GPS 765t Garmin

I just returned two of them for calibration and keyboard issues. Got a 1490T from Costco and am loving it. No comparison trust me...see email from Garmin below. The issue has been going on since December....If you get the unit and it has version 3.6 software you will be ok until a fix comes out but don't update to version 3.9 as that is what has caused problems.

Thank you for contacting Garmin International. I would be happy to help you with this issue.

Our sincerest apologies for this issue, as we are aware of this glitch, and we are currently working on a fix. We have not been informed of a date of release, but it is hopefully going to be released within the next week or so.

This is a high-priority update, as we understand that many device's are exhibiting this behavior.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused, and should you need further assistance, please reply to this email.

Probably “NO”!

It is a great unit - but I am now on my third one. They all have had touch screen issues. This last one still has the issue but I can live with it (so far it is the best of the lot). I am tired of sending this thing back to Garmin.

My wife will not be able to use the 765. I got her a 1490t! It seems to be fine.

Knowing what I know now I would probably not. I have a C330 and C550, and both are good units. I had been watching the 765T since it first came out. As the prices had been dropping, I had been waiting to pull the trigger. Finally, Amazon.com had a one-day sale on NEW 765T's for $184.99. I decided it was worth the plunge.

The first unit I received had strange markings on the screen that appeared to be inside the screen itself. Rather than try to figure out what they were, I contacted Amazon.com and I had a replacement in two days and a postage paid return for the first device.

With the new unit, I noticed the erratic screen behavior but it wasn't too bad and I really like the various features that the 765T had over the C550 though the routing on the 765T is not is good, IMHO, as the C550. Finally, last weekend, I decided to recalibrate the screen as other posts indicated it helped solve the screen problems. I did that and the screen started working much better. However, whatever fixed the screen, screwed up other things in the 765T. Custom routes started acting strange and my traffic receiver would go offline with the "no reception" gray icon. Also, the device started rebooting itself and the diagnostic logs show issues with memory allocation (malloc() call issues for us programmers). Mid-week, I decided to do a hard reset and wipe everything. That appears to have stopped the crashes BUT the screen is acting funny again. It is most annoying when trying to enter my Garmin Lock PIN and having it tell me I entered the wrong PIN.

I am pinning my hopes that the replacement for 3.90 will fix many of these issues. It does appear to be a "memory leak" in their code and having experience with leaky code at work, those kinds of issues can cause many problems. It won't fix the routing issues but a lot of the other stuff may go away.

I love mine before and after backdating from 3.90. Had lots of problems with 3.90, nothing since going back to prior version

I love my 765T. The only problem I ever had was with the hanging second letter when searching for a POI, but that is only with 3.9 firmware. Everything else is 100%

Now isn't that great that you have to back date to a different version to have your unit work properly. I love Garmin but boy why can't they put out software and units that don't have problems. It just amazes me that the upper management has not woken up to the fact of all the returned units they are getting back. They wanted to send me a refurb unit to replace a new unit less than a week old but said it would also have 3.9 version on it. HELLO!!!! Returned it and got a 1490T...

The things that make you go HMMMMM

I am pretty happy with my 765T.
Yes, it has that infamous 2nd letter freeze in spell mode after "upgrading" to 3.90.
No, I did not experience the discribed traffic issues (last few days, in fact, it worked quite effectively)...
I do not care about the letter freeze - it teaches me that patience is important in life...
I think Garmin will fix it in next upgrade release.
But otherwise - the unit functions nicely and comfortably... For me, that is...

My only issue is the screen calibration issue. Other than that mine works fine. I just have to re-calibrate the screen every few months otherwise it takes 4-5 tries to unlock it. Good unit otherwise and while I don't use it often the free traffic is nice too.

Buy a 760 or 780 and get a traffic receiver separately

What's the difference between the 760 and 780? They don't appear on Garmin's website product list. How come? Amazon has the 760 at $10 more than the 780.

dminz you can see the difference yourself in the reviews.

Garmin 760 review:
http://gpsmagazine.com/2007/10/garmin_nuvi_760_review.php

Garmin 780 review:
http://gpsmagazine.com/2008/04/garmin_nuvi_780_gps_review.ph...

It looks like the only difference is that the 780 includes the MSN Direct receiver and free service for 9 months. And, strangely, it is $10 cheaper than the 760 on Amazon. Is Garmin still making these? They are not listed on their website.

