When will the 880 be available in stores?

It would have been nice if this $999 device could display an arrow for upcoming turns just like the Nuvi 255 does. The dual front firing speakers being the same volume as the single speaker Nuvis is a bummer too.

Nice write up Fletch as always!

I would say a few features Garmin should have included is lane positioning which will tell you ahead of time when and what lane you should be in when exiting or entering a highway.

3-D landmark buildings images would also be nice.

I would say at the $999 price, it will not be as attractive as it would be at $699 which I think may be reached by Dec this year possibly. Under Con the price should be posted as a deterrent.

Including EU and SouthEast Asia maps would have made it more attractive for world traveler since TomTom 930 includes EU for half the price and have VR features and bluetooth also.

Overall, it is a wonderful machine and Garmin is doing a wonderful job for the PND market.

Always enjoy your reviews Fletch.

Terrific review, though I wish someone would develop an interactive tool of all possible GPS attributes, and allow users to weight them and get recommendations. But I digress..

The review mentions Dash as the only GPS not afflicted by false traffic density reporting. This is true only to the extent that there are other "Dashers" who recently have driven the routes. In my case, this lead to false confidence, and caused me exactly the same issues as with other GPS's. There just aren't that many Dash units out there yet, and the INRIX data service it uses to bridge the gap does no better than the other traffic services.

So for now, back to Garmin. All else aside, the route's the thing.

Does the Garmin Nuvi 660 show when and what lane to be in.

I would say a few features Garmin should have included is lane positioning which will tell you ahead of time when and what lane you should be in when exiting or entering a highway.

AFAIK, only the upcoming Nuvi 2x5 units have this feature.

Oh wait a sec., that's not correct. The 2x5 units only have an arrow pointing the direction of the next turn. I don't think Garmin has any unit that shows what lane you should be in.

If the 8xx series really does run on embedded Linux, someone might be able to come up with some addon that could enable this.

Hi.
First of all i must say the P.O.I on the gramin SUCK.
i have the gramin 780 and almost every day I'm trying to use the P.O.I and ending in a non-existing places , I'm not saying the the poi is old database I'm saying that the places I'm routing to was never there before , means wrong address.
i wonder about the Speech Recognition if a guy like me that my English is not my native language and i also have some accent if the device will understand me at all?

Rambling review for a doomed GPS, who's gonna pay 2x compared to 780 or TomTom 930 ! Garmin have lost their touch.

In the last 6 months I've tried the TT 920T,930, 730, Nuvi 680, The Sony with the 4.8 inch screen, and an LG and a 7 inch nextar peice of junk.

The Garmin Nuvi 760 is the best out of the bunch.

I have no reason to be loyal to any of the companies, I want a unit that I can be confident using as a cab driver, and while no GPS is 100% without faults, the 760 is currently the best unit available.

Don't get me wrong, tomtom has some cool ideas and options (some which I actually prefer to the 760) but until they work out the bugs, the 760 will be the only gps in my cab (until the 860 is released)

I am very impressed with the Magellan NEW RoadMate 1430 so far, and I think it would be a wonderful PND at the price Magellan is asking for that includes a 4.3" display, TTS feature that is much better than the older version, TMC RDS and 6M POI's and a much better speaker than the Maestro 4250.
All I can say is this could be the answer to the Nuvi 260W for Magellan.
Expected street price between $250-$300 and that is an excellent value for this product.

The very first item under the "Cons" section is "No arrow indicating the direction of the upcoming turn." Yet the photo of the 880 at the top of the review shows just such an arrow. So, which is it? Arrow or no arrow?

Cons "No arrow indicating the direction of the upcoming turn"?? Yet the photo shows such an arrow.

This con is not listed for the 760, but the pictures are the SAME!

What's the real story here?

Thanks.

To Jeff Pfohl and others,

You don’t understand what the reviewer is saying about the turn arrow. Yes the pictures shows a turn arrow on the map just as you approach the turn, but not when you are 2.5 miles away for example. Magellan and TomTom shows a turn arrow on the screen at all times, the Garmin Nuvi’s does not.

As always, a blatantly biased review. Let me just ask you something, Fletch. Why would you compare the 880 with TomTom's 720? Hasn't the top-of-the-line TomTom 930 been out on the market for about a month now? How can you compare a $999.00 device with a $400.00?

