Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 84
 855 is a piece of junk November 19, 2009
Joe Jazz (MA, USA)
Was okey in the beginning. Usual problems - drains battery overnight (even if turned off)), sometimes very slow to start in the morning.
Completely stopped working 3 months later. Asked if Garmin can downgrade to a lower more reliable model, they don't want to do it. TO bad, I will get a refurbished piece of junk again. BTW, I will be paying for shipping the product for repair. Do yourself a favor, buy something else.
 Read the reviews, do your homework... November 19, 2009
Michael Gerbasi (Elmont, New York United States)
The Nuvi 855 is my first GPS unit. I did alot of homework and read reviews on MANY Garmin and Tom Tom units before I selected this model. After receiving my unit, I sat INSIDE my house at the kitchen table, opened the box and immediately put the GPS to work. The enclosed battery comes with a full charge, and within 20 seconds of boot up, I had four green bars in the display, showing me a more than adequate satellite acquisition. I then proceeded yo go through the necessary initial programming, which took no time at all. Today was the first road test while I used it around town. The unit, although not much larger than my iPhone, has a large, colorful LCD screen, which occassionally got washed out by the morning sun. I found the voice prompts loud enough to be heard, but used the FM radio feature to hear them on the radio. The choices for the voice are limited and sound mechanical, but are able to be understood. I found the voice activation (one of the reasons I chose this model) to have a huge learning curve when it comes to the voice commands. If there's ANY background noise (kids in the backseat), or the radio playing at the same time your giving a voice command, you might as well save time and just use the touch screen. I also purchased the Garmin GTM 20 traffic receiver, which also doubles as the unit's power cord. I live in the NY metro area, and I "think" it's working, as I see different colors on main roads when I press the traffic icon. Being that neither comes with a users manual, I don't know if I have it set up right. The cable's a little pricey, but there's no subscriptions to worry about. I also purchased the Garmin Portable Friction Mount, which really keeps the unit in place. As far as the "freezing" issues are concerned, I did a firmware AND map update without any problem. Put aside a good hour or so (I have a cable modem) to take care of this task. I did notice that the POI's (points of interest) had no text labels on the map, and icons are kind of small. There's no bluetooth ability, and uploaded music on a SD card seems to play out of order, even when it's not on shuffle mode. I really don't know why this unit got less than 4 stars in any review. It may or may not stop working in the future, since it is possible to get a lemon with any purchase. But overall, this model is loaded with features and has the GREAT Amazon price.
Wave the checker Flag!! November 17, 2009
Mark A. Ward
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I like the Garmin Nuvi 855 very much. It has gotten me out of a potential jam when options like Map Quest or BIN made it sound confusing on back roads to get to our destination. I took out the Garmin and plotted in the destination address from where we were currently at and it plotted the rest of the route for us. I also like all the features Garmin has to offer. Thumbs up for this realiable Gizmo. Mark Ward
 What a Dud November 14, 2009
Carol Lugg (Colorado Springs, CO USA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
We purchased this unit in late October, for an upcoming trip to Las Vegas we were taking in early Nov. This was our first GPS, and we were looking forward to putting it to the test. As it turned out, it put us to the test! Right after we arrived, and got our car rental, we used it to navigate to an In & Out Burger place. That went pretty well. After lunch, we decided to use it to help us navigate to a couple of ghost towns. On our way there, it locked up, but we removed the battery and we were on our way again after we put the battery back in. The following day, we used it to help us navigate to a local museum. Halfway there, it locked up again, and this time, I couldn't even get it to turn off! Finally, we got it to behave, and we just put it in the glove box, since we knew where we were going by that time anyway. We didn't use it much after that. Fast forward to the other day, when I had several errands in town to run, and not a lot of time to accomplish my task. Thankfully, our son was with us, looking at the map as we moved along, because it told us we were 8 miles from our turn off, and the next thing I know, I drove past the turnoff! While I am busy navigating us back to where we needed to be, our son couldn't get it to turn off, and when he finally did, it wouldn't come back on! We removed the battery, and put it back in, and that worked. It worked fine for the balance of our day.
