Garmin RV 770 LMT-S

John Jasper wrote:
Has anyone yet tried the RV 770 LMT-S?
I'm interested in it as a replacement for Street Atlas. I like the idea that the 770 is compatible with BaseCamp, so I can lay out the day's driving in detail on a laptop and then download to the 770. A plus is that there is a Mac version of BaseCamp, so I wouldn't have to mess with Parallels and Windows any more. Of course, if it doesn't work well, then buying it is a no-go.

I'm a long-time Garmin user and have always been impressed with the different units. Prior to buying the RV 770 LMT-S I had used a nevi 3590LM as. Although the 3590 still worked great I was impressed with the list of RV specific aspects of the RV 770 and also liked the larger screen size. Let me say right off that the RV 770 has been a huge disappointment. I'm sure it's all software related, but that's part of the overall product. The RV-770 consistently directs us the wrong way. By this I mean the voice guidance is not the same as the route shown on the map on the device. For example, if you look at the map you can see the colored route line might be correctly showing a right turn, but the voice guidance says "turn left". Since I rely on the voice guidance when driving alone, I can't catch these mistakes sometimes until it's too late. One time the incorrect direction of turn on the voice guidance actually tried to turn me the wrong way on a one-way street. Another big issue with me is active lane guidance. Going through large cities with several lanes and interchanges it is important to me to know well ahead of time which lane(s) I need to be in because as we all know changing lanes quickly in heavy traffic is not always possible in a larger motorhome, especially towing a car. The RV-770 is very late in both the voice guidance for these changes as well as the pictorial of the lanes.

If you're thinking that this is normal, I can tell you that on our latest trip (2400 miles roundtrip) I also setup my old 3590 and the software in it did NOT make the same errors as the RV-770 and ALWAYS displayed the lanes I needed to be in way far in advance of when the RV-770 did. Lastly, we had several instances of the RV-770 simply routing us incorrectly. Again, the nuvi3590 worked flawlessly.

There is no excuse for these things. If the software in a 4-5 year old device can be accurate, why can't Garmin do the same thing with their supposedly newer, top-of-line RV GPS. If Garmin can correct all these software/navigation errors, I still believe this could be a great device, but until that time, I will continue to also use the nuvi3590 and pay attention to it more than the RV-770.