I run a demo on the TT Go 930 for the three trips you put out as Garmin's superior routing engine performance. Except for the third trip from Boston to Cambridge, the TomTom Go 930 gave me an almost exactly the same route as your Garmin 880. For your third trip, however, your starting location(1200 Beacon Street, Boston, MA) could not be recognized either by Google, Yahoo, or MapQuest. Where did you get it from? It appears that the house numbers on Beacon Street end at 999. Yahoo suggests that the closest house number for 1200 Beacon Street is 998 Beacon Street. When you demo-run that on Yahoo maps, the TT 930 gives you a much faster route than Yahoo.

My point, Fletch, is that please when you try to endorse a certain product, at least get your facts straight. Don't use a non-existing address. And when you compare a high-end Garmin, compare it with a high-end TomTom. Otherwise, you will damage your credibility and nobody will care about your reviews. If some people consider you to be in the employ of Garmin, don't be surprised because you gave them a reason to think that way.

First off I do not get the attitude of some responders here. I do not think Fletch is trying to endorse any product. If you read carefully he said that for the most part the review of 880 was written with use of 780 model, hence the comparison with earlier model of Tom Tom. Fletch have not covered new and exiting features like picture navigation and instant on technology.

What strikes me most is a lot of posters here down Garmin for not putting lane positioning system. I personally do not see why it is useful. Garmin tells you more than mile away - take an exit on right - this is already clear what lane you need to be in!!!! Why would you be in the left lane when your exit is on the right? What I cherish most is clear Text-to-speech coupled with nice bright screen.

Finally - VR is above and beyond any additional features found elsewhere. Garmin focus was on VR and they have delivered. This system can be fully controlled by voice!!!

I am a happy owner of 880 - waiting for it to ship. If you put your safety first instead of some eye candy on the screen get 880!

Max,
At the time of the review, TomTom 930 was out for about a month. If he was testing the routing engine of the new 880, why not compare it with the new TomTom? My theory (I could be wrong) is that Fletch tested the TomTom 930's routing engine with Garmin 880 and found the former to be superior, or equal to the latter, and opted to give TomTom a beating (as usual) by comparing it with TomTom 720. (We don't even know if he has TomTom latest maps on the 720.)As I said before, I demo-run Fletch's trips on the TomTom 930 and found them to be identical with Garmin's. This is someone who reviews GPS devices and should know better if he wants to be credible.

On another major site, there is a comparison drive, cross the entire United States and back. The poster has had more than his share of issues with the 930. I myself own a 930. Guess what? The nuvi 780 the poster is using for comparison is so far beating up the 930. Garmin's older tech against the latest from TomTom. To make matters worse, the reviewers 930 has taken to rebooting so often now that the reviewer has taken it out and gone back to a 920. For those suggesting the Garmin 880 should be compared to the TT930, I think there would be a clear winner. Not what you want to see. IMO, the 930 is much less stable than the 920. Save the $500 you'd spend on the 930, put it towards a 8x0, or just buy the TT920.

Mike,
You are probably right. The truth to be told, the competition among GPS makers is so tough that it actually puts burden on consumer to make a choice. Every unit has differential set of features, so we cannot have them all.

On the review issue: I agree with you in the sense that if this site is a GPS magazine all the relevant units must be reviewed here. So far the majority reviewed is Garmin. This gives an impression of skewed opinion. I think Fletch needs to carefully put competing units side by side and show how similar features are implemented in them and how they are different

Max, have you compared Garmin's lineup to TomTom's lately? Garmin easily has more than twice the number of models TomTom does.

The 930 seems to be a buggy unit though judging from many of the reviews I've read of it. Go to the GPSPassion forums and read the long thread in the comparison forum. One of the moderators there just took a GO 930 and Nuvi 780 on a long road trip in which the 930 had many spontaneous reboots / freezes.

I have Magellan Maestro 4250 Hardware revision 4 with the latest firmware. After the firmware update it calculates route very fast. It does show the arrow for the next turn, it does allow to exclude any part of your route by clicking on it, it has very accurate POI and AAA tour book build in (very useful). I got complementory 1 year FREE traffic subscription. And here is the punch line: I got it at Costco for $250. Although 880 probably a better unit overall for the fraction of its price 4250 is much better value.

I have been following the comparison being made by a Garmin Nuvi moderator between the Nuvi 780 and TomTom 930. Other than the reported reboots (which I have yet to see occuring even once in three weeks of owning it), the 930 has had a decent performance.

The key word is decent. In many ways the 780 has outperformed the 930. POI's have been more accurate, speed limits show much more often, the 780 can navigate to a parking lot location, unlike the 930, and the system has been much more stable. The 930 certainly is no nuvi killer.

