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Imserba Webstore - Garmin nüvi 855 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator with Speech Recognition
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List Price: $499.99
Our Price: $199.99
Your Save: $ 300.00 ( 60% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Garmin
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Batteries Included: 1
Battery Description: 1 Lithium-Ion
Binding: Electronics
Brand: Garmin
EAN: 0753759091286
Feature: Sleek, ultra-slim design fits in a pocket; High-sensitivity GPS receiver for fast satellite lock
Is Memorabilia: 0
Label: Garmin
Manufacturer: Garmin
Model: 010-00577-31
Publisher: Garmin
Special Features: nv:Condition^New|Type^Automotive|Waypoints^500|Route Capacity^10|Display^TFT|Display^Backlight|Screen Size^4.3"|Touch Screen^Yes|Voice^Yes|Expansion Slots^microSD Card|Battery Type^Removable, Rechargeable Lithium-ion|Battery Life^4 hours|Special Features^FM Transmitter|Special Features^Spoken Street Names|Special Features^Lane Guidance|Maps Included^United States
Studio: Garmin
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Features
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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
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: My GPS has occassionally froze up but I turned it off and back on without any problems
Comment: Excellent product and great price! As with anything, a few kinks have to be worked out such as the freezing up of the GPS. However that has only been a minor factor for me. I used it on a recent trip, in an extremely rural area, and I was still able to receive satellite reception. The driving directions are awesome and I really love the lane assist feature. The only thing that wished could be re-worked is the voice and the volume because it is sometimes difficult to understand because of the placement of the speaker. Overall if I had to purchase all over again, I would.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great GPS except for some bugs
Comment: The functions of the 855 are great.
I like being able to replace the battery when the original wears out eventually since it's much cheaper to replace than sending a unit to Garmin for battery replacement.
The custom avoidance feature is a nice function not found in many other Garmin GPSs. You can save avoidance instances to certain roads or areas you don't want to travel through.
Ease of use is great similar to my 760 I had given to someone.
The lane assist is nice.
The junction view where it shows exit signs has very few exits in the unit, maybe they will add more in the future.
Only main con I would say is an occaisional hang of the GPS and I have to hold the power button for a while and then it does a full reboot.
Also the voice recognition does not respond sometimes, but it's still a great feature to have.
Hopefully these will be ironed out in a future firmware upgrade.
Customer Rating:
Summary: What happened to Garmin Quality
Comment: This is my first review, ever. I couldn't let this go by without relating my experience with this device as a warning to others.
After owning a StreetPilot 550 for several years I decided to upgrade to the 855 and give the StreetPilot to a coworker that I had been praising the benefits of owning a Garmin to. After about 3 months use I thought perhaps there were some pages in the owners manual (that you have to download online) that i had completely skipped over which explained that there might be some kind of learning curve for those of us non-rocket scientists and theoretical physicists.
The freezing of the screen became more and more frequent and for sequentially longer periods. Living in Los Angeles with a high stress job that actually does involve life and death at times, this was not a situation that was going to be tolerated for long.
The MSN Direct features were somewhat helpful, as long as you didn't need accurate traffic information. Of course that was the primary feature I wanted out of it. About four to six weeks ago MSN Direct sends out an email notifying those of us with "lifetime" subscriptions that they were going to be closing shop in 2012 so don't count on this feature to be around for more than a year.
I kept telling myself to return it but truly did not have the time to do that.
I'm not a road rage driver in the least but this machine found its way out my car window and somewhere along the 405 one night when it told me I should be able to be driving at 65mph as I drove less thsn 4 miles in two hours due to an accident.
To top things off the Garmin 755T that lived in the better half's car had a screen freeze for the first time 2 days ago and then yesterday it died a death that deserved last rights because it wouldn't even power on anymore.
What happened Garmin?! I'm headed to TomTom to check out the competition.
