GPS Outlet & Clearance Review • Best Price

I have liked this unit very much, however, there is something that you should know about the battery life. It is advertised as being “up to 4 hours.” I thought that meant you could take it out of the power cradle and use it for up to four hours on the battery, such as in another car or while walking around.

That is not the case. I took it out of my car to use it in my wife’s car and it only lasted for less than an hour. I e-mailed Garmin and this was the reply:

“The battery life is listed at 4 hours for the Nuvi 885. However, that would be 4 hours of battery life
if the unit was not being used at all, with all power consuming features turned Off.”

That is a pretty odd and misleading definition of “battery life”. Again, just for your information.

I have had my 885t for about a month now. I looked at many reviews before buying it. My concern was cost, comparing TomTom and other garmins to the 885t. Garmin has so many types and trying to decide what was best for me was challenging. I get lost a lot, so finding one with voice commands was very important to me. So far, it wasnt all that I expected. Here are my positives and negatives:
For the positives I like everything regarding the mapping and directions. When coming to a major interstate with many different signs, the garmin in very good a telling you the correct lane and list where to go at the top. Now sometimes it doesnt give it to me quick enough or the distance may be a little off, however, its not to bad. I also like the voice command if there is no noise or I am driving very slowly. When it recognizes your voice it works perfectly. The menu is very good and does everything I would need.
The negatives to me are the following: I have a Jeep Wrangler and the voice recognition does not work very well with me driving or my window down. I will be yelling at the garmin and with any other noise the 885t will not seem to hear my voice. It can be very, very frustrating yelling as loud as I can. While reading other reviews I did see and have experienced that the volume could be a little higher. I even downloaded this software onto my garmin to make it louder, garmin could have made some changes here. It does not have very many English speaking voices too. I also dont like the fee for MSN or traffic.
Overall, I am happy with my purchase. But mostly I am glad that I waited for the cost to come down. It isnt worth $900 however, for $400, it was a great buy.

I owned a Garmin Streetpilot C550 for a few years and recently sold it to my son. It was a good unit but the designers oversimplified the interface and omitted displaying a lot of information like latitude and longitude, satellite signal strength, elevation, etc.

The 885T, thankfully, can display all of this information and more. They kept the classic Garmin interface which is very intuitive and added a lot of nice features like “Where am I?”. With one button press you know where you are (lat./long.), and nearby emergency and fuel services. With the C550, these things were buried deep in the menu system. Another nice feature is the ability to touch the 3D map and see it instantly change to a 2D movable map. The speed limit display is nice for people like my wife that obsess about staying under the limit. The 885T also has Lane assist to take the guesswork out of upcoming highway turns. It must not be supported near me because I haven’t seen it work but it’s supposed to display arrows telling you what lane you should be in for your next turn and also have a 3D display with realistic road signs. Also, power up and satellite lock on is almost instantaneous with their “hot fix” technology.

Probably the biggest selling point for the 8X5 series is the voice activation feature. It comes with a small wireless remote that attaches to your steering wheel. Virtually every menu function can be accessed through the voice command system. Ostensibly to keep your eyes on the road while you drive. It works fairly well although when there is noise in the vehicle it can get confused and you will wind up yelling at it. They need to streamline the voice commands as well. After each one you give, you need to wait for a voice prompt from the unit. Sometimes several seconds. Invariably, you will take your eyes off the road to see what the unit is doing. A good example is volume control. It reads back the volume percentage after each adjustment.
Google it and you will find videos of the system in action. Once you learn the shortcuts you will find the system useful.

Another great feature is a user replaceable Li-ion battery(which is a good thing as you will be pulling the battery to reset the unit on a regular basis). A first for Garmin. It also comes with a nice mounting cradle which makes it very easy to remove from your dash. It even remembers the last place it was disconnected and saves it as a favorite so you can find your car again.

You also get a 3 month trial subscription to MSN Direct. They are running a special now, 6 additional months for $20. It’s a very nice service offering weather, traffic, stocks, fuel prices, local events, movie times ,etc. You can also send Points of Interest right from Bing maps directly to your GPS wirelessly. Really cool. The receiver is in the cigarette lighter plug and has it’s own battery. It will receive MSN Direct data even when unplugged.

Bluetooth worked well and paired with my LG phone. Bluetooth is integrated with the POI database and allows you to call them with one button press.

Downsides:

The flimsy sliding power switch feels cheap.
No external volume control. My C550 had a nice wheel that you could find and adjust easily.
Volume, of course. At full blast you may have a hard time hearing the unit over the road noise.(update: There is a 3rd party TTS editor out there that will allow you to adjust volume levels of individual TTS voices. I turned TTS Jill up to 85% (default 65%) and she is much easier to hear in the car-Google TurboCCC TTS editor). I did hook it into my vehicles sound system with a mini stereo cord and it works well. I had music playing from a micro SD card and the system will automatically mute the music for an upcoming turn or phone call. There is a mixer so you can adjust individual volume levels. I had to turn media down to 60% to match the voice direction. I read that the built-in FM transmitter was very weak and essentially useless.

The 4.60 software is very buggy. I have had many lockups requiring removing the battery and also slowdowns leading to spontaneous reboots. I’ve also had the unit grow extremely sluggish. Also, twice while hooking up to my PC, the screen said “updating Bluetooth firmware” ran to 48% and then rebooted. This caused all my BT devices to lose their stored pairings. Today I noticed that my unit was not receiving MSN Direct data. After pulling the battery and allowing the unit to restart, I had full green bars in “Service Status”. Please Garmin, fix these issues!

Be aware that when you register the unit it will ask to load the Garmin Communicator plug-in in your browser. After that is done and you connect your GPS, click next, etc. it will start a software upgrade! Make sure that your battery is charged first before you register it. Also, be aware that the available map update is 1.9 GB and will take a bit to download and install.