Max

"What strikes me most is a lot of posters here down Garmin for not putting lane positioning system. I personally do not see why it is useful. Garmin tells you more than mile away - take an exit on right - this is already clear what lane you need to be in!!!! Why would you be in the left lane when your exit is on the right? What I cherish most is clear Text-to-speech coupled with nice bright screen. "

If you drive in Los Angeles or on freeways that have multiple option exits and entrance, the lane position would be most valuable since the voice command sometime does not speak as clearly as it should and at once glance you can tell you are supposed to be in the correct lane instead of being out of position.
Again, it is a matter of choice, I would love to have that feature but who knows? Maybe others find it useless.

"Lane Assist" as TomTom calls it could be useful IF it actually appeared fairly often in the navcore8 feature set. It does not. Navigon has a fairly thorough implementation, and the Magellan split screen is better than nothing. I would guess that lane assistance will be common to nearly all PND's with a year or two, historical speed data even sooner. Six months from now all TeleAtlas customers will have access to TT's lane assist and IQ Routing data, which includes Mio and HP, among others. Navteq is already making historical speed data available.

When some of you yell at Garmin that they did not include some feature found with lousy implementation in other brands, you miss important concept: marketing strategy. As Fletch had posted Garmin owns American market with largest GPS market share. That being said, the leader cannot allow putting some feature that works only some time and looks like a good selling point but results in frustration later. If Garmin will decide to put lane assistant or anything else in the their units you can bet it will work right! It is like with speech recognition - many included it only Garmin got it to work to level that it is not only a selling point but something you can actually use and enjoy.

Fletch,

Since you have tested the Nuvi 880 - do you mind commenting on following:
(1) Does the unit run on Linux
(2) Have you tried picture navigation? If yes how does it work
(3) Does the unit show digital elevation maps? Some stores list this feature as included in the Nuvi 880, but Garmin web-site does not mention it

In the cons, it lists no way for custom road avoidances, but I believe that the 880 can avoid specific roads and specific areas. The menu set up is similar to the Garmin nuvi 5000 which can do that.

I investigated the picture navigation feature, but I'm skeptical because all the photos are user generated content and not certified by any source.

As I understand, it will not.

Fletch, does the Nuvi 880 have the attention tone that chimes / dings right before it plays the next direction? I was disappointed that the Nuvi 7xx series doesn't have this feature (even though the sound / tone for it is in the Nuvi 7xx series' diagnostic menu). It's an important feature for me since I like to connect my Nuvis to my car stereo's audio input w/ interrupt feature.

Garmin has delayed the 8xx further. Someone at another GPS forum got an email from Garmin saying sometime in July. GPSCity changed the ETA from June 6 to June 23.

RVProtection products website states that they expect 880 by June 18. I am a bit skeptical about this date given some discussion around. BTW Garmin is not doing themselves any favors by delaying 8xx into the summer driving season

I wonder what is the reason for this delay

According to posts at another site, Garmin is shipping today.

Warren,
Garmin is not shipping these the 880s yet. In fact, they haven't even released them yet. According to Garmin's website, it says that they will be availble during the 2nd quarter of 2008 which is between now and the end of June.

Warren, what website are your referring to?

Probably the GPSPassion Nuvi forum. A member of their forum claims to have received an email from Garmin stating that they are shipping.

@Stefan, GPSNOW,com has the 850 in stock.

Warren:
Are the 880s in stock at GPSNow?

Crutchfield and GPSNow have the 850 in stock. No one has the 880 in stock yet.

Looks like about 2 weeks (or less)for the 880

Just wanted to comment on how accurate the "users rating" at the top of the review is. 109 "owners" give it a 3.3 rating. Interesting since no one has one yet.

The first 880's should be in some users hands by Wednesday, June 18. (At least those willing to pay for overnite shipping)
The 880's will (apparently) begin arriving at some of the Garmin authorized dealers on Tuesday the 17th.

I have had an 880 back-ordered on Buy.com since March. Are they an Authorized Dealer? I hope they can ship mine soon after June 17th - I go on vacation July 4th!

My friend picked up the 850 a couple of days ago and, besides speech recognition, you can do custom road or area avoidances. You just have to scroll down in the 'Avoidances' menu to enable them and then select the road/area to avoid.

My friend picked up the 850 a couple of days ago and, besides speech recognition, you can do custom road or area avoidances. You just have to scroll down in the 'Avoidances' menu to enable them and then select the road/area to avoid.

No user manual is included, just a quick start manual. There is no CD with an embedded manual on it either. The box "contents list" does not even list a user manual. Unit was delivered today, June 18, in Canada. Haven't yet had a chance to use it, but compared to my 360 it seems very slow to acquire satellites here in Ontario.

