jim65wagon
Well-known member
For several years now we've used a Magellan Meridian Gold as our only GPS. With a mix of Topo and DirectRoute maps on one SD card it delivered us to many places both on and off-road. In the last year it started "acting up" freezing, showing us driving on areas of maps we weren't on, and requiring a firmware reload. It seems to be working fine now (in Topo mode at least), but we decided to upgrade.
We decided that a new GPS would be more vehicle oriented and we could use the Magellan and my wifes Garmin Legend as hiking units.
We wanted a widescreen, easy-to-read unit.
It had to have maps that were frequently updated.
Had to have text to speech direction (turn in 500 feet onto suchandsuch road)
It would be nice to route multiple waypoints. Some of our roadtrips go to a variety of locations and it would be nice to route to each as needed.
I started out looking at the Nuvi 750. Garmins maps are updated regularly, its a widescreen, and routes through multiple waypoints (via points). It's price wasn't cheap, but I wanted one so I started saving pennies.
While saving, my wife found a Best Buy ad for the Nuvi 780, which had all the same stuff as the 750, but added Bluetooth and a few other geegaws. The price clinched it though, at 200 dollars off. I picked one up for 299, (yes it was originally 499).
It works well, picks up satellites fast, routes and reroutes quickly. You can set a destination and with the touch screen select other destinations to stop at along the way and it routes to each in turn, or to each at your choosing. It'll avoid routing hiways, tollroads etc if you like. It was set up to avoid unpaved roads and that was the first thing I unchecked in its setup! I can't wait to see where it takes me!
Nuvi780
We decided that a new GPS would be more vehicle oriented and we could use the Magellan and my wifes Garmin Legend as hiking units.
We wanted a widescreen, easy-to-read unit.
It had to have maps that were frequently updated.
Had to have text to speech direction (turn in 500 feet onto suchandsuch road)
It would be nice to route multiple waypoints. Some of our roadtrips go to a variety of locations and it would be nice to route to each as needed.
I started out looking at the Nuvi 750. Garmins maps are updated regularly, its a widescreen, and routes through multiple waypoints (via points). It's price wasn't cheap, but I wanted one so I started saving pennies.
While saving, my wife found a Best Buy ad for the Nuvi 780, which had all the same stuff as the 750, but added Bluetooth and a few other geegaws. The price clinched it though, at 200 dollars off. I picked one up for 299, (yes it was originally 499).
It works well, picks up satellites fast, routes and reroutes quickly. You can set a destination and with the touch screen select other destinations to stop at along the way and it routes to each in turn, or to each at your choosing. It'll avoid routing hiways, tollroads etc if you like. It was set up to avoid unpaved roads and that was the first thing I unchecked in its setup! I can't wait to see where it takes me!
Nuvi780
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