Garmin nüvi 680 4.3-Inch Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator
by Garmin
|
Our Price: $444.00 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $72.49 (click here) Category: GPS or Navigation System See more product details |
|---|
Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Garmin nüvi 680 4.3-Inch Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator
Customer Review: A Brilliant Piece of Work
Summary: 5 Stars
The Garmin Nuvi 680 is my first true auto unit on top of handhelds used for work. This is my real experience out of the box.
A friend and I traveled 300 miles in a rare trip to Atlanta, GA to see "Lord of the Dance", staying with area family. Truth is truth, I am a LOUSY road warrior who DESPISES driving in Atlanta. Computer map printouts are near useless around the perimeter because one must know about and PLAN lane changes, sometimes very quickly. I have NO experience with locating the Marietta theater, which already has me sitting on nails, and we unexpectedly discover some Atlanta friends are also going to the show. This creates dinner plans to a restaurant within a half-mile of the theater, but it may as well be 100 miles because I don't have a clue where IT is, either. Now I'm sitting on knives, knowing we better leave for dinner and the theater at 12-noon if we are going to make the 8:00pm show at all.
Instead, we spend daylight at some I-85 shopping centers where I buy the Garmin Nuvi 680 to raise our odds. Here is what happened.
Out of the box, Nuvi immediately locked on to the 'birds' INSIDE our host's house ... impressive. In 10-minutes, I had it ready in the car. Nuvi's street address entry is VERY easy and ABBREVIATED, displaying the correct address with minimal entry! Cool! It only took moments for Nuvi to calculate the route and off we go for the hour ride to the restaurant. Before leaving, I touch our host's street on the screen and Nuvi lets me enter and permanently save full details about our starting point for easy call up when it is time to return.
After 20-minutes, I threw our paper maps away. Apart from the basic route, Nuvi WARNED ABOUT WHICH LANES to use ('Stay Left' or 'Stay Right') and announced the turns in PLENTY of time. It even announced which side of the road to find the restaurant, which was hidden by a hill until the last moment. Bingo-bango-bongo-bam ... THERE IT IS ... right where Nuvi said, arriving within 1-minute of Nuvi's prediction for the hour ride. Nuvis 'text-to-speech' is very good, backed by top-line screen instructions.
Our friends are late and the restaurant is packed. We finish with 10-minutes to make the theater, park and hike it to our seats. Oh, man, I still don't know where we are going and I'm sure we are NOT going to make it. It took 30 seconds to enter the theater address, racing off. My confidence rises as Nuvi guides us through multiple turns straight to the theater parking lot, a new facility only 6 months old. We get to our seats with 1-minute to spare; 6th row ready to enjoy the marvelous spector of Irish dance.
My friend falls in love with the violinist. I'm not so selective wanting to take ALL the talented, beautiful girls home. I'm sure the ladies felt the same about the guys. The performance was teriffic, candy for the eyes and ears with arrival guaranteed by Nuvi.
Charged by the performance, I tell Nuvi to take us back to our hosts house. Nuvi's first route is to enter I-285 on the right side with an immediate exit to I-75 across 4-lanes of heavy traffic on the left. NOT POSSIBLE! Nuvi quickly knows the turn is missed, reports 'Re-calculating', and guides us to a quick and easy turn-around exit that was MUCH safer. This was a lesson not to BLINDLY follow a first pick by any GPS.
It gets better. The term 'Atlanta expressway' is an oxymoron, so I generally take the lesser back roads home for the 5-1/2 hour trip. Nuvi agrees rural roads are better and calculates a route I have never considered before. To my amazement, Nuvi cuts the trip time for the 300 mile trip to 260 miles and 4-hours 50-minutes. 40 minutes FASTER on superior roads which I would have NEVER noted on a paper map. We pulled onto the driveway at the EXACT time Nuvi predicted ... to the MINUTE. The display can be zoomed in/out, while a wide angle route view will AUTOMATICALLY zoom in as a turn is approached, with excellent detail.
