The Best GPS

I feel a great amount of sympathy for consumers shopping for a portable GPS systems or any sophisticated electronic product for that matter. There is such a dizzying array of models/brands/functions that it is both a blessing and a curse. I am very tech oriented and enjoy researching and evaluating new electronic gadgets. After a few days of reviewing GPS brands and models, I narrowed my selections down to the Garmin 760, Garmin 680, TomTom 920T and the Magellan Maestro 4250.

I am not going to dive deeply into the features and benefits of each model because many of the reviews on Amazon and other websites do a great job of that. However, I will summarize my thought process for finally choosing the 760 as the best GPS for me. Let me start by stating that there is no perfect GPS system and therein lies the challenge. Every model that I looked at had strengths and weaknesses and there wasn't a product that made it a clear cut decision. What I did (and recommend) is to make a priority list of the features and functions that are most important to you and to pick the model that best fits your requirements. This sounds like an obvious approach but it was a lot harder than it sounds.

The single most important aspect for me was the accuracy and capability of the routing engine. That seems simple enough but when you throw in the all the other features offered in today's GPS models the decision making process becomes much muddier. In staying with my original strategy, I determined that the Garmin 7xx series had the best routing engine for North America. My conclusion is based on consumer and professional reviews, discussion boards, and my own testing. With that being said, the 760 is not perfect and I have experienced a few quirky directions but nothing that was of great concern.

How do I like the 760? For the most part, I am extremely pleased with the performance and functionality of the 760. Like most people I do have a list of my personal improvement and enhancements for the system but they are not deal breakers. When I first received the unit, I tested it on a trip to Palm Springs and Joshua Tree National Park. The directions to and from the Park and Palm Springs were flawless and the GPS recognized all the main roads within the park. We actually encountered some road construction on one of the main highways and the traffic receiver recognized the jam but gave us a strange recommendation. It directed us to go down the off-ramp and immediately get on the next on-ramp. We did this twice and it actually moved us ahead in traffic. I'm not sure how effective that strategy would be in other similar situations. The speaker volume could be louder but I could easily understand the commands traveling at 80 mph. I have also tested the system on several routes throughout Southern California and the system performed very well. All of the main features worked as published with a few exceptions noted below. The user interface is very well designed and I was able to operate 80% of the functions without reading the manual. In addition to the 760, I also purchased the Garmin Friction Dashboard Mount which I believe is superior to the glass suction mount provided.

So why did I only give it 4 stars? The one big annoyance for me was that if you directly input the POI name, the search can take a long amount of time (greater than 5 minutes)if it goes outside of your vicinity. This is extremely slow compared to our in-dash GPS system. The touch screen could be more responsive and is not that sensitive especially with the browse map option. The 760 bluetooth pairs consistently and quickly with my Motorola KRZR phone but the receiving and transmitting sound quality is very poor. The FM transmitter is unusable.

I really wanted to like the TomTom 920T especially with the voice recognition, user updates for maps and a long list of customizations. However, the routing engine seems to produce more inconsistent performance than the Garmin and I could not find enough information on their mapping data to understand how accurate it is today. The two main providers of map data are Navteq and Tele Atlas. Garmin and Magellan use Navteq and TomTom uses Tele Atlas. In the past, Navteq has been considered more accurate and complete for North America but Tele Atlas has made significant updates in recent times. Interestingly the 760 uses Garmin's 2008 North American maps but the source data is 18 to 24 months old which shows there is always a large lag in map information. Garmin has been very good at providing updates more frequently than the other manufacturers. My impression is that TomTom is much stronger with the European maps than the NA maps.

Here is a quick rundown of how I view the models:

Magellan Maestro 4250:
Pros: multi point destination routing with optimization, great address and text input system
Cons: questionable routing engine, outdated map data, inconsistent voice recognition, cumbersome POI interface, poor text to speech quality, poor customer support in US

TomTom 920T
Pros: voice recognition, enhanced positioning technology, map share, excellent customization options, multi-destination routing
Cons: questionable routing engine, outdated map data (although this is somewhat offset by map share), no routing optimization, cumbersome user interface

Garmin 760
Pros: routing engine seems very good, multi-destination routing optimization, good POI database, more map updates compared to competition, great user interface
Cons: touch screen is not very sensitive, outdated map data, FM transmitter is useless, expensive

Garmin 680
Pros: most of the same features and functionality as the 760 but with MSN Direct, louder speaker volume than 760, much better value than the 760
Cons: no multipoint destination, older look and feel than the 760

I have only listed a limited set of the pros and cons for each of the different models but these were the areas that stood out the most to me. When it's all said and done, I probably would have been happy with any of these models but if you can afford the 760 and routing directions in North America is your most important requirement then I would highly recommend the 760.

I have seen questions about whether the 760 comes with the SiRF Star III chip and the unit that I just purchased from Amazon did come with that chip. The SiRF is a high performance GPS chipset that can quickly acquire and maintain a lock onto satellite signals for position information. It is considered the chipset of choice for the higher end mobile GPS devices. All of the models I have described above have the SiRF chipset. I also have seen questions about how quickly the 760 can lock onto satellites. I updated my system firmware to version 2.6 and the satellite acquisition time is lightning fast. I have found in outside environments, my 760 can consistently acquire a signal in under 10 seconds even first thing in the morning.

There are a couple of other useful features that are not described in the instruction manual. If you hold down on the signal strength bar in the top left corner, you will get the satellite acquisition screen which shows the position accuracy. If you hold down on the battery indicator for a few seconds, this will allow access to the diagnostic screen which is where you can identify the GPS chipset among other information.


Garmin nüvi 760 4.3-Inch Widescreen Bluetooth Portable GPS Automobile Navigator