I am looking at the 760, 780 and the 880. Leaning towards the 780. In your best assessment which way should I go? I like the routing features of the 700 series over the 600 series and the MSN would be useful to ne for traffic. That brings me to the 780. Garmin needs to just make a unit with all the tweaks from the 600, 700 and 800 series instead of nickel and diming us to upgrade to a few features. Any comments and testimonials would be appreciated. Thanks

Go with the 760 + MSN Direct Receiver.

It's cheaper than the 780, but it's essentially a 780.

Go for the nuvi 780. Than you know that it's a genuine 780.

Stefan, a 760 with MSN cable option is a "genuine 780"

So what you guys are saying is that the ONLY difference is that when they are packaged is that the MSN cable goes with the 780 and not with the 760? The MSN antenna is what makes a 780 a 780. Correct?

Robbie: You are correct.

Warren: Actually, a 760 with a MSN Adapter/Cable is not a genuine 780. It is only a genuine 780 if the back of the GPS device says nüvi 780. If it says otherwise, than it's NOT a genuine 780.

Stefan C,

The 760 may not have a sticker on the back that says "Nuvi 780", but a Nuvi 760 w/ a GDB50 MSN Direct Receiver is identical to a Nuvi 780 aside from the cosmetics that show each unit's model number. Once a Nuvi 780 is updated with F/W v3.00 and a Nuvi 760 w/ GDB 50 MSN Direct receiver is updated with F/W v3.00, they are exactly the same (again, aside from the sticker on the unit that says what model it is).

Oh and in almost all cases, a Nuvi 780 is more expensive than a Nuvi 760 + GDB50 MSN Direct Receiver.

In EVERY case, a Nuvi 780 comes out of the box with only a 3 month subscription to MSN Direct. When a GDB50 MSN Direct receiver is purchased separately, it comes with a one year subscription to MSN Direct.

The Nuvi 760 + GDB50 MSN Direct receiver is definitely the way to go if you're interested in the Nuvi 700 line, especially since prices on the 760 have gone down to as low as the 750 in some places.

I know. You don't need to explain that.

Garmin PLEASE address the SOUND ISSUE! I just got a 680 to replace a Mio c320 and I can't hear the commands w/o rolling up the windows and turning off the radio! The Mio was able to go TOO LOUD... so why not crack one of those open and use those parts?

I was so excited to see a new unit offered with TWO front firing speakers and I see the review says they're no louder then the older one speaker style? What is UP WITH THIS? The point of a speaker is to have the option to follow instructions w/o taking your eyes off the road! The screen is great! Can't you spend another .25 per GPS to fix the sound???

I drive a truck. So I'm sure those buyers who drive moderate to quiet cars don't see the problem, but compared to other brands this is a very week area! Also... please make QWERTY address input that blacks out non-applicable letters. Everyone else has this feature.

I keep reading reviews that say "no gps is perfect" but I don't understand why the GPS Giant... Garmin... can't make one that is?

Fletch... I'm sorry I forgot to THANK YOU for your incredible reviews. I've enjoyed your attention to detail and extremely comprehensive breakdown!

I wish that one GPS had:

1) QWERTY Keyboard that black out letters and gives a list once you hit enough letters to yield only 2-3 options... as Mio and Magellan do.

2) Screen must be bright and clear as Garmin is.

3) Screen should refresh quickly for accurate REAL position on the map. (I'd gladly dump the candy-car choices on my Garmin for more refresh speed... and lines could be slightly more jagged for the same reason.)

4) Unit MUST be LOUD and CLEAR!

5) I had a Mio that would let you "grab" the screen and move it w/o changing views. This is HUGELY helpful for combining traditional map navigation with GPS technology. I hate how my Garmin switches to airplane view from 10,000 feet up. On the Mio one click on "follow" snapped the map back to following... all while never changing the perspective... only the position. That was very nice.

6) I like the new internal antenna for pedestrian use. The 680 isn't really pocketable unless I want to flip back and forth for navigation.

7) The Mio had sliders for choosing the amount of interaction I wanted from the unit... It was nice having control of the frequency and distance of prompts!

8) The distance accuracy was much better on the Mio (believe it or not)... while it didn't have TTS... when it said "turn in 400'..." it WAS 400'... the prompts were accurate to reality. I'm sure most people don't like to judge distance, but this accuracy was very comforting... it was akin to flying IFR and being able to trust the visual, rather then confirming what you see around you.

