RV GPS

rr2254545 wrote:
Best on the market - buy it

x2. I drive charter buses and use one for my routing. Very happy with it.

Bill J., Lexington, KY

I have the Garmin 760. It's like anything. Just a tool. Like GordonThree stated above, it's not perfect. Many times, I've known for a fact roads are RV friendly but the Garmin would rather send me 50 miles out of my way to make sure I stay on a major highway. Use a GPS unit as one tool to go along with other research and they are helpful but not the best thing since sliced bread by any means.

Ryanjb01 wrote:
I do not trust any 1 GPS, but I was hoping that the Garmin 770 RV would at least maybe give me a little more warning if I am approaching a "low bridge".

Another question I have is:

When using the Garmin 770 RV, if you just have the unit on, and do NOT have a destination programmed, but have your RV height set, will the GPS notify you of a low bridge?

Or does it have to be programmed for a specific route before it will identify low bridges?If that makes sense.

Ryan

When driving without a route programmed, I still get warnings about steep grades, sharp curves, sudden speed limit changes, school zones, speed traps, etc.

My 760's favorite answer is "RV Accessibility Unknown" ... kind of a general disclaimer. My height is under 10 feet, so I haven't seen any height warnings. Tried searching on the subject? The subject seems to come up frequently, rants about various brand GPS misleading folks on bridge heights.

We have the Garmin RV770 and in over a 5K of travels this year, it didn't mislead us. Found it to be pretty accurate and useful. But we still had our paper maps.

I do not trust any 1 GPS, but I was hoping that the Garmin 770 RV would at least maybe give me a little more warning if I am approaching a "low bridge".

Another question I have is:

When using the Garmin 770 RV, if you just have the unit on, and do NOT have a destination programmed, but have your RV height set, will the GPS notify you of a low bridge?

Or does it have to be programmed for a specific route before it will identify low bridges?If that makes sense.

Ryan

we have the garmin RV750. yes you can program for vehicle length weight height etc. However it has one noticeable drawback. you can only program for overall length, not TV and trailer length. So....... it will tell you to avoid roads when it sees your overall length greater than the allowed trailer length for comercial trailers. It doesn't distinguish. And many times roads have a length limit for comercial trailers as well as overall length.

Next, many states list height restrictions for the corners of tunnels. and again, it can give you bad info, based on bad input. Not garmins fault but the sources fault. Likely any GPS will give the same problem if you can set overall height.

I've run into this issue on roads I KNEW I could travel on, been their, done that.


Overall, I like ours, it's nice to have the shortcuts for rv related things like campgrounds, repair etc.

and we have the matching rear camera, works great on the back of the trailer.

IMHO if your looking for a GPS, and you tow, no reason not to go with the garmin or similar RV GPS for the extra features they offer.

I have the previous model, the RV 76o ... it works OK, but it is not infallible. I'm obsessive compulsive and thoroughly research all the roads around a destination and along a route, looking for surprises, so I don't get surprised by an error in the GPS.

The units are only as good as the data they're programmed with, and Garmin doesn't bother to double check any of the data the buy from where-ever. So if some community or map maker decides to mislabel the specs on a road, bridge, underpass, etc, Garmin will blindly accept that error and pass it along to you.

On the plus side, the voice command works great. The screen is huge and has a very wide brightness range, so you can see it in noon day sun, and it's not blinding you at night.

the tl;dr it's a great gps but don't follow it (or any device including the omnipotent Google) blindly.

Best on the market - buy it