While Nuvi 680 has standard and optional features for which I have no use (e.g., Bluetooth), a few really appeal to me. Download your favorite MP3's and Amazon Audible audio books for a more enjoyable trip. The fidelity is very good when Nuvi is told to play them through a quiet, fully selectable FM frequency on your car radio, interupted by Nuvi's brief turn instructions. If you have a car stereo aux input, Nuvi can use it with an optional (Radio Shack) cable. Nuvi will run for an unknown-to-me amount of time on a lithium battery. FM broadcast is through Nuvi's 12-volt adapter cable as a transmit antenna, therefore likely required for the FM feature. When cable powered, Nuvi shuts off with ignition after a 30 second warning that offers the option to stay on with battery power. Nuvi also has a security lock feature that I have not used, yet. When away from home, a 4-digit code would be required to activate the GPS. When at home, Nuvi knows it and bypasses the code requirement. If the unit were to be stolen with this feature in use, the ONLY known way it can be unlocked is by sending it to Garmin. If you have registered your Nuvi, Garmin will know it's a stolen unit.
You can touch the screen on an IDENTIFIABLE point to make an unplanned route change as a new destination or 'via' stop. Gadget geeks may like the MSN traffic, weather, gas-station, 'points of interest' features but I cannot conceive how that can be made to work well as some reviewers opine. Some things still require judgement and brain power.
I don't think it is reasonable to expect any GPS to tell YOU where an unplanned destination can be found and always be accurate. Download Garmin's map updates timely, plan the trip with STREET ADDRESSES in hand and Nuvi WILL confidently guide you right to it. Does it ALWAYS choose right? Not for me. Nuvi wanted to take us down Georgia's I-95 for the last leg home. With on-going (decades) worth of construction amidst very heavy traffic with copious numbers of semis squeezing through narrowed lanes, it is an inordinately DANGEROUS highway which, despite MSN, Nuvi can't judge. Local knowledge prevails. What is marvelous is how quickly Nuvi detects the detour and recalculates the route (a whopping 3-minute difference). When it does detect a 'wrong' turn, it may first try to get you back on the original route. If you purposely miss the second turn, Nuvi gets the idea.
With a Nuvi 680 on board, you can put your road maps in the trunk for emergency use and let Nuvi guide you while entertaining with your favorite music or audio books in the bargain. And if you are a true road warrior that cannot stand to be disconnected from the world with one of those goofy things sticking in the ear ... well, you get your wish, too.
I suppose states that have banned windshield mounts can make the case that a driver may look too much at the GPS, despite a view into the hood, and not enough at the road. I make the case that it is far more dangerous to mount it away from the windshield, forcing one to fully look away from the road. Nuvi's verbal instructions are usually adequate and good judgment dictates looking only when necessary. Display brightness is plenty adequate day and night and fully adjustable. If you need to make ANY meaningful setting change, the socially responsible way to do it is by pulling off the road, first. If you try to do it while driving you ARE being IRRESPONSIBLE and become a danger to everyone else. It is NOT possible to do this, responsibly, while driving. Yet another of our local citizens lost their life in a head-on collision talking on a cellphone with a laptop computer running in the passenger seat. Give me a break!! The worse news is that the driver of the car he hit is also paying the price for this stupidity with a very lengthy and painful hospital stay. No one has this 'right' on public highways.
Well! In the end, I did manage to 'kidnap' a beautiful doll in Atlanta and take her home ... the voice of the lady whom is now known as 'Miss Nuvi'. I shall hold her for a ransom none can pay, such is the beauty of her intellect. Indeed, the charm of Miss Nuvi's excellent features are such that I don't think it's practical to consider buying a car with a built-in unit. Why do that, when the Garmin Nuvi can be transplanted to any car any time.
Customer Review: I Love This Thing!
Summary: 5 Stars
I already had two conventional GPS devices before I got the Garmin nuvi 680. To be precise, I should say before I won the nuvi in a raffle. Yes, I'm a lucky bastard.
The reason I bring this up is because I would never have bought what I called a "driving" GPS, not when I had two other perfectly acceptable devices (a Geko 201 and an eTrex, both Garmins). Mainly, I used these for Geocaching and if ever I needed a real-time map, hooking the GPS to my laptop running Streets and Trips was all I needed.
I'm so glad to say I was wrong--the Garmin nuvi 680 is a technological wonder that goes beyond anything I expected. First, the screen is bright and beautiful, the colors simply pop and it all stands out for readability in everything but the most direct sunlight.
Second, the features on it are incredible (a built-in MP3 starts things off nicely and three free audio books from audible.com are included). Featuring a vast database of data, one can easily search for, and more importantly, find just about anything nearby: food, hotels and motels, theaters, ATMs and banks, entertainment. And with the purchase of an MSN Direct subscription--there is a one-year free subscription that comes with the GPS--you get access to the closest gas stations *with pricing*.