I need a GPS unit I can trust. If he hadn't been with me, and let's say I was in unfamiliar territory this could be really bad for me, since I am somewhat handicapped. I understand no unit will be perfect, but this one is WAY off the mark as far as we are concerned! We only tested it in relatively familiar territory at first, so we could see if it would be reliable or not. I would definitely put this one in the category of not reliable!
We are returning this unit, and i have purchased the Garmin 780, and we will see how that goes! Hopefully, I will be able to write a glowing review after putting that one through its paces! We really wanted to get the 7200 Street Pilot, but the issue of not having an internal battery was a problem for me, since my car has one plug in up front, and another WAAY in the back. If I ever needed to charge both the GPS and my phone, one of them has to go way out of my reach, behind the back seat.
As a side note, I cannot say it has been fun researching and reading TONS of info. on all things Garmin for several days! To begin with, there are features on any given unit that I might like that someone else might not like, so with every review you read, you kind of have to take what info. works for you, and toss the rest. I don't know if it is doable, but it would be kind of cool, if you could kind of "custom" order a GPS, that has only the features on it you want. For example, an Mp3 is useless to me. I have a really great Mp3, and I know that what they put in these units cannot compare. I also have no need for the bluetooth feature. I realize that the 760 is the same unit, but without the bluetooth feature, but it is also about $34.00 more at the moment. Hmmm..., it costs more, but has less features. Yep, that makes sense!
I hope this review has been a helpful one to you, if you are seriously considering getting this particular unit. Was it locking up just a weirdo thing, and perhaps another unit wouldn't lock up? That is entirely possible. I just don't want to have to keep trying the same unit over and over again.
 Great So Far November 14, 2009
JennyRac (Hartford, CT)
I ordered Garmin 885 Nov. 8th and it arrived at my home surprisingly Nov. 10th with free standard shipping. Ironically, the GPS case I ordered the same time has not arrived even today!
After researching several models, I settled with 885. I am a first time GPS buyer, never used a GPS in my life. Saw some of my friends using a GPS and got lost every time. I have been resistance of purchasing a GPS for my travel, but I decided to give a shot to see if it helps me, yes it did help after I tested it out a few days.
Although the instruction manual is not quite clear for a first time GPS user, it is not difficult to figure out various features by pressing icons. The Garmin's web site did not really help me much when I was trying to find out how to operate various features. The web help is difficult to search, I might not have reviewed the site closely and did not know how to browse correctly. I am also not a patient person, like to get things done very quickly. If I do not see information that helps me, I started pressing icons on the unit.
I think I have mastered most of the features in a very short time period. I tested it out in the past 3 days, just love it! It gave me clear directions with enough preparation time. The voice recognition feature is really a plus. Surprisingly, it understands most of words I speak; English is not my native language, I give very good rating for this feature 885 offers. I had difficulty pronouncing the word "routes", the poor GPS could not understand what I was saying, then a gentle touch on the screen indeed helped.
I remember I read some people saying that the unit cannot be powered off, they had to take the battery out or insert a piece of paper in the battery case. This unit I have does not have a Power Off button, but you can power it off easily. What you do is plug it to your computer via UPS cable, then unplug it. You will be prompted to either turn off or stay on. Just click on Turn Off or wait for 30 seconds, the unit would turn off. Another way is when you take the GPS off the cradle (the same as unplug the car charger), it prompts you either turn off or stay on. Just wait and the unit will be turned off. I also read people saying something about windshield mount is not as good as the "sandbag" mount. In the package, there is a small round piece, you clue it on dash board, then suck the cradle on the round piece; this way you see the GPS very closely. I think the volume is fine, I set it up to 90% when I was listening to radio. But you can plug an audio cable from the cradle to your car and use the speaker system. If I do not listen to radio, I set the volume to 70%.
One thing I am not sure is if it can give me an overview of my route after the route is calculated. Another thing is how to speed up the "simulator". What I mean is when you change the GPS to simulator, it will run an entire route for you, but it is too slow. I cannot find a place to change the speed of simulation or if I can pinpoint to the area near the destination and start the simulation from that point. I would also hope that when a route is calculated, I can review it and can revise the route manually by touching screen, just like Google Map. This model may have the above features, but I just do not know yet.
In general, I really like the unit; the price is so good in Amazon, a small $200 unit that can do so many things, really amazed me.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 84
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