They are discontinued!!!!I would suggest a 1490T naturally because I just got one and love it...

MSN is going away on January 1, 2012 so the GDB 50 receive will be useless. However, if the price is really good, you can get a GTM 20 on eBay and use that for traffic. For $10 difference, it is not worth it.

I would stay away from both of them myself. It obvious why Garmin discontinued 780, because of the MSN debacle. But why on earth would they dump the 760 other than they ruined the marketing ability of the unit with it's problems they still haven't fixed. Even though it does have a FM TMC traffic receiver and not a MSN receiver.

The Nuvi 760 on Garmins web site.
https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?pID=37420

First of all, the reason the xx0 are discontinued is that they released the xx5. Garmin lives on churn; they try to convince you to buy the 'latest and greatest' in order to keep product moving in an almost saturated, high competition market space.

Unfortunately, the newer units have lousy Bluetooth implementations based on Motorola chipsets where the xx0 series used the Parrot chips that work so well. They also use the Sirf chips that work better than the Chinese MTK chips that caused so much trouble. In other words, the 760/780 series preceeds Garmin's cost slashing.

The reality is that Garmin also managed to mess up the xx5 and those that followed by removing the display of upcoming cross streets in the banner box when not routing - so you get to see the truly useful 'Driving on xxx street' for miles on end when the reality is that you would prefer to see the display alternate between the 'driving on' message and the 'approaching yyy street' one.

Yes, I know that if you zoom in tight enough on the new units the map will display the names of the upcoming streets on the map itself, but that doesn't make sense and isn't definitive in the sense that it

a) doesn't display EVERY street and
b) is not effective at allowing you to discriminate between the upcoming street and the one you are just passing if they are closely spaced and
c) requires that you be zoomed in real close, so you don't get an overview of the surroundings.

The idea is that you should not be messing with the navigator while driving and you shouldn't have to search the screen for information, so putting the street name in the banner box is much safer.

Further, Garmin also seriously reduced the street display resolution in the newer models so that you can't see secondary streets (even the one you are driving on) when zoomed out past 500 meters, meaning that if you are not in the city center and want to see what the roads are more than about 3 miles away, you can't unless you zoom in and then manually pan the map - the xx0 allow zooming to 1.2 km while still showing the details.

More insidious is that if you ARE zoomed out, the display won't even show you the street you are driving on - and if it doesn't happen to have a name, you get to see your car icon on a solid yellow screen with a banner box that says 'Driving on road" and nothing else.

Give me the older GUI any day

Sure, you don't get the junction view and lane assist in the older units, but it DOES tell you whether to turn left or right, just not which lane to be in. And you don't get the building view in 3D (aside from the fact that I don;t use 3D view much, big whoop - besides, who cares?). But I have driven and ridden with both styles and I must say that the older GUI is a lot less cluttered and provides more useful information so that I feel that the trade-off between lane assist which is IMO the most important of the newer features and the downsides simply make the compromises in the newer units unjustifieable.

As to what to buy from the series? Whichever is cheaper;

The traffic receiver packaged with the 760 is subscription based and, as mentioned, MSN Direct will be discontinued on Jan 1, 2012, though it is a very nice service where they have it. Garmin decided to move to their cellular-linked Nulink solution that is available in the 1690.

So, why buy a 760/780? First of all it simply works better; It has better street detail resolution than the 'more modern' units; it is cheap; when you plug in your lifetime traffic receiver you won't be saeeing advertisements; It supports all of the features (custom POIs, map updates, MP3 and so on) that the current models do with minor exceptions; The Bluetooth works MUCH better and the unit doesn't lock up or have any significant bugs. Same warranty too.

My nuvi 760 is fully updated and has been rock solid with no problems. It does routes and plays .mp3 sounds. I am running Clear Channel traffic with the GTM-20 FM traffic receiver with no ads. When not navigating it displays the next cross street.

I am surprised to hear it is still available for sale; I think I'll buy another!

dobs108

Is there any reason to buy the 760 instead of the 780? The 780 is $10 cheaper.

have to spend upwards of $100 to replace the traffic receiver in a little over a year.

I don't know anything about traffic receivers and probably wouldn't use one. Does the 760 come with one that will be usable or is it a $100 option?