I don't need to bore you with the feature set because that's easy to find, but I'll relate my experience in using it. Starting the device is easy: either push the power button (duh) or simply attach it to the car charger/mounting platform which is held to the windscreen by means of a pretty good suction cup that locks into place. If the car is on and providing a charge through to the charger, the device will turn on. How clever and convenient! By the way, I've had rather good performance from the suction cup, but you need to make sure that both the surface of the cup and the windshield is clean.
Actually using the nuvi is easy: the screen is touch sensitive (although I wish it were more sensitive because I feel like I need to almost bang on the screen sometimes to get a result) and the device works by touching "buttons" shown. If you're not a reader of manuals like me, diving in to using it is also easy and very self-explanatory. Grandma shouldn't have too much trouble with this thing. It presents you with a logical flow to things: first, where do you want to go? At this point, that database comes into play.
If it knows the city you're in (hey, it's a GPS!), you can choose to go either to an address, or you can search for other establishments and even parking. All by touching the screen. Now, for safety's sake, you understand this can get a bit distracting while driving and it's not like I haven't changed options and such while driving myself, but care needs taking when you're working the nuvi. It's dangerous to divide concentration like this and in fact, the nuvi shows a warning about this on each boot up to which the user has to acknowledge.
The Bluetooth feature is incredibly useful. It offers a hands-off connection to your Bluetooth-enabled cell phone with all the usual features (voice dialing, etc.). I really found it useful because the driver actually sees the incoming phone number while driving. One pairing exercise is all that's required and from then on, anytime the two are in proximity of each other, they connect up. The sound is excellent and I found I didn't need to raise my voice when using Bluetooth. The really amazing thing is, the nuvi can broadcast to one's car radio.
This means that instead of the small (although powerful) built-in speakers, you can converse with your pesky friend and hear sound throughout your car! MP3s and audio books can also be broadcast through the radio. This features is hit-or-miss for me though; there are times I can't get the transmission to work and others it works great! I'm still experimenting with this and with the various frequencies to find the best.
As a GPS user, I know that GPS signals are attenuated or degraded in certain conditions--like buildings in most downtown areas. Heavy overhead tree cover will also attenuate signals, but in my experimentation so far, the logic built into the nuvi seems to handle these problems quite well: it simply "knows" which street you're on, even if it's only receiving a partial set of satellite signals. I'm not 100% sure about this, but it seems to make sense.
A word (the last) on the turn-by-turn guidance and instructions. This is one feature I LOVE. Why? Well, say I have a turn coming up to the left but right afterwards, I need to be in the right lane because either my destination is on the right or the next turn is coming up on the right. Well, the nuvi handles this perfectly by giving you this exact information. That right there is the reason I'll be buying another nuvi if this one, hopefully not for a while, bites the dust.
Excellent, REALLY excellent.
Customer Review: A Big Hit and a Little Miss
Summary: 4 Stars
Purchased in May, 2007, have used the Garmin Nuvi 680 for short and long trips, near home and across the country. It is an expensive, top-of-the-line GPS, but mostly justifies this cost with its slew of helpful features.
Production Quality:
The Screen is bright, colorful and crisp. It's large touch screen is easy to view when driving and even automatically switches to display differently for night and day. The touch screen is accurate, though users with big fingers may hit a couple wrong keys on the touch keyboard, especially when the car is moving. Menus are easy to navigate and most items appear in the logical, intuitive place. The included mount works well, but has fallen off a few times. There are many voices to select from and all sound clear and easy to understand. The leather case included is nice for stowing or carrying the GPS without worry of scratching. Overall, very polished product with little oversight.
Features:
The Nuvi 680 is loaded with features. Some features are common to most GPS - Points of Interest Database, travel related software tools, multiple stops en route, option to take a detour at any time, preview of route, zooming in/out & changing view of map. I cannot compare to other devices, but these features all work quite well. Though the POI database can be slow to find a particular place by spelling and occasionally a place is found in an incorrect sub-category. Anyway, the main feature that sets this GPS apart is the MSN Direct Service...
MSN Direct - Traffic:
Traffic reporting is the big draw here above other models. However, it can take 15 minutes or longer (around 20-25% of the time not working at all) for the traffic information to update when you plug in the GPS. If you keep in plugged into your car, often your wait time will be less, but you will still occassionally be left in the dark. When traffic reporting is functioning, you will get a semi-realistic estimate of the time delay and acess to brief details regarding all delays in the area. It's tough to say for sure, but I believe the rerouting usually saved me a good 10-30 minutes at least half a dozen times. Yet, it seems like there were as many times or more where I should have been rerouted and was not. Hopefully the firmware update I just received will fix these issues. One simple suggestion I'd have is to let the user know when they've been automatically rerouted and to show both routes and ETA's on the map screen.
