Garmin nüvi 850 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator

• Sleek, ultra-slim design fits in a pocket;High-sensitivity GPS receiver for fast satellite lock
• Pre-loaded with City Navigtor NT maps for North America, including more than 6-million name-searchable points of interest
• Speech recognition -- speak menu options and keep your eyes on the road
• Multi-destination routing -- enter several destinations and get the best route to all of them; "Where am I?" and "Where's my car?" features
• Full feature set -- text to speech for spoken directions with real street names; MP3 player, and Photo viewer

I recently bought a Nuvi 850. Here's my advice for what it's worth.

The real value of a Nav system comes from the fundamentals.

* Receiver

* Maps

* Routing Engine

* Display

* User Interface

Garmin does a solid job in all these areas. But that's not why you're paying a premium for an 800 series Nuvi.

This model has a couple of "nice to have" features that were introduced on the 700 series of Nuvi's.

* Where Am I

* Where's My Car

Both are very well implemented and can be very handy. But again, all of the stuff I mentioned so far can be found in a Nuvi costing $300 less.

So what are you paying a premium for?

* Voice Recognition

* User Replaceable Battery

* Front Mounted Speakers

Well, the front mounted speakers are still drowned out by moderate road noise. So, I wouldn't pay a nickel for that. The only real sound solution remains the FM transmitter that everyone complains about. It works OK for me, in my car, in my area. Your mileage may vary.

The user replaceable battery is excellent. For $30 you can carry a spare battery and go totally wireless in the car or use the Nuvi for 8 hours of walking around a city. I'd pay for that. In fact, every portable device should have user replaceable batteries.

OK, that leaves the "Big Kahuna" feature, voice recognition. Don't believe the hype from the professional reviews or some of the hosanna's being thrown around in Amazon reviews.

Does it work? Yes, it works amazingly well. In a dead silent environment.

With moderate road noise or even indoors with a TV at low volume 15 feet away the thing to gets confused about what it's "hearing". It should have a microphone with low sensitivity and high directionality to screen out spurious noise. A little DSP noise filtering wouldn't hurt either. Unfortunately, the standard piezo mic that Garmin also uses for bluetooth phone calls will pick up any sound coming from any direction. The result is that voice recognition becomes an excercise in frustration.

Still, I'm gonna keep the darned thing. I'll simply enter destinations in the quiet of my home, office, hotel room, or a restaurant before heading out on the road. The remote will live in my briefcase. It does save you from a lot of tedious keyboard entry. But, it is not the mobile safety feature that reviews would have you believe since voice commands are all but useless in a car. You can get essentially the same features in a Nuvi 760 and save yourself $300.

Your decision.

EDIT: Update.....OK maybe I was a bit harsh first time round. I have found that the unit will respond with moderate background noise.....some of the time.....if you yell at it. It appears to have the ability to lock in on the loudest sound it "hears". So, if you are relatively close to the microphone and speak really loud (yell), it does respond some of the time.

On the upside, connecting to the Garmin website was very easy. I registered the 850, downloaded the newest firmware, and downloaded/installed the latest maps (2009), all in about ten mintues without a glitch.

Buy Garmin nüvi 850 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator Now

I am a Realtor and have been using my Garmin GPS for almost four years. (It was the 2720 and had cost $999 when I bought it.) It's invaluable to me in my business. Today it died as I was previewing a dozen homes and I went back to where I bought it originally and picked up an 850. Boy, am I disappointed!

The new graphics will take some getting used to, but that's not the problem. With the newer technology and all the bells and whistles, I had expected this unit to be MORE intuitive than my old one. Turns out it's not. Twice it told me it could not find addresses in older neighborhoods where my old Garmin never had a problem. I had to guess my way across unfamiliar areas to find them and, sure enough, once I got there, the street names registered on my screen. I immediately saw what happened but was shocked that Garmin hadn't picked up the slight differences.

