Garmin Nuvi 885T: GPS Product Review

Garmin International
Garmin is a manufacturer of GPS navigational products. Currently their product line extends to the Aviation, Automotive, Fitness and Recreational Markets. Being the number one manufacturer of these products in NA has caused some other smaller companies to enter the market in an attempt to steal market share from them. Currently with $1B in reserves, the current economy is only hurting them in the sales department. They are currently reducing operating costs and reducing the number of units they have on hand in anticipation of the economic downturn.

Nuvi 885T
The Garmin Nuvi 885T is Garmin's current flagship model. Building upon all their previous models they just keep adding features. With each new model they implement some new feature. With this model they have a long list of features which may or may not be all the impressive.

Speech Recognition
With the Nuvi 880 they introduced Voice Recognition. This required that you have an attachment placed on your steering wheel which I didn't really like but it did prevent the unit from trying to recognize each and every word that you spoke. Usually it had some issues understanding what I would say and I had to type it in manually so for me this was not a feature that I found to be all the impressive.

MSN Direct
This is a feature that they introduced a few models back. Through a subscription based service you are able to pull up local weather, gas prices, local traffic, and stock and movie information. There have been some additional updates to the information that the service provides such as being able to send locations to the unit via MSN Direct from a computer. Also added was the ability to plan trips on the computer and send them to your unit via the computer also. For me the best feature of the MSN Direct was the local traffic and local gas prices. With the hefty price tag on the Nuvi 885T and the additional price of the subscription I had to try and save as much as possible with it.

Lane Assist
This is a nice new feature that they added to a few of their newer models. It will display what the lanes look like that you are coming up to and clearly display which one you need to be in. This is really handy if you are in a city that you have never been in and some of the intersections can get to be confusing. For me this is not really a positive or negative benefit.

Lifetime Map Updates
This is not really a feature of the Nuvi 885T as it is a new feature available to all Garmin Automotive units. Previously you had to pay $75 to get an update to your maps on your unit. As of January Garmin introduced Lifetime Map Updates for $129. This gives you updates to your maps for life and every quarter not every year. If you were to update more than once you would pay more. During this economic downturn this is a deal that some people really need.

The rest of the features that come with the Nuvi 885T are the same as previous models and not all that new anymore. Here is a list of some of them.

Bluetooth
Internal Battery
Widescreen
Preloaded North America
Turn by Turn Directions
Text to Speech
JPEG viewer
Audio book player
Mp3 player
Alarm clock
FM transmitter