To illustrate - On a normally 3 hour trip we hit 2 hours of traffic, while 30 minutes were predicted by MSN and only after an hour into the trip (but before the traffic jam). We were rerouted around some of the traffic (maybe 30 minutes time saved), but if the correct delay had been predicted, we probably would have been shown a detour shaving off even more time. So while certainly better than a regular GPS, left some room for improvement.
MSN Direct - Weather, Gas, Movies:
Unlike traffic reporting, Weather, Gas and Movies information is useful even if it is several hours or even a day or two old. Usually gas prices are correct or within a few cents. Movie showtimes I haven't used much, but seem correct. The weather, I've tried the most, and is probably 90% accurate, maybe more. These features can be pretty helpful, though I rarely drive out of the way for gas.
Ease of Use:
The startup time (to acquire satelites) is a fairly quick, almost always under 5 minutes, usually under 2 minutes. The route calculation is even faster, almost always under 1 minute, usually under 20 seconds. GPS is highly accurate, despite my regular driving through crowded criss-crossing streets. Once in a while, it may take a few seconds for the GPS to register a turn, but hasn't caused me any problems. Recalculating of route is very quick when you miss a turn, enough to make the next turn. Guidance through directions are easy to pay attention to, with well placed reminders and clear graphical presentation when there are many places to turn off or road splits. It certainly beats mapquest!
Overall:
I'm glad I bought this GPS. While I would highly recommend it, I believe for some, the much cheaper Nuvi 350 is a better buy. The traffic reporting is currently hit or miss and so you may find yourself listening to the radio for traffic anyway. However, if you can't stand traffic and are planning to use this for many years to come, you'll eventually get your money's worth. And hopefully some time in the future the firmware will be optimized and MSN Direct will have a comprehensive reporting system.
Customer Review: Not quite ready for primetime RV-ing
Summary: 3 Stars
I used the Garmin Nuvi 680 GPS on a five thousand mile six week RV tour of National Parks in seven states. Bottom line: the Nuvi has room for improvement for RV drivers.
I was frustrated when I tripped over inaccuracies in the Garmin's maps, especially since I had updated the unit just before my trip. I was routed to several businesses that failed over two years ago that are still listed. A couple of RV parks had bad addresses that took me touring the town at the end of a long day. There were a small number of bizarre but obvious misroutings that looked like the old Vermont farmer telling Nuvi that "you can't get there from here", and we drove on 3 or more roads that looked more than a year old which Nuvi didn't know. In general, I estimate that the map database contained an error for every 250-300 miles we travelled. Garmin would do well to have an easier method of reporting these errors to help alleviate user frustration - maybe a "thumbs down" button to tell Garmin/Navteq that there was something wrong: even if users don't have time to detail the error, maybe enough problem reports will help locate inaccuracies and give users some recourse other than getting angry at the GPS.
I wanted the product to be more "RV friendly". Nuvi has several automobile service categories, but I could never figure out how to look for an RV park as easily as I could look for a motel, nor could I find repair shops specializing in RV repairs unless there was "RV" in the name (and Nuvi's search function threw in many red herrings such as names including "seRVice".)
I found a woeful lack of detail in National Parks (e.g. for seasonal services.) There were many roadside attractions missing altogether. Nuvi has a "truck route" navigation preference, but no "scenic route" for those of us willing to drive farther and slower for prettier roads. Altitude information is hard to locate, and slope information doesn't seem to exist (which is important when you're towing a load). I couldn't figure out how to download any routing information to allow the unit to keep track of where I went on my vacation (even the "Recently Found" waypoints would be useful). I wanted search categories for pets/vets, and for "Doc-in-the-box" businesses separated from hospitals.
The MSN Direct coverage is almost useless for the RV kind of cross-country driving we did, and its lack of comprehensive movie theater coverage makes it disappointing for local use as well. I'll be looking for WiFi features in my next GPS. Specifically, I want a WiFi locator that can tell me if I'm in range. And once Nuvi connects to WiFi, it should update information useful to me, such as podcasts and traffic info for my commute.
