement. These are simple fixes that they should consider!
Bad Points of the Garmin 780:
1. If I go into the menu system, I can go 7 or 8 layers deep to get to what I want to do. To get back to the map, I have to keep pushing the "BACK" button, up to 8 times in a row, to get back to the map. Stupid!
2. If I go into a menu item and decide I'm done, but don't want to push "BACK" over and over, the unit stays on the menu or submenu screen forever.
3. It would seem that on a unit this expensive it could give you lane guidance. The Sony does. The Tom Tom does. Why can't this unit, at almost double the cost?
4. When you turn off the car the unit asks if it should stay on or turn off. If you don't answer, it turns off in 30 seconds. For people who are making deliveries, or running errands, this is a real pain. It would be nice to allow you to configure this once to set how long it should wait before turning the unit off (options like 1 minute, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, for instance). This would allow you to run into Kinkos and back out again without having to wait for the unit to turn back on, get a satellite bearing, and then finally get to its map to tell you where to go next. Simple software change!
5. It would be nice to have the unit start up on the same screen where you left off. If you were on the map screen, then it should return to the map screen. If on the weather screen, then return to the weather. I like to keep it on the weather, but I have to hit about 6 different buttons every time I turn the unit on to get to the weather! Simple software change!
6. Most GPS units even at half this cost allow you to SEE your speed, direction, and target's relative direction while on the main map screen. This unit requires you to go to a dashboard screen to show you this information....so you have to choose the map or the dashboard to view. Since some people may not like this feature, it could be configurable. Simple software change!
7. I can't seem to figure out how to show the satellite signals/connectivity. ALL units have this, even though it is just for fun.
8. For $500 the Garmin should include a carry case for the unit. They sell it small size, light weight, and its "ability to know where you were when you take it out of the cradle, to help you find your car later", and yet don't give you way to carry it around safely. Just about every unit on the market, starting at the $149 units, include a case!
9. The 780 does NOT include an owners manual. You have to go online to view the manual, at garmin.com. Garmin may be surprised to know that not everyone has the internet (50% of homes don't). Although not perfect, the Sony included a fairly comprehensive start up guide and a CD based owners manual.
10. The display looks like a cartoon movie, and that causes a lack of detail. The Sony displayed a very concise map where you could actually identify road splits, acceleration lanes, etc.
11. There is no ability to show POIs on the map. You can route to one, but you can't just show them. The Sony allowed you to pick which POIs to show, and it actually showed you little BP, Shell, Cracker Barrel, etc. logos on the map so that you could know well ahead of time which POIs were near you.
12. Many units tell you how far to your next turn AND the direction you will be turning in. The Garmin tells you how far to the next turn, but it does not tell you which way to turn until you get within about 2/10 of a mile. So on most multi-lane roads I find myself staying in the middle lane as I get close so that I can go either way. It should warn you which way you will be turning at least a few miles in advance! As soon as you get onto any road the Sony tells you that your next turn is "LEFT 123 MILES", and it is always displayed on the main map. Handy. Simple software change!
I like the unit, but I only give it 3 stars because of its price, its lack of common sense features, and lack of "in the box" support. It's strong points are fast, accurate routing and MSN direct.
Rating:  -
Unit purchased 8/8/08 worked fine for 10 days. Unit would then not Load Maps for over an hour. Powered off the unit, reset User info. via Garmin provided solution. Unit will now boot - however after driving 2-3 miles - screen continually locks up and unit is non-responsive. Read numerous reports of 760/770/780 lockups on other sites. Until Garmin provides a solution- I would not recommend this generation - my Nuvi 680 and '09 Map upgrade has been trouble free for well over a year, and my handheld GPS60CS has been fantastic.
*update* After subsequent FW4.0 upgrade- unit would not get past Loading Maps.... Returning unit to Amazon via RMA for one try at a replacement. Crossing fingers as I've been a happy Garmin customer previously.
