You Get What You Pay for with the Garmin Nuvi 880 GPS

When the Garmin Nuvi 880 GPS system was unveiled at the CES 2008, I decided straight away to investigate this gadget to see if it performs as well as previous Nuvi GPS devices. I wanted to see the advanced features and good performance installed into the Garmin Nuvi 880 but was more interested in test driving the capabilities of its speech recognition. Other GPS devices namely the Magellan Maestro 4250 and the TomTom GO 930 were not the most accurate with location. It's the opposite case with the Garmin Nuvi 880. The defined accuracy of the Garmin Nuvi 880 amazed me and the features that came with it along with the ease of use warmed us to the Garmin Nuvi 880 straight away. Reliable performance, a stylish design and the performance of the navigations system have earned it a Editors' Choice award. Unfortunately, the excellent performance of the Garmin Nuvi 880 is shown in the price tag which nears $2000.

Like its predecessors the Garmin Nuvi 880 GPS is stylish and compact, measuring 4.9 inches wide by 3.1 inches high by 0.7 inch deep. It comes in at 6 ounces so it's easily transferred between cars. Due to its small size it can be used for entertainment or as a travel aid outside the car as it comes with travel tools and games included. The 4.3 quick responding touch screen of the Garmin Nuvi 880 GPS has a 480x272-pixel resolution providing a display that is clear, bright and readable. The screen's brightness can be adjusted and there is also a mode which will change the maps colors according to whether you are using the Garmin Nuvi 880 GPS at night or during the day. The onscreen keyboard can come in QWERTY or ABC format and is a little on the small side. It does however have predictive texting and will pull up history results after only a couple of letters have been entered.

Applications on the Garmin Nuvi 880 are clearly displayed and you can figure out the operation more or less by just playing around with the interface. More complicated tasks such as planning a journey with more than one destination or using Bluetooth are better carried out if you refer to the user manual first. I could find nothing but excellent performance from the Garmin Nuvi 880- GPS system. I was impressed with its ease of use, the features available and general overall functionality. The price range is a little high however this is reflected in the quality of the Garmin Nuvi 880 and its performance.