Garmin Nuvi 760 GPS Unit: The Best Budget GPS Device

 The Garmin Nüvi 760 is among the most thoroughly reviewed and tested GPS units on the market. Consumer reports and GPSMagazine.com have compared the Nuvi 760 against other competitors, and tested its effectiveness in direct head-to-head competition. About.com and PC Magazine have also conducted reviewers of the product and compared it with competitor units from other brands as well as the other models of Nuvi and indicated that the Nuvi 760 is simply one of the best GPS devices from the house of Garmin. Amazon.com user reviews reflect large numbers of satisfied customers, clearly indicating that the Garmin Nüvi 760 performs well.

So, now let us see its good points, bad points and the overall performance one by one.

Of course, the Garmin Nuvi 760 GPS unit has got loads of handy features that make it a superior choice and its pros are literally endless. So, let us take a look at the top 10 advantages of the Nuvi 760:

• The Garmin Nuvi 760 comes with a super bright screen, which is much brighter than the 600-series nuvi models.
• It also comes with a "Where Am I" feature that is extremely useful in providing one-touch access to the current location of the user, along with nearby landmarks such as police stations, hospitals and gas stations.
• The address entry system is capable of remembering the recently used State/City/Street names.
• The routing engine is acclaimed to be better than similar spec'd TomTom/Magellan units.
• Supports multi-destination.
• Flawless Bluetooth compatibility and MP3 play-list support.
• Track log recording.
• 3-month free trial for receiving real-time traffic updates.
• Excellent windshield mount.

When you compare it with the other members of the Garmin Nuvi series, the main disadvantages of the Garmin Nuvi 760 GPS are its weak FM transmitter unit and the sheer fact that it runs slower than the other latest Garmin Nuvi GPS units such as the Garmin Nuvi 880, and even the Garmin Nuvifone G60. Moreover, the Nuvi 760 also misses out on some of the latest advanced features of Garmin that include voice command, which is seen in the Garmin 880. The Nuvi 760 also doesn’t have free traffic alerts, which is a prominent feature seen in the wide-screen Garmin Nuvi 265WT.

The Garmin 760 also includes some useful characteristics, which were skipped in the recent mid-priced Garmin Nüvi 265WT. For example, the Nuvi 760 is capable of saving 10 of the user’s favorite routes, and it has built-in 'best route' capability to hit your destinations. It can inform the user about static objects such as parked cars. Furthermore, high quality text-to-speech functionality in the device delivers natural sounding conversion.

The Garmin Nuvi 760 is a top of the line-up Garmin GPS. It did initially cost a little more than was affordable to the general user, but now that the price has come down dramatically it is a worthwhile investment. With fully featured navigator aids it is only slightly higher in price than its budget rivals, and most reviews also recommend the Nuvi 760 over other mid-priced automatic GPS systems. The Nuvi 760 does tend to navigate better than similar spec Magellan and Tomtom units and most reviewers have concluded that the 760 can navigate just as well as other expensive Nüvi models (such as the 880 and others which are at least $100-$200 more.)

To surmise, Garmin's WebUpdater software helps in keeping the Nuvi 760 up-to-date with the latest firmware, but the detour function offered in the device is very basic and GPS Simulator mode only is capable of running at normal speed of 1x time (no acceleration is possible.) That said, this is a worthy buy for just about anyone.