Rating:  -
Pretty accurate with GPS, I have only found one local road in which the speed limit was off, and it was listed lower than the actual. There was construction in the area a while ago and not sure if it ever incrreased after they were done, but it is on the roadway. Great to have gas prices, and they are fairly accurate. Nice to have weather, news and traffic too. All the things that TOMTOM 930T have, but cheaper
Rating: -
I've had several Garmin GPS units which I used mostly for hiking and offroad navigation -- for the most part Garmin has kept offroad and onroad units separate, you could have one or the other but not both feature sets in a single unit. My 60csx is an exception, it was the first unit I had that also included on road routing and I quickly became addicted to it. But the 60csx's screen is small and not terribly bright and it doesn't talk, so it's not great to use on the road unless you have a passenger to relay along the information. And it doesn't know anything about traffic, which I've been dealing with a lot recently. So I decided to try a nuvi -- I saw the 780 on sale and went with that. For the most part I've been quite happy with it -- it's not perfect, but it's a big improvement.
The good: overall I love it. I'm going to mention every little thing I've noticed that bugs me in this review, and I might end up sounding negative, so just remember that -- I have no regrets, I'd happily buy it again.
The screen is large and bright and easy to read, and can be read in full sunlight, although it doesn't seem to be the sort of reflective screen the 60csx has. With the spoken directions you don't need to look at it much while you're driving (although see my comments below about routing quirks). The interface is fairly easy to use, a lot easier than the handhelds. The speaker is loud enough that I haven't had any trouble hearing it, although I have to turn the radio down sometimes. The bluetooth is great for accessing my phone, and I've had no complaints about call quality from the people on the other end. Overall the routing engine seems much improved from the 60csx, although like all systems it has its quirks, and you should take a look at a real map once in a while just to make sure. What's nice is that you can easily add a via point to force a better route if you know better. I also like several of the MSN direct features, like movie times and local events, and the traffic flow information is really handy, especially in a city you're not intimately familiar with. For getting from point A to B on roads, this thing is great.
The not as good: the MSN traffic service is really not all you would hope it would be -- driving around both the San Francisco Bay area and LA, I have yet to drive by an incident it was reporting and actually find anything there, the incident data seems to be so far behind that it's useless. Possibly related, it seems to take the traffic data a long time to update -- in the SFBay area I'm often half way to work before I have any traffic data, and when driving into the LA area from the north on I-5 I'm also well into traffic before the traffic data starts to appear. The traffic flow data on the other hand seems reasonably accurate, and it has done an admirable job of getting me across LA far faster than I would be able to do on my own, occasionally even directing me onto surface streets to avoid traffic (or maybe non-existent incidents). However it's quite slow to decide things are bad enough to recalculate a route, I once saw the delay time go over 90 minutes (as in 2.5 hours for what should have been a 1 hour long trip) before it decided to find a new route. Yet in most cases when the delay listed is over 20-30 minutes if I force it to start from scratch it's immediately able to come up with a much improved route. So now I just do that.
One glitch in the routing engine that I run into occasionally is that it will tell you to get off and back on your route when you should just keep going. For instance at intersections it will sometimes tell you to turn left, then immediately right, when what it really wants you to do is go straight through an intersection. Or it will tell you to take an exit ramp only to tell you to get right back on the interstate when you should just stay on the interstate. When this happens it requires staring at the screen more that you should to avoid getting offroute.
When you're searching for something the categories are not always the best, they are often far too general. Maybe they do that to keep it simple, but finding a grocery store for instance can be a pain.
I've seen people complain about lockups, mine has only locked up once, when trying to display topo maps loaded onto a card zoomed far out. I haven't done this very often so I don't know how repeatable it might be, and whether it's a problem with the unit or the card. A power cycle cured it.
And I wish it came with a better mount, or that the mounts with arms (like they have for the handheld units) worked with the nuvi's. The windshield mount is useless to me (both in that it would not make the nuvi easy to use and in that it's illegal in California) as are any of the mounts Garmin sells for the nuvi. For now I'm using an aftermarket vent mount and working on my own adapter so that I can use one of the arm mounts, I'm not sure yet if that will work. But Garmin should be making those.