9) There are other cool little things that the Mio did... which shouldn't take that much processor, but gave the impression of attention to detail... such as map color scheme choices (like you'd have in Windows)... and a detailed "dash" that could pop out with a tap of the screen... while still showing half of the actual route being traveled... on the Garmin you tap out the map to see these details.

10) A permanent arrow ghosted for the next turn would be nice. Many other GPS systems have this. To me this is more valuable then a speed limit sign!

Anyway... that's my wish-list... Keep up the good work! If you are so motivated, feel free to pass my requests along to those who may hear it... or how about a "feature poll" predominantly shown on your site? A breakdown of what people want and what is most important? I think that the marketplace already proves that Garmin is doing ENOUGH in this regard... to lead... but my list is why there's still competition. Other people like the extras as well. I think Garmin could crush the marketplace if they took a hard look at WHY there's competition.

Got an 880 yesterday.

Setup was a breeze. Works in downtown Chicago in the 'canyons'. Voice Recognition is great, no issues. The only problem is the bluetooth. It recognized and connected with a Motorola Razr quickly and easily. Only problem is when the phone rings you can not understand the caller. Reception is garbled to the point I shut it off. The caller can hear you clearly but inbound calls do not work. I'll post Garmin's response.

I just picked one up at Frys yesterday and have had it out on a couple of short trips. The 880 does show upcoming turn arrows.

The bluetooth works great with my T-Mobile Wing phone. No glitches with either inbound or outbound calls.

The speech recognition works very well - the only errors I've seen so far are when a command that is appropriate outside of the current context is confused with an option on the current page, but this is to be expected with speaker-independent voice recognition, particularly in a relatively noisy environment.

Although the destination does give the side of the road, in at least one case the wrong side was given.

I am new to this site and very impressed with all the knowledgable comments. The review was most helpful. I had a Garmin 660 and it stopped acquiring sattelites. I had a plan with Circuit City so they took the non working unit back with no questions. I had heard that voice recognition was coming, so the store clerk exchanged my NUVI for a Magellan 4250 as it had some level of voice recognition. I did not like the Magellan. I live in Florida and when wearing my sunglasses, the Magellan screen was way too light to see. Also, the volume was so low on the speaker that I could hardly hear, especially when using Bluetooth with my TREO phone. So I am waiting for the Garmin 800 series to be available at Circuit City so I can use my credit to purchase one of those. But I do not understand the difference between the Garmin 860 and the Garmin 880. It seems the only difference is between the traffic using MSN or XM Traffic. Is that correct and is the MSN service preferable over the XM Traffic? Thanks for your help. The ones that seem to be available right now in my area are the 850 without Bluetooth and I really would rather have the Bluetooth capability on the unit I buy.

I should have added that I found the speaker on my Nuvi 660 not very good. Though it was loud enough, there was no way to adjust the bass/treble and the very high pitched treble sound was annoying. Is there a way (aside from using the FM Reciever function) of adjusting the speaker tone on the 860 or 880?

Bottom line--buy an 860 or an 880??????

RobertAF:
The 860 is only available in Europe. The 850 and 880 are available in North America. I also want to buy a 880 since I have an iPhone so I really would like the Bluetooth feature. The voice recognition sounds very cool. One problem: The price. I'll have to wait a while.

Thanks for the response. I did not realize the 860 was only avaialable in Europe. An earlier discussion on this blog concerning the 700 series suggested buying a Nuvi 750 and adding on a GDB50 MSN Receiver. Is that a good strategy for the 800 series--that is, buy an 850 and add on the GDB50 MSN Receiver?

Forget my question above--the 850 does not have Bluetooth, which is a feature I want--but can anyone answer for me if the MSN traffic (featured on the 880)is better than the XM Traffic that I had on my NUVI 700 series????

The Nuvi 850 / 880 seems to be slow in processing for what ever reason and the speaker volume is low even with dual front speakers.
Magellan fix the audio output issue on the RoadMate 14xx compare to their Maestro 42xx series and I am hoping Garmn will do the same soon.
The text on the Nuvi 8xx seems to have gotten smaller and no way to adjust the text/font size like you can on the older Street Pilots or the 72xx/75xx series.
Over all a very nice unit and best in class for the VR feature.

RobertAF:
You can't get XM Traffic on the 700 series, I don't think. And yes, MSN Direct has more features than XM. More bang for your buck. I hope this helped. Also, if you want to risk losing the Bluetooth, than get the 850.

I currently have and am happy with my 15 month old 860 with MSN Direct 1. I understand the MSN is encoded into the power supply. I'm considering getting the new 880 and putting the 680 in my honey's car.

