Neutral: Garmin RV 760LMT - Announced

[awwall]

Originally Posted by RodeoGeorge

I will be interested in the volume level of the voice.

I have the NUVI3790LMT because the mount for that unit also has an amplified speaker, and I have a hearing deficiency.

The other option would be if the unit can power an external speaker.

I just upgraded from MapSource to BaseCamp, and was very pleasantly surprised that I can now plan routes on the computer and they are uploaded to the 3790 as TRIPS.

RodeoGeorge

Rodeo, my 760 has great volume. Even my wife can understand it from the passenger seat in my Georgetown. You want be disappointed in the volume.

[ChrisMSNT]

So, this isn't an all inclusive review but I wanted to get down some first thoughts. First, I am pleasantly surprised of the speed, touch sensitivity, and GPS tracking (picking up the satellites) of the unit. I'm stating all of this as I'm parked at a campground. So, the real proof will be on Monday when I pull out of here and rely on it's directions to get to my next point of interest.

A couple of downsides that I've encountered thus far. When I ordered it, the accessories which were listed was the Ecoroute. So, I purchased that as well. It turns out that this has the same issue as the Dezl; such that, Eco only works in Auto mode!!!! ARGH!!! I'll be bringing this up with Garmin when I return from my trip. The second thing was, out of the box, there was a 4.2 GB map update. OUCH. I'm sure my Wi-Fi neighbors didn't appreciate me last night updating that!

RodeoGeorge: To your question, the back of the base has the USB power port, camera input and audio output. Thus, you can plug into that straight to your RV head unit and play the direction over your radio speakers. Make it as loud as you'd like. ;-)

I really like the interface and speed compared to the Magellan. It's lightening fast such that when you touch something it actually responds! I just hope the directions are as solid as what I've encountered thus far! I want to post a video when I get home next week and I'll be posting an update to this to review the navigation side of things. Until the next update!

[Witch Doctor]

Originally Posted by RodeoGeorge

I will be interested in the volume level of the voice.

I have the NUVI3790LMT because the mount for that unit also has an amplified speaker, and I have a hearing deficiency.

The other option would be if the unit can power an external speaker.

I just upgraded from MapSource to BaseCamp, and was very pleasantly surprised that I can now plan routes on the computer and they are uploaded to the 3790 as TRIPS.

RodeoGeorge

George did you try Google maps, they work pretty good you can also load trips by points that you want to see or just from a to b.......Just another source.It will load directly to your Garmin...

[kmr]

Originally Posted by Hmnbrdlady

Can you input gps coordinates such as N117 33.175 besides an actual address with this unit? The website was unclear. It seems that a lot of places post gps coordinates instead of an address to navigate to.

Yes, you can. I'm looking at that screen right now.

By the way, the manual is now on Garmin's web site--you can download it and peruse to your heart's content.

[wmtire]

Originally Posted by kmr

By the way, the manual is now on Garmin's web site--you can download it and peruse to your heart's content.

Thanks for the heads up. I plan to do just that.

[kmr]

Well, my RV760LMT arrived! Unfortunately, it arrived just as we returned from a short trip, so I haven't gotten to use it on the road yet. But in playing with it around the house I have learned some interesting things.

I just finished loading custom points of interest onto the unit, and it behaves beautifully with them. My Rand McNally unit slowed down A LOT after I loaded thousands of POIs on it (I mean SLOW--it took over a minute to search for anything, even non-POI locations) so I had to delete most of them. The Garmin takes only a few seconds to search through my 109,309 custom POIs (including WiFi hotspots--that should be extremely useful).

Out of the box, the first thing I did was to start an update. But I wasn't able to stay with the unit for the whole process, and the update failed due to my firewall blocking access to the Internet. The unit was then giving me incorrect routes, for example it said to get onto Interstate 90 at the crossing of NY36, but in fact that is a bridge and there is no entrance there. In addition, when I tried to search for restaurants, gas stations, or anything, the unit came up with "No entries found" every time.

Today I did another update and babysat it the whole time, and found the screen where my firewall asked permission to let the program access the net. This time the update succeeded and the problems I described above are all gone. I've now got all the info on gas stations, shopping, etc. etc. etc. and the bogus routing is gone as well.