Customer Rating:
Summary: a solid 4: nice features, some drawbacks vs. older units
Comment: My 855 is my third Garmin, after the venerable military-grade brick "GPS V Deluxe", and a more recent Nuvi 350 I received as a Christmas gift when the GPS V could not compete with San Francisco navigation. My writeup incorporates my experience with my previous Garmins ease of use, adaptability, capabilities and etc.
PROS:
The 855 was a top-of-the-line unit with an MSRP of a cool $500 a few years ago. The unit now sells for less than 50% of that. This is a good example of buying last year's models for greatest benefit. The 855 includes features which other, newer, Garmin units have foregone even though they are the same price range or more. Namely a few nice things such as:
- voice recognition
- removable battery
- external antenna input
- lane assistance (where available)
- exit diagrams (where available)
- capability of backup-camera integration (with compatible backup camera and VIB10/11 "Vehicle Integration Box" (now discontinued)
- routes and route waypoint optimization
- "guided detour" (specify your own avoidances if you don't like the route picked)
I have found the navigation/routing capabilities of the unit are completely on par with my excellent Nuvi 350. The mapset is fairly up to date, and the custom detours is a function I had _always_ wanted on the 350. (No, I am _not_ going to take the 101 in the SF Bay area, dear Nuvi, because that road is crap.) The voice recognition works actually pretty well once you train yourself to the "secrets", and the lane assistance has proved to be useful more than once. Coverage for the lane guidance has been good in the SF Bay Area, with most major multi-lane roads supported, and about 50% of all highway exits I've seen documented with the exit pictures. BTW, not sure how Garmin "did it", but the exit pictures are often uncannily accurate, showing not only the over-passes you'd see at the exit, but also often hills, embankments, retaining walls and other features which aren't strictly related to the road. This could be called gimmicky, but it gives a nice level of assurance when navigating unfamiliar exits. Multi-point routing works as expected... which is fine.
CONS:
As great as the 855 is, there are some definite shortcomings that can only be attributed to "progress" in the product line. My biggest gripes in comparison to older Garmin units would be as follows, and aren't necessarily specific to the 855. Many of the newer Garmin units seem to have similar faults:
- car cradle is fussy to clip in, I usually have to take a few tries to get it straight
- using the USB cable automatically puts it into "PC" mode, which means you can't use a universal mini-USB connector to run it in a different car
- lack of flip-up antenna to easily turn on/off GPS reception (the 350 automatically goes into "simulator/indoor" mode when you flip the antenna down)
- power button is poorly implemented in comparison to the 350. one "click" on the 350 power button would automatically bring up the "volume/mute/lock" screen, no matter what interface mode you were in, another click would bring you back out again
- software is "fragile"/buggy, I've had to yank the battery more than 1x when I borked the voice recognition language by changing the interface language, and then back to English; I've never had the unit fail while navigating, so this shouldn't affect the on-road stability, just when you're fussing with the settings.
- touch screen is not nearly as sensitive as the 350, but this seems to be common across all Garmin's newer units, more of a "fingernail drag" rather than a finger touch (was the screen re-purposed from a stylus-based handheld PC?); my father-in-laws 265T was similarly non-responsive
- menus/interface could do with some polish/rethinking, my GPS V was ergonomically amazing, always felt intuitive, the 350 coped well in interface design, the 855 menus feel "overloaded" sometimes, but workable
- searching "near" other towns/cities instead of where you are currently often doesn't work or takes a few tries
Conclusion:
Ultimately it comes down to "would I buy this unit again?" and I would give that a qualified "Yes". The set of features on this unit is a good one, and from my research not available as a package on any other unit. From a feature standpoint, the capability is dead-on, and certainly on par with any unit I've used to date. That being said, there are certain things noted above that still make me like my Nuvi 350 a little better. The 350 was Garmin's very first Nuvi, and I think they spent extra time with the fit, finish, and interface, getting it right. The features available on the 855 have now surpassed the 350, but the phrase rings true, "they just don't make them like they used to..."
Customer Rating:
Summary: Never Lost Again
Comment: This unit works just fine, I haven't looked into all its features, but so far its done well, in FL, NJ, NY and NC.
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