One question: Can I use the 880 PND with the older 680 MSN power supply and vice versa. The newer MSN Direct II has stocks, news, etc, and I wondered if the display capability is in the power supply or a combination of the power supply AND the 880.

Bob H:
First of all, where do you live? Its impossible that you have the nuvi 860 for 15 months considering that it came out this month. Secondly, I don't think that you could use the 680's power adapter to power the 880. Plus, if it were possible, than you would have to buy another power adapter to power the 680. In addition, why would you want to use the 680's power adapter when the 880 comes with one in the box?

I believe Bob H mistyped and meant that he has a "660" that he has been using.

I have e-mailed Garmin to ask them when the 880 will be available in stores, but no answer of yet. Does anybody have an answer on the availability of the 880?

RobertAF:
Actually I think that Bob H mistyped and meant that he has a 680. I will call Garmin customer support/help and ask. I called like 2 months ago and they said in the 2nd quarter.

Thanks for making the call to Garmin. When I call I get into one of those queues that says you will likely be on hold for at least 30 minutes and I have not had the patience to wait.

Yeah, when I called Garmin today, and after waiting 8 minutes, I finally hung up. I will try again later or another day. Will keep you posted.

"I have e-mailed Garmin to ask them when the 880 will be available in stores, but no answer of yet. Does anybody have an answer on the availability of the 880?"

We have had the Nuvi 880 in stock now for almost two weeks.

Search google search under Auto Nav 2000 Plus, Inc and search Nuvi 880

Good Luck

After 18 minutes and 45 seconds on hold, I finally got Garmin and asked if the 880 has shipped and the answer is yes. I also asked if the 860 was for Europe only and the answer was again yes.

GPS4ME:I would order from you, but I have a signficant credit from Circuit City.

Stefan C: Thanks for your patience and reaching Garmin to get the info.

RobertAF:
No problem on the phone call. Can I ask you one favor though? If you do have an 880, than can you (if any) list any problems it might have or glitches? I'm thinking of getting the 880 within the next couple of months so I want to know how it is.

Sure. As soon as I get my hands on one from Circuit City and start using it, I will let you know my experience. I am a Garmin fan as you may have read earlier from my trying the Magellan and deciding to return it to wait for the NUVI 880 to be available. But will be sure to let you know if I discover any glitches.

Thanks a lot. Appreciate it!

Stefan, you could have saved the trouble of a phone call. I advised you back on the 13th that the 880's had shipped. You seem to be quite the "doubting Thomas".

I'll seldom post incorrect info.

I didn't doubt you. I just wanted to double check. If I'm a "doubting Thomas" than you, my sir, are a "eavesdropper." Do you have an 880?

Never mind Stefan. . . Let me know if I can ever help you. Otherwise just go ahead and post what you want. I won't bother correcting or advising you.

If I make a mistake I two, please feel free to fix it or advise me of it. Warren, do you have a nuvi 880?

I have a Nuvi 880, what do you wish to know? I represent Auto Nav 2000 Plus, Inc. www.autonav2000.com and Fletch was one of our oldest customers back when GPS was not as popular.
I feel the speaker volume is weak, the VR command will not accept Where to with some of our customers and can't find First Street when using VR, it will show Third street instead.
The unit redraw or zoom in is not very fast nor smooth, TomTom have the best refresh and redraw rate in the industry and nothing can touch it.
The font/text size is now the size of the Magellan Maestro which is to small in my opinion for some of our older customers, why Garmin took away the ability to adjust text/font size I will never understand, this is available on the Street Pilots but they took it away on the Nuvi lines.

The Garmin Nuvi 880 unit is a solid PND unit, over all very and user friendly.
I think the price will be way down on this product in Q4 but for now the $999 pricing is good enough for the people who can afford this product.

Want to know how this unit functions? Rent one from GPS4Rent or www.GPS4Rent and test drive the unit for yourself before committing to buying one.

Fletch is missing in action again, no new reviews, hope he is o.k.

Great review Fletch. And the 880 is extremely close to what I am looking for in a portable GPS system.

My wife has OnStar in her 08 Chevy Malibu and I just love the integrated nature of the hands-free phone, GPS and stereo. Although the FM transmitter feature in the 880 is an improvement over the built-in speakers, it does not however, permit you to listen to your regular stereo.

What I am looking for is a GPS system that would allow me to listen to my music but mutes the sound to give directions. They have mastered voice recognition why not go one step further and offer a truly integrated system. I am sure consumers would be more than willing to pay a little extra for that killer ap.