One thing you must be careful of with this unit--not all low clearance bridges are listed in it. (The same was true of my Rand McNally RVND7710.) Margaret and I bought the Rand McNally Trucker's Atlas, and our hypothesis for the omission of some bridges is as follows:

1) The GPS must have been loaded with low clearance data from some source (obviously).
2) The Rand McNally Atlas is aimed at truckers, so the clearance data exists only for obstacles that are on designated truck routes. (The same is likely true for other sources of this data as well.)
3) Hence, if you're not on a designated truck route, the GPS may lead you down the garden path right to a bridge that you can't get under.

My Rand McNally unit led us directly to one of these last year (NY218 just E of NY5 near Fredonia, and Gowens Rd in Angola NY). Neither of these bridges shows up in the Garmin unit, nor do they show up on the custom POI file of low-clearance obstacles that I downloaded. So you've got to keep your eyes open for these things while driving, or buy a trucker's atlas and stick to designated truck routes.

The user interface seems to be pretty intuitive. I haven't yet found a feature that the Rand McNally unit had which is lacking on the Garmin, but as I said earlier we haven't actually had it with us on a trip yet. One nice feature of the Garmin is its "sleep" mode--you can put the unit to sleep and it will consume very little power (according to the manual), but when you wake it up it is ready to go in just seconds--much faster than turning it off and then back on.

I found the manual to be rather terse and there are some omissions (such as, How exactly does the touch screen react to your touches? You can point at a spot on the map and the unit will center that spot, and you can drag your finger across the screen to drag the map, but I don't seem to be able to zoom using the two-finger motion that works on Apple's iGadgets.) I speculate that the manual they've got might be a preliminary version, to be replaced by a better one later--just my guess.

Oh, and speaking of manuals, you don't get a printed manual in the box! I had to print it off of the Garmin web site. (Cheapskates...but then nearly everyone is doing that these days.)

So far, so good! I'll post some more comments after our first trip.

[ependydad]

Originally Posted by kmr

The unit was then giving me incorrect routes, for example it said to get onto Interstate 90 at the crossing of NY36, but in fact that is a bridge and there is no entrance there.

Ok, I LOL'd a little - you obviously aren't thinking aggressively enough! I've seen "The Terminator", you just need to crash through the side of the bridge and ramp it down below. Every vehicle is ALWAYS driveable at the end of these stunts- I don't know why you would do anything else?

[kmr]

Originally Posted by ependydad

I've seen "The Terminator", you just need to crash through the side of the bridge and ramp it down below. Every vehicle is ALWAYS driveable at the end of these stunts- I don't know why you would do anything else?

I think I'll wait until the truck is a little older before trying that!

[wmtire]

Originally Posted by kmr

I just finished loading custom points of interest onto the unit, and it behaves beautifully with them. My Rand McNally unit slowed down A LOT after I loaded thousands of POIs on it (I mean SLOW--it took over a minute to search for anything, even non-POI locations) so I had to delete most of them. The Garmin takes only a few seconds to search through my 109,309 custom POIs (including WiFi hotspots--that should be extremely useful).

That was going to be one of my questions, as I have a hobby of searching for geodetic control points/benchmarks. I have these control points converted into poi's per state and there are hundred's of thousands of them. My current Garmin Nuvi (255W) has a SD card, where I keep these POI's and the unit reads them from the card.

Does this 760 accept SD cards or maybe micro SD's?

[kmr]

Originally Posted by wmtire

Does this 760 accept SD cards or maybe micro SD's?

It accepts microSD and microSDHC cards. I put all of my POIs on an old 128MB card and it barely made a dent in it.

[kmr]

A couple of other neat things Margaret and I found out about the RV760LMT.

(By the way, I learned that "LMT" stands for "lifetime maps and traffic.)

I downloaded a POI list of low clearance things from poifactory.com and was able to set a proximity alert on all of them. Now when we get within .2 miles of any of these, the thing is supposed to beep at us (or flash, or shout, or jump up and down--I don't know because I haven't actually seen it happen yet).

We set up a couple of trips with the "trip planner" tool. First you put in your stops, and then if you set a departure time for the starting point, the arrival time will appear on all the subsequent stops.

Or you can set an arrival time on the last stop in the list and it will go backward and compute the starting times needed from each stop to get to your destination on time. In fact, you can set the arrival time for any of the stops within the list and it will compute from there to both the start and the end.

