Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I have been using the Nuvi 880 GPS for a couple of weeks now, and it is the best Garmin unit to date, and possibly the portable/handheld/car GPS available at this time. The Garmin Nuvi GPS units are probably the easiest to start using out of the box without reading any manuals.
The new line of Nuvi units have done away with the small flip-up antenna, opting for a internal antenna which is much nicer. This GPS is also VERY thin and can be carried in your jeans pocket (front pocket-without the leather case/protector) if you're traveling in another country. Because the 880 has done away with the external antenna, it also maintains the same thin dimensions for the length of the backside of the unit, finally losing that small bulge as on the back of the 670 (and other 600-series) Nuvi units.
The speech recognition is about 90% accurate, but this may be due to the higher amount of road noise in my car (and/or the air conditioner fan noise). When it's quiet, however, the voice recognition is surprisingly accurate.
The ability to have a user-changeable battery is featured on the 880. I can't tell you how many times I wish I had this feature with our Nuvi 670 on our trip to Italy when we were out all day on foot and the GPS battery became depleted, (though it did last for 5-6 hours). The only thing lacking is that Garmin should sell some sort of external battery charger for the extra batteries rather having to charge them in the unit itself.
Another reviewer mentioned that the Garmin doesn't have intelligent street recognition (such as with Google) to ask the user if a different spelling for a street/highway was intended when the unit doesn't return any results with the spelling it was given. This is not true, and perhaps that reviewer should have another read of the documentation to understand this. If you provide a partial text street or highway name to the Garmin it will return a list of possible matches. The Nuvi 880 works slightly different than previous Nuvi models in that the earlier models would provide an "active lookup", listing the possible matches as soon as the user had typed enough characters to determine a match. The 880, however, allows the user to provide (enter) the partial or full street/intersection AND THEN it will display a list of possible matches. This works a little more efficiently than the previous models because it allows the system to do a single fast search, rather than searching after each letter, and it allows the user to correct any typing mistakes before searching on them.
Another nice feature of the Garmin unit is that the virtual keyboard for spelling can be QWERTY style now.
The built in MP3 player is fun. For example if you have a music (or any MP3) that you want to hear via the car's stereo, you simply tune the FM radio to an unused station and configure the Garmin to output to the FM transmitter. Music and guidance prompts will be played via the car stereo. This is also nice for extremely noisy car environments if the Garmin's (loud) volume isn't enough, then the GPS prompts can be played via the car stereo. Other utilities on the 880 are very helpful, such as the unit and currency converters.
I've also tried the TomTom units, which I found to be slower in computing routes, and having far too many user configurable options. If you want to spend hours "customizing" all of the screen colors and every other aspect of your GPS, then maybe a TomTom would be a good choice for you. However, if you want an easy-to-use unit, the Garmin is a better choice.
The screen brightness can be set by the user, but 70-80% will suffice in all but the highest glare situations, and the large screen is very clear.
With ANY touch-screen device I always recommend purchasing clear screen protector sheets. These clear sheets stick via friction (no residue), and will help to greatly extend the life of your GPS or other product.
Lastly, another very nice feature on the 880 is the addition of MSN Direct which I renewed the subscription to a lifetime (guaranteed until 2012) extension for about $120 flat (there are other renewal options available). One of the best features of MSN Direct is updated traffic reports sent to your GPS. Even while not navigating a route, and simply viewing the map, a traffice "incident" icon will show on the display if a traffic event lies ahead in the direction you're traveling in case you want to have your GPS route you around the traffice. MSN Direct also features such things as a little icon for weather warnings on your GPS, full weather for your location, a selection to pop up a quick list of gas prices/station near your location, another selection to pop up a quick list of movie times listed by theater or movie title, news, stocks, local events. It is a very nice feature.
All in all this is one of the best portable GPS units available currently.
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