Phieus, You can do just that with the addition of the Garmin VIB Interface box

What does the VIB box do?

Phieus

There are many ways to integrate the Nuvi 880 with your OEM sound system without going through the FM transmitter.
To tell you the truth, depending on your location and how populated it is, the Garmin FM feature does not function to well in areas like San Francisco bay area where they have tons of radio channels.

You can find out more about the VIB on Auto Nav 2000 Plus, Inc website

Auto Nav 2000 Plus, Inc is recommended by Garmin to perform the VIB installations on Garmin approved VIB installer page.

You can even add a reverse camera using the VIB for your vehicle with the Nuvi 880 unit.

I was looking at the VIB11, but it looks like you can't use the MSN Direct receiver when you have your Nuvi hooked up to the VIB11.

That appears to be correct. TMC looks to work tho.
GPS4ME can probably confirm

I'm interested in upgrading to the 880 from the Tomtom 920T but I'm a little hesitant upon learning of Magellan's upcoming Elite models, specifically the 4370 at $700 which has full VR (from what I heard). Does anybody have anymore info on Magellan's Elite line?

Does the NUVI 880 have the item that tells you what lane to be in for an upcoming turn like the Tom Tom 930? I don't know if I am using the correct terms for this feature. Still debating between the NUVI 880 and the Tom Tom 930

RobertAF: No, the nuvi 880 doesn't have the lane guidance feature. The TomTom does. The nuvi 880 has better maps for the US and Canada and the TomTom 930 has better maps for Europe. Get the nuvi 880.

if this was $599 i would buy it today. Its gonna be hard to hold out until Christmas waiting for the price to drop on this one..

Just received a Nuvi 880. It seems very nice, but I notice an annoying clicking sound whenever a voice announcement is made.

To Jake: I understand your hesitancy on the price and if I did not have a significant credit at Circuit City, I don't know that I would not be waiting until a price break happened. But considering that Circuit City staff does not have any clue about the 880 or when they would get it in, maybe by the time that they get it the price will have already come down. Garmin has said that they shipped the 880 to Circuit City but have no control when it will be available for them or just at select locations and perhaps not even through their web site. I am waiting a little longer to see what happens and if I can use my credit to purchase the 880 from Circuit City or need to go elswhere.

Hank: I heard there was a software update for the 880 already that specifically addresses the clicking noise.. check that out.

Robert: Yea, Circuit City just got the 850 up on their website also, for $799 .. so the 880 should follow soon.
If I decide i can't wait, i am going to buy the 760+MSN receiver

The nüvi 880 does have the ability to set custom avoidances; Tools > Settings > Navigation > Avoidances > Custom Avoids. You can add both "Avoid Area" or "Avoid Road".

The nüvi 880 is every bit as good as my nüvi 760, but includes all of the additional features executed with Garmin excellence.

I have mixed feelings about the 880. I like the voice recognition feature. However, the sound quality when using it as a bluetooth hands free device is substandard and unacceptable. Not only is the quality of the call poor, but the volume is inadequate. I notice that if I direct the call to my phone, it will slip back to the Nuvi. Thinking that it might be my phone, I paired it with other devices with the same result. Garmin sent me a second unit, but the same problems exist, and the newer unit has a screen that is much dimmer. I am sending back the newer unit. Without good sound on bluetooth, I would have been better off sticking with my 2730 or a 6XX - 7XX Nuvi for less money. I am considering sending back my original unit and taking the 10% restocking hit.

so, is the bluetooth better on the 760?

Does anyone know if you can ADD bluetooth capability to the NUVI 850?

You could probably add bluetooth IF you know what bluetooth chip it needs and IF you know where to solder it to on the Nuvi 850's circuit board. The 850 shares the same software as the 880 so it's just a matter of sourcing the bluetooth chip that is on the 880 and soldering it to the 850's circuit board.

You void your warranty though by doing this.

Well, just thought *I'd* post MY experiences with a newly acquired Nuvi 850, delivery taken Friday, July 11th PM.

Spent an hour or so that evening playing around with the unit.

All in all, was quite impressed. The VR seemed to work quite well. Even found several commands/operations that seemed undocumented (eg. 'plus' and 'minus' to zoom map) that proved useful.

Again, *all in all*, was initially quite pleased.

Sunday night (two days later), started playing around a bit more and have run into a problem:

I was 'playing' with the unit with about 1/2 charge in the battery according to the indicator, setting up routes, navigating, etc. when the unit simply just ***VERY ABRUPTLY, WITHOUT WARNING*** Shut Down.