Most of the user interface is useful and optimized for getting places, but there are numerous rough edges. For example, looking up by address requires spelling out the city each and every time (yuk!) And why can't Nuvi import my address book from my email? The "Nearby" and "Spell" buttons seem to be magically implemented (now you see them, now you don't). Looking up a City doesn't sort the list by closest match, so it can take some time to scroll down and find the one I'm looking for. And you should abandon hope for phonetic spelling: if you can't spell where you want to go, you'll struggle to find it.
The map display needs some attention, especially for the long stretches of cross country travel. With almost nothing else on the screen most of the time, Garmin could do well to tune the route display to be more useful (e.g. next feature plus next town with services). For routing lists, Garmin could also break up the long stretches of interstate highways with intermediate towns (e.g. "100 miles US-15 to Provo UT" might be divided into ""50 miles US-15 to Salt Lake City UT; 50 miles US-15 to Provo UT").
For all these minor weaknesses, the Nuvi product line is solid and easy for auto touring. Garmin simplifies and optimizes the user interface to facilitate getting you wherever you want to go. As of this writing, the Nuvi 680 attempts to be the most comprehensive "Digital Travel Assistant" in the product line, and begs for the kind of enhancements tuned to distance traveling and to be polished to justify the premium price.
Customer Review: O.K. But not worth the generally high price
Summary: 3 Stars
I've owned several GPS units over the years, and while I've updated models because they have evolved, The Garmin nuvi 680 is a step back.
While the GPS works fine, it has some very bad annoyances that I wouldn't expect from a unit of this price. First, it doesn't default to the map screen, rather you have to select maps everytime, otherwise it just stays in its menu mode. In fact almost all screens eventually will go back to this page. I feel, that if you don't press any buttons for an extended time, it should return to the default map display, but it doesn't.
Second, the real function of this unit, navigation, is a bit sketchy at best. There are only two navigation settings, "fastest" or "shortest" and neither really accomplish their goals.
I live about 5 miles from work, and because of obstacles, there are basically three ways that I can get to and from work; the east way, the west way, and the center way. The center way is both the shortest and the quickest, but no matter what the setting, the 680 NEVER takes that route. And the road sizes are all about the same, generally 2 lane roads.
That alone wouldn't be so bad if the 680 truly thought that the other routes were shorter or faster, but it doesn't. Let me explain. I set the setting to "fastest route" for a test, and routed to work. On the bottom of the display is an ETA screen which estimates your arrival time. One day I followed the suggested route and got there about two minutes after it predicted. Not bad.
The next day, I repeated the drive, but instead of going the recommended way, I went the "center" way. The ETA was the same as the day before, but the instant I deviated from the planned route, the 680 said "recalculating" and the ETA dropped by about 5 minutes. I eventually got there 5 minutes sooner like it projected. So, in other words, the Nuvi knew that the center route was faster because when I turned on to it, the ETA reduced by 5 minutes, but yet it never recommends that route. How stupid.
Other routing decisions are plain stupid as well. When I need to make a left, it will often tell me to make a right then a u-turn, then back!! Other times it tells me to drive past my destination, make a u-turn, then drive back, almost like it doesn't think there is a turn lane in the road.
The MSN part of this device is O.K. but I don't know if its worth $40/year. Gas prices and movie times are helpful, but the traffic is a waste. I don't think it has ever given me traffic info that has saved me time. Either it reported accidents I never saw, or it doesn't find accidents that are there, and only SOME major roads in Phoenix (5th largest city) are even mapped. Nothing other than major highways are.
Other annoyances. When driving a routed course, the 680 gives you the distance to the next turn, and your ETA, but that is it. You CAN'T display the total distance to your destination, or the length of your trip, only the time you will get there. This is lame.
Its almost like this device was designed for idiots, that were too stupid to ever want more.
Here is another example of poor design. I live in AZ and we don't change our clocks for daylight savings. When the clocks did change in the rest of the world, my 680 time was off an hour, so an easy fix, right? I went to setting and there was a "Time" setting, so I pressed it and was offered two options "12-hour" or "24-hour." It was set to "12-hour" and I wanted "12-hour" so I just pressed cancel. There was no time-zone setting I could see.
I called tech support at Garmin, and after 60 minutes on the phone, we solved the problem. On the time screen, for "12-hour" and "24-hour" if you press Cancel instead of OK, you never get to the timezone screen, you have to end it with OK, even if you aren't changing the setting. How stupid and unintuitive?
After my experience with this unit, I don't think I would buy a Garmin GPS again.