Finally, what's missing: first, more user configurable options. On the 60csx, on nearly any screen that displays numbers I can configure at least what numbers are shown, and on the map screen how many are shown. I'd love to be able to display elevation (which apparently this unit doesn't display anywhere?) and time on the main map screen, and be able to choose what numbers are shown on the speedometer screen.
Next, a compass on the main screen would be nice!
I'd also like it if some selection of points of interest could be displayed on the 3D map. Like if I'm looking for a gas station, or a movie theater, etc.
And finally, why do the nuvi's have to be limited to on road navigation only? What I really want is a more all in one/outdoor themed nuvi -- coming from the 60csx this feels like a dumbed down or crippled GPS. It could easily be so much more. For driving to work or finding my way around a city the 780 is really good, but when the weekend comes I'm left needing two GPSs. For instance, say I want to drive down to the beach, and I'm wondering what the tides are doing -- the 60csx will tell me that. Or if I'm driving down a long 4WD trail to get to where I'm going to start a hike -- I have to switch to the 60csx as soon as I leave the pavement. (The 780 will display topo maps, sort of, but it's not really meant to do that and doesn't do it terribly well.) And my earlier comments about wanting to know elevation and direction are along the same lines. I know a lot of people who would love to have a nuvi with the feature set of a 60csx, a nuvi for people who don't spend their entire lives in cities. If they made one tomorrow I'd buy one tomorrow, and I know a lot of people who would do the same. This and the iffy traffic data are the main reasons I'm only giving it 4 stars instead of 5.
Rating: -
I bought the 780 for the MSN service only to discover that I barely need it. The fuel price updates are nice, but there is no way to sort the prices so I am stuck looking at them sorted via distance. Sometimes that gas station is behind me, and when I am traveling, I do not go backwards unless I must.
As far as finding movies, and the other features, they are fairly useless to me. I can find Starbucks and WalMart and all my favorite restaurants without that MSN service.
As far as gps technology goes, it is pretty good. Sometimes it tries to take me through gated communities or closed roads, and a couple of times, it has taken me in directions that make no sense whatsoever, but most of the time it gets me right where I am going. Sometimes it has directions that are better than the way I normally travel.
I don't trust it to plan critical trips without reviewing what it is going to do before I leave. I wish I didn't have to do that, but I think this is a reality with any gps.
There are several things I love about this gps above others:
1. Google maps lets you send points of interest to your gps. This is only available for Garmin or Magellan gps owners. This feature alone has made me love owning a Garmin. Nothing beats finding your location on satellite and sending it to your gps. Especially if you don't have an address. I found a friends property in the mountains via satellite imagery and sent it to the gps. Once you give the 780 your Google point, it takes you right to the door.
2. The audio out connects right to the aux plug on my stereo. While the audio is tolerable for navigation direct from the gps speaker, when I connect it to my stereo, the bluetooth phone conversations are crystal clear and the directions are pristine.
3. The database of poi's is amazing. I have yet to look for a store or restaurant that it could not find. While camping recently, I looked for a Wal-Mart in Flagstaff, AZ. It not only found one that I would not have been able to spot from the highway, but it took me through all sorts of streets to get to it so that I looked like a local in a town I have never driven in.
4. When navigating complex intersections, the 780 always tells me what side of the highway to be on. This has saved me many a frustrating experience of not being able to make a turn because of being in the wrong lane position.
5. The traffic monitor, which may or may not be related to the MSN feature, is pretty cool. When it is issues a traffic warning, clicking on the warning button gives you the option of rerouting. If rerouting does not save time, it warns you of that. So far, I have never rerouted. I have realized, unfortunately, that sometimes the traffic info is outdated. It has told me that I was going to have delays, only to arrive and find the roads crystal clear on more than one occasion.
After having had the 780 for almost 3 months and having put it through most of its paces, I am a very satisfied customer. I would have probably been just as happy with the 680, but I guess I will never really know.
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