I thought that since I was holding the unit in my hands I might have tripped the slide switch and turned it off so I powered it on again. It came right back up in the middle of the route I had been manually stepping through.

All seemed well for a few more minutes when the unit ABRUPTLY simply 'crashed' and shut off AGAIN.

I tried once more (a third time) with similar results - after a few minutes got a 'hard' shutdown/power off without warning.

At this point, I decided to try upgrading the firmware (Unit came with v2.50, latest was 2.80).

I downloaded and tried WebUpdater from Garmin BUT I ***could not get WebUpdater to 'see'/find the USB connected and powered on 850.

I tried a second PC - same results.

I was finally was able to update the unit to V2.80 by MANUALLY downloading and installing the update successfully.

Then, with v2.80 installed, I tried again - playing, routing, manually 'naving' through routes BUT, again, NO LUCK - same result - three more hard shutdowns/crashes without warning.

So, at this point I decided that come tomorrow, this unit will be going back for replacement or refund.

I quite like the VR - it seems to work quite well and I can see it being quite useful.

However (unless I've missed something, a couple of complaints/observations:

1. I'm disappointed to see that there seems to be no way to 'activate' the VR WITHOUT using the remote. Seems to me that if one were using the unit as a 'pedestrian' it would STILL be nice to be able to use VR without having to take/carry the/a steering wheel remote around.

2. I'm still/also under the impression that in 'non-nav'/just driving around mode the 800 series does NOT (like *my* 360 and the 6xx series???) display the NAMES OF UPCOMING INTERSECTING STREETS AND AVENUES. I've found this to be an incredibly useful feature enabling one to NOT have to watch for/check street signs, particularly at night, when one KNOWS that a particular street 'intersects' but is not quite sure where and is too lazy to set up a destination and navigate there. Hopefully, Garmin will see fit to adding this feature in a future firmware release.

the best navigation of the world

Can anyone tell me when the price of the 880 will/might go down? How much might it go down by?

HammerToe: I have had the exact same problem as you are experiencing with the sudden shutdown or crashing as you may call it. I also couldn't update via the webupdater and had to do a manual upgrade to firmware 2.8 without resolution. Did you ever find a solution?

This nuvi is the best one of them all! Those people posting bad comments probably work for TomTom or Magellan. Best Nuvi yet!

After all is said and done, and here is the real loaded question - is the Nuvi 880 worth the cost as compared to the Nuvi 780/760/tt930 etc. So far what I can determine is that there would appear to be some software issues that have yet to be resolved and that is an issue at least for me. Input/comments would be helpful and thanks

Good evening to everybody..bit what about digital elevation map (dem)

I just purchased the Garmin 880 and have had many GPS units in the past, including TomTom (x2), Magellan, Alk CoPilot (on the Motorola Q), TomTom on a Win Mobile 6 phone, and Garmin 660 . I like many of the features of the 880, but not much has improved over the 660.
1. No way to power the Nuvi 880 via the USB and also use it. This requires carrying the proprietary 12V cable AND the bulky bracket (can't plug the cable directly into the Nuvi) and the mount. THIS IS A MAJOR NEGATIVE FOR ONE THAT USES GPS WHEN FLYING TO A DISTANT DESTINATION.
2. Cannot connect a bluetooth headset, everyone in the car MUST hear the directions.
3. Cannot activate voice commands from the unit (no hard switch or soft switch on the Nuvi itself), you must carry a relatively large remote control that "connects" to the steering wheel via a strap (looks like a very large watch). Another thing to carry when traveling.
4. Comments to Garmin support to forward to the company exects were met with inane comments about how the lack of features were "features."
4. I'm on a trip now, and the Garmin died, powering it via USB and using it was not possible, so my granddaughter is playing games on it (after I charged it) while I use VZ Navigator as my GPS. The Nuvi 880 is a very expensive gameboy.

Telonly thing that is missing that was on the 660 and is not on the 880 is that in the green display banner on theap screen it tells me what street I am on not what is upcoming. After I have been on the same street for 10 minutes I still what I am on and not what is upcoming which I found usefull otherwise I have to zoom in to see. Does ayone know if that will be one of the updates.

I have been waiting patiently for Circuit City to begin carrying the NUVI 880 as I have a significant credit there. But every other retailer, including Best Buy and even Wal Mart is now carrying it as well as being available on line--but nothing at Circuit City. I have heard that Circuit City is in some financial trouble and could be going out of business. Heard anything about that or any other insight as to why the NUVI 880 is not available at Circuit City. I am beginning to wonder if they will ever carry it. Any advice or thoughts on this subject would be appreciated