One street is named McLain Road. I typed in Mclain (small "l") and it couldn't find it. The old Garmin used all upper-case letters, so it found every address regardless of upper or lower case. This one obviously needs you to know which to use -very frustrating. The second one is spelled Hollowbrooke Lane. I typed in in every which way I could think of -Hollow Brooke Lane, Hollow Brook Lane, Hollowbrook Lane, etc. Now that I'm home and could play with it a little, sure enough, it found it. I should have typed in "Ln" instead of Lane and it had Hollowbrooke without the "e." When I had typed in Hollowbrook Lane, it couldn't find it because I spelled out the word Lane. Again, the old Garmin knew that Lane and Ln were the same thing.

Another very annoying thing I found missing on this new one which was on my old Garmin was the display of streets. Typically, each street will show up as I get near it, whether I'm turning onto it or not. With the 850 it doesn't show streets unless they are major thoroughfares. I finally clicked on the "plus" button twice in succession and it started to give me lines (which represented streets), but it rarely showed the name of the street. Again, the old Garmin showed every street you came up to.

The voice prompts are also unreliable. Several times the voice prompt did not match up with the screen and if I tried to answer based on what I saw on the screen (for example, a city was on the screen and the voice was asking for a street address), I could not get it to sync and had to start all over or (more often than not) just gave up and tapped the information into the GPS. Again, a nice concept but frustrating if it's not working properly!

I can't figure out why this newer model would be LESS intuitive than the old system. I'll play with it for a few days, but at the price I paid, I won't be keeping it very long if I can't figure out how to make this work better.

And, not to beat a dead horse here, but I'm shocked that the unit doesn't come with a carrying case. I just bought my daughter a nuvi 350 last week for her birthday and it cost a fraction of what the 850 cost -and it had a carrying case! SHAME on you, Garmin!

Read Best Reviews of Garmin nüvi 850 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator Here

This unit functions perfectly as it is described. The voice-activation is nearly perfect. Probably one of the best implementations to date that I can remember. The map is a bit under-detailed for the price but it gets you where you need to go. Voice commands from the unit are very easy to understand. Controls are easy to navigate as are the menu options. One thing that I think is a bit ridiculous is the absence of Bluetooth Hands-Free calling. For $800 they could have included that and it is the reason that I gave it four stars instead of 5. Many of the options included with the device are useless to me to be honest. Games? Picture viewer? MP3 player? I don't need any of these but the voice-commands for unit control are awesome.

If you have the money to buy this unit, get it... if not look at some of the lower-priced 700-series Nuvi's

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[Feb 28, 09 update: I've had the unit for several months and have grown increasing more frustrated with the unit for several reasons

1. The screen update is "laggy". I've turned off everything that could slow down the system (e.g I've set map details to normal and lower) and the map is about 3-5 seconds behind. I live in a near dead-flat area with no hills or buildings. The unit obtains 6+ satellites at full strength. It says that I have 10 feet accuracy but too often it doesn't seem to know where I am. Because of the delay, it'll tell me to turn a bit too late and when traveling at 65MPH on a busy highway with multiple exits, even one second is way too long let alone several seconds. I've tried every option. I reloaded the firmware to an older level. Same results.

2. Too often I get poor/useless directions. I keep getting "Recalculating, recalculating, recalculating". I was speaking to someone who was driving in in a car I kept hearing "recalculating...". Yep, he also had a Nuvi and he said the Nuvi drives him around in circles. I didn't tell him that I experienced the same problem myself.

3. I'm walking along and am using the Nuvi to get me back to the hotel. Even though I'm right next to the ocean withe the battery nearly full charged, it just wouldn't find any satellites. I kept turning the unit off for 8+ seconds, taking the battery out, holding it up to the sky (either hoping to get a signal or maybe I was praying). After 5 minutes, I asked someone for directions.

4. I'm tired of screaming at the unit.

I'm asking myself why I paid over $500 for something that isn't helping and even taking me longer to get somewhere.

I'm going to bring the unit back and try again when they update the unit; whenever that might be.]

--Original review ---

I bought the 850 nuvi last night. Before taking it out on the road, I spent a few hours learning how to use it and read the forums.

First off, I installed the latest firmware. The new Garmin software makes that extremely easy.