You can also set a duration for each stop, which is then taken into account in the calculation.

I would not be at all surprised to hear that other Garmin units do this too--I'm excited because my Rand McNally unit didn't do any of it (or, perhaps I just couldn't find how to do it on that unit).

[OldCoot]

Originally Posted by kmr

A couple of other neat things Margaret and I found out about the RV760LMT.

(By the way, I learned that "LMT" stands for "lifetime maps and traffic.)

I downloaded a POI list of low clearance things from poifactory.com and was able to set a proximity alert on all of them. Now when we get within .2 miles of any of these, the thing is supposed to beep at us (or flash, or shout, or jump up and down--I don't know because I haven't actually seen it happen yet).

We set up a couple of trips with the "trip planner" tool. First you put in your stops, and then if you set a departure time for the starting point, the arrival time will appear on all the subsequent stops.

Or you can set an arrival time on the last stop in the list and it will go backward and compute the starting times needed from each stop to get to your destination on time. In fact, you can set the arrival time for any of the stops within the list and it will compute from there to both the start and the end.

You can also set a duration for each stop, which is then taken into account in the calculation.

I would not be at all surprised to hear that other Garmin units do this too--I'm excited because my Rand McNally unit didn't do any of it (or, perhaps I just couldn't find how to do it on that unit).

You can download a file from Low Clearance GPS Data $14.97 and get up to 200,000 ft (39 mile) notice so you have time to plan a detour. You set the clearance for what you want.

[kmr]

Originally Posted by OldCoot

You can download a file from Low Clearance GPS Data $14.97 and get up to 200,000 ft (39 mile) notice so you have time to plan a detour. You set the clearance for what you want.

I saw that, but if I can get it for free I'll try that first.

(What an idiotic thing for a guy who just bought his second RV gps to say!)

[OldCoot]

0.2 miles vs 39 miles is worth the $14.97.

[kmr]

Originally Posted by OldCoot

0.2 miles vs 39 miles is worth the $14.97.

I can set the proximity on the points in my free POI file to whatever I want using MapSource.

Besides, the proximity is a radius. That means you'll get a false alarm every time you get within 39 miles of one of these things even though it is not on your route.

On the other hand, the $14.97 database claims to have over 3600 points, whereas my free one has a mere 2443 points. The free one includes one of the three low bridges we encountered on an earlier trip. I wish I could interrogate the paid database to see if it contains the other two as well before buying it.

[OldCoot]

Originally Posted by kmr

I can set the proximity on the points in my free POI file to whatever I want using MapSource.

Besides, the proximity is a radius. That means you'll get a false alarm every time you get within 39 miles of one of these things even though it is not on your route.

On the other hand, the $14.97 database claims to have over 3600 points, whereas my free one has a mere 2443 points. The free one includes one of the three low bridges we encountered on an earlier trip. I wish I could interrogate the paid database to see if it contains the other two as well before buying it.

Haven't gotten a false alarm yet and I set mine at 20 miles. What 3 bridges are you wanting? I will check it on S&T.

[jwarren17]

Do you happen to know if the unit is aware of state by state bridge/tunnel hazmat rules and can route or warn accordingly?

[OldCoot]

Originally Posted by jwarren17

Do you happen to know if the unit is aware of state by state bridge/tunnel hazmat rules and can route or warn accordingly?

To whom are you directing your question?

[jwarren17]

Originally Posted by OldCoot

To whom are you directing your question?

Sorry... My question is widely directed to anyone with experience with or knowledge of features/functions of the Garmin RV 760LMT GPS. I guess I can always go RTFM but I thought I'd ask.

[kmr]

Originally Posted by OldCoot

Haven't gotten a false alarm yet and I set mine at 20 miles. What 3 bridges are you wanting? I will check it on S&T.

Interesting. When we get on the road with it I'll have to try that larger radius.

The two remaining bridges we ran into (oops--bad phrasing) were:

1) 42.577228,-79.105525 just N of where US5 and US20 meet/split.
2) 42.592972,-79.082874 Commercial St. in Angola NY.
3) 42.592988,-79.084872 also Commercial St. Angola (we didn't hit this one [oops, another bad phrase] but it is right there, so might as well get it too).

By the way, what is S&T?