From the Garmin web site:

Avoid Traffic Tie-ups

Steer clear of traffic with nüvi 760's integrated FM TMC traffic receiver. Receive alerts about traffic delays and road construction that lie ahead on your route. Next, simply touch nüvi's screen to view traffic details or detour around the problem area.
https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?cID=164&pID=37420

So are you saying that the 780 does not have that? Is it a feature that involves buying an optional add-on?

You'll have to replace the traffic receiver unless you like paying subscriptions for the rest of your life.

Oh, and the MSN 'free trial' period for the 780 is 3 months, not 9 as someone mentioned. The 680 came with a 1 year 'trial', the 780 reduced it to '3'.

You can pick up new 'free service' traffic receivers on ebay for under $60 at this time - anyone who has replaced a 't' series navigator with another likely has a spare they can sell, perhaps cheaply?

What still is not clear to me is does the 760 have something that the 780 does not have? And, if so, is it ready to use as is?

https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?cID=164

The 780 has MSN traffic. They are being discontinued. The MSN traffic receiver will not work with FM traffic.

The 760 comes with a GTM-20 FM traffic receiver which will work with Navteq and Clear Channel. A paid lifetime subscription is a good idea.

dobs108

OK, now I see why the 760 is $10 more. It comes with the FM receiver and the 780 does not (it has the MSN receiver which will soon be useless). Can someone send me a link for the subscription prices for FM traffic?

Thanks for the link for feature comparison on discontinued models. I didn't know that existed.

A repost of mine...traffic subscription info/link is at the end.

Clear Channel Traffic coverage map:
http://www.totaltraffic.com/CoverageAreas/

Navteq Traffic coverage map:
http://www.navteq.com/rdstraffic/

----

Additional info regarding multiple subscriptions on one GTM 20 (4/8/2009)

You can purchase a Clear Channel lifetime subscription and apply it to a Navteq only GTM 20. I have done just that on the GTM 20 that came with my 765T. Two subscriptions are on the unit, Clear Channel & Navteq.

You can also purchase a Navteq only GTM 20 direct from Garmin and add a Clear Channel subscription to that. Yes, this really is a Navteq GTM 20; read the fine print and note the price compared to the Clear Channel GTM 20.

Navteq GTM 20 - $119.99 https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?pID=36249
Clear Channel GTM 20 - $214.27 https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?pID=403

You can also purchase a Navteq subscription and apply it to a Clear Channel GTM 20. That does not make much sense though unless coverage for your area is better using Navteq. The system is auto-sensing (with no option to the user as to which subscription/provider will be used) and will choose the provider with the strongest overall signal if you have multiple subscriptions.

See https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?cID=268 for available traffic subscriptions.

Don't buy the 760 for the traffic receiver when you can buy the 780 for $10 less and then, once the MSN drops dead (assuming you live in range of a service area) buy a lifetime traffic receiver discounted (again, assuming you live in range of a service area) for the price of a year's subscription fee for the paid receiver that is included.

And, the 760/780 will not display those pesky advertisements that come with the 'T' models.

When you already have the receiver, the traffic subscription is $50. If you were to buy the receiver and subscription together, it is $120 (on the Garmin website). That's $70 for the receiver. $10 looks better.

It's $50 a year for the subscription and you can find the lifetime traffic receivers on ebay for $59 - no subscription required.

I'm looking for a new GPS. I want one that will let me know if a bridge is too low.
I was looking at the Garmin 465T. It is for truckers, but is there another available?

Thanks,
Bruce

It's $50 for a LIFETIME subscription https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?cID=268&pID=36804.

If you can really get the receiver and lifetime subscription on ebay for $59, that's a good deal---$1 better than doing it the other way.

loading the low clearance POI on your current unit?

I stand corrected . . .. the only mention of 'lifetime' is in the small print - and since I already have a lifetime receiver I never bothered to read it through, so like everything else Garmin, I just assumed that it was an annual deal.

I've had mine for awhile now and have enjoyed it. I have experienced issues with the Bluetooth functions and have had an occasional freeze up, but for the most part, it performs well enough. I think, knowing what I do about it now, if I was going to buy another unit, I wouldn't buy the 765T.

Bruce try this link http://www.poi-factory.com/node/1154