Here's my major gripes so far:

1) The speech recognition turns itself off after entering several voice commands and I have to keep turning it on every few commands. THIS DRIVES ME NUTS AND IT'S NOT SAFE. There's nothing in the manual that explains that. Yes, I read the entire manual. I reset the device by turning it off for 8 seconds. That didn't help. For me, voice recognition is extremely important. I nearly drove off the interstate once when I was using my fingers to access an old GPS navigator. I stopped using it that day and never used it again for driving.

2) The POI are seriously out of date. I asked where the nearest hospital is and the nuvi returned hospitals 5+ miles away but there's a hospital one mile away that's been there for over 4 years. I asked where the nearest police station was and the nuvi returned just a few of the major police stations. There are numerous police substations here, one is nearly within walking distance. I'm guessing that the maps are about 5+ years old. And Garmin wants *me* to pay for a map update. No, I don't think so.

3) The nuvi 850 CANNOT be used when it's plugged into the USB port.

4) The accuracy of location is woefully lacking. I have 7+ year old Garmins that are accurate within 10 feet. The Garmin nuvi 850 says that my house is 200 feet away from where I set my home location. We have very good satellite access due to lack of mountains and buildings. The satellite indicator has all bars lit up.

5) Keeps crashing. This has already happened several times. The system is completely frozen and I have to reboot or it reboots itself. When this happens, some of the values that I set are reset to the default values. This is unforgivable.

6) When navigating, the unit doesn't display the destination. If I accidentally enter the wrong address from my favorites whose locations are somewhat near each other, I won't know about the mistake until I'm there. I've tried every button to find to display the destination location but it's nowhere to be found. If it's a matter of knowing a secret set of steps, then the product was poorly designed. This too is unforgivable.

7) The screen dimmer intermittently goes bright then dims again. I have the unit sitting untouched on my desk and it alternates between dim and bright.

Minor gripes:

My last two old Garmins came with cases, manuals and wall-plug rechargers. This came with nothing. I searched on the Garmim site for the manual and couldn't find it. Eventually I found it by using "Garmin 850 manual download" into Google. The web site sucks. I wouldn't have a manual if I didn't have access to a computer.

I found a location on the Garmin site where I download vehicle icons. After an hour of searching, I never found that location again. I should have bookmarked it.

On the positive side, it seems that the voice recognition is pretty good (at least in my quiet office). I can mention part of the street name (e.g. just Northway instead of Northway Court or Northway Drive or Northway Street) and it will bring up all of the possibilities. Still, that requires you to look at the menu instead of the road.

Volume and clarity seems pretty good (at least in my office).

By accident, I came across a feature that I didn't find in the manual: You can scroll the screen with your finger like an iPhone. Move your finger across the screen and the map moves but it's not nearly as smooth as an iPhone (and the iPhone is a lot less expensive).

On another note, I've been reading the debates in the forums regarding the practicality of the "anti-theft" mechanism (a misnomer since the thief is going to steal it anyway if the unit or mounting bracket is visible). I decided to use the PIN since I don't have to enter my PIN if I'm already at home, BUT, it takes quite a few seconds for the Garmin to acquire enough satellite data to know that you're at the "security" location so it's faster to just manually enter your PIN. While the PIN won't deter theft, it's nice knowing that they only stole a useless brick.

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I'm new to the GPS world, having purchased a Navigon several months back (which was stolen). I decided to get a unit with speech recognition, because without it I found myself unable to utilize the GPS safely.

I love my Garmin Nuvi 850, although the model is discontinued (for the 880 I believe). I would never buy another GPS without speech recognition.

I've had no problems with it recognizing my voice commands, and it's easy just to follow the onscreen menus to select commands, but it is also very intuitive, and when I have just spoken a command, such as the name of my destination, or "gas", it responds quickly. I really like being able to choose the different voices (Australian, UK English) for a variety of accents. Before this, I had the Navigon, which I liked, but the onscreen display and graphics are much more pleasing to me than the Navigon.

I tend to forget to push the button to activate speech recognition, but it is easy to use when clipped on to the steering wheel. I was disappointed to find that the MSN service doesn't work in our area...you have to be in a very large metropolitan area for that, but otherwise, this is a great product.