TomTom has been the satnav big dog for years, with Garmin nipping at its heels like a Yorkshire Terrier on heat. Give it its dues, though, Garmin has come up with some top-quality navigators, the Garmin nuvi 765t being the latest in the production line.
Garmin’s big update with the Garmin nuvi 765t is the addition of Lane Assist – a swanky, new full-screen graphic that tells you which lane to use when exiting the motorway. Patronising much? Yes. Useful? Hell yeah.
Satnavs are never going to be the glamour boys of the gadget world, and the Garmin nuvi 765t adheres to that rule like a school boy at boarding school. It’s chunky and pretty ugly, if truth be told. But the 4.3-inch, 480×272 pixel touchscreen is vibrant and ultra-responsive.
Garmin has also fixed it so that the nuvi 765t can navigate you to geo-tagged images, and it even plots the most fuel-efficient routes (saving you some hard-earned in the process). And with up-to-date maps, Bluetooth phone links and TMC traffic alerts, it’s not shy on features.
The Garmin nuvi 765t’s best asset, though, is its mind-massaging ease-of-use. Navigation maps have clearly been laid out by someone logical who’s used satnavs before and said: “Nobody drives like this. We should do it like this…” To you sure, a double thumbs up.
The only thing that we didn’t like so much was the way the screen got cluttered with those 3D landmarks. It doesn’t make navigating historic city centres easy, when the umpteenth cathedral pops up. Still that’s a minor point, for what is otherwise some exemplary satnavvery.
