I've been using Nuvis for years. Was very excited to get the new form factor Nuvi so I could give my well-worn 765 to my graduating daughter.
Received my fancy new device and put it directly into service on a trip to NYC--my first time there after all these years of exploring the rest of the country.
Made it through the northward routes of PA into Jersey, and then found myself at one of the famous "Jersey jughandle" intersections and unsure which lane to take for the direction I wanted to go. And the moment I stopped, I looked at my beautiful new Garmin to find out my next move.
And right on top of the map was a damn Red Lobster ad, hiding the info I needed. Couldn't make it go away, couldn't see my map underneath. Let loose a stream of profanity. Then the light turned green, I began to move, the ad went away and I found I needed to be in another lane, but my moment in traffic to plan the lane change had passed.
Garmin takes the only safe moment to check your map away from you--the moment you are stopped. So the only times you can check your map are when you are in motion and should have your eyes on the road.
Who is the genius that came up with this garbage?
I knew this problem was going to be bad in NYC traffic. But this POS had me steaming before I even entered the city. Inside the Lincoln Tunnel, once again hoping for lane info to get to my hotel, up comes a great big ad, WHILE THE CAR IS IN MOTION, obscuring the directions I paid my $450 plus tax to have. I damn near caused an accident with the "tourist slowdown" needed to find the right lane in time to get there.
Once in the city, this thing was the very definition of useless, with ads obscuring the map every time I was at a standstill and able to look at it. When I realized I was going to be more of a problem to surrounding traffic with this thing than without it, I put it in my suitcase and went to electronics alley and got the cheapest Tom Tom on the shelf--$79.
The Tom Tom outperformed this POS Garmin in every respect. If you must have the latest and greatest advertising-delivery technology, you can bid on mine on ebay.
UPDATE FEB 11, 2011:
Response poster Kevin looks to have solved it--the ads are the trade-off for 'free' traffic data. If I'd gone into the menus and turned traffic off, apparently the ads would have been turned off too.
Living in the Balt-Wash area, I'm jaded as to the traffic functions of Nuvi units anyway--3/4 of the time they route you over to the BW parkway for massive delays on the 95. I take the 95 anyway if I'm going to the north side of D.C., and the massive delays the instrument prophesies rarely materialize.
More often I get stuck on the BW Parkway and the Anacostia, where the brilliant Garmin device is routing me and everybody else who has one. So I've pretty much stuck to the 95 and had better luck in the past year or so. I've firmed up my ego by practicing my skills at saying 'no' to a female voice issuing commands. First I was answering her with unprintables, then I just smiled and said 'yes, dear,' while ignoring her and continuing my chosen route.
Now that advertiser-supported traffic is the norm for Garmin, if I should buy another Nuvi I'll just remember to switch the feature off. It seems to have limited utility anyway.
So, potential Nuvi buyers: if the ads get in your way, pull over, go into the menus, and turn off the traffic update feature. Then I think you won't have any more problems with gigantic banner ads obscuring your maps.
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Received the Garmin 3790T four days ago. I upgraded from a from a Garmin Nuvi 760. My first comment is Wow! The size and physical design of this beauty is amazing. That's the same word that comes out of most people mouth's when I show them my new toy. Physical beauty aside this new unit really is a huge step up from my 760.
The 800 x 480 pixel glass screen is incredibly clear and a huge enhance over my old unit. The multi-point screen works great. Everything about the 3970 is an improvement from the old 760.
One interesting point is the 3790 picks slightly different routes than the 760 used to. I assume this is the nuRoute/trafficTrends in action.
Hands down my favorite feature on the 3790 is Voice Command. When I originally bought this item I had concerns about how well this feature would work. Let me tell you it works great. I can navigate to some place, add stops or phone someone without ever having to pull over or take my hands off the wheel. What a huge safety improvement.
Another seemingly small item they improved that I really like is the zooming. The map zooms in as you slow down and out as you speed up. It does it very smoothly and provides the perfect amount of data for my tastes.
The traffic data is also very useful in urban areas and well presented. However this area contains my only complaint about the product. Using the traffic feature causes small little adds to occasionally pop up on the screen. They are unobtrusive and don't happen very often so far but I would prefer to find a way to turn them off.
All in all I love my new Nuvi. It is one of the best purchases I've made in years.
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I just got my Nuvi 3790 today and I must say it is by far the best GPS I have owned. I have owned Garmins, TomToms, Navigons, and Magellans.
The display is super crisp and bright. Even in bright sunlight. I had my Nuvi 1690 up next to it. The 1690 was washed out, the 3790 was very, very bright.
I transferred my favorites (waypoints) from the 1690 without a hitch. Also installed traffic cameras... no problem (UPDATE the traffic cameras I installed were from GPS POI which I have used on other Garmin units without a problem. They did not appear on this unit. I understand there is some kind of bug Garmin is working on. I used the Garmin POI Loader, as I have in the past. I downloaded the Garmin Safety Cameras for the US, which they didn't have a while back and they do show up, but I need to see what happens when I come across them.). I tried the voice command and it worked surprisingly well. I had used a TomTom with voice control and this was far superior. You get a list of commands on the screen and I had no problem activating the feature simply by saying, "Voice Command.' Picked me up without a hitch. Only once did it seem to freeze on me and for a minute I thought I would have to do a reset, but I said another command and it cleared. (UPDATE I really like the voice command feature. It makes things so much easier while moving. I am not a 'voice' person but this has come in very useful. Rarely does it miss a beat. If it does I just repeat and it gets it.)
The unit is super thin. In fact, I almost lost my grip on it a few times it is so thin. I bought the Garmin case for it and it fits very well. Easily fits in my shirt pocket.
I did a backup on the hard drive, which by the way is a whopping 8 GB, using a little over 4 GB -room for expansion indeed. I couldn't select all on my mac and get them all to copy over, but I burned a DVD and pretty much everything was copied from what I could tell. It took about 25 minutes or so.
The unit did get pretty warm in use, perhaps because of the black back and the sun. I haven't used it at night to tell if that is it. (UPDATE it doesn't seem to get as warm now even with the sun hitting it. Perhaps the electronics needed to get 'burned in' and all is well.)
I live in northern Virginia and was not able to pick up traffic. My 1690 was showing traffic in the same areas. The 1690 is cell-connected, the 3790 is FM.
In comparison with the 1690 with most detail selected, the 3790 is pretty much about the same in many areas, perhaps a bit more in others. No complaints about that at all so far.
I do like the ability to rotate the screen. I didn't think I would but I like the portrait view. It gives me more of where I am going rather off to the sides. I will need to experiment with it.
Routing is a bit different than my 1690. I will see how it evolves in its learning my routes. Calculation seems quick. It did take a while to lock in after being powered off, but nothing appreciable.
I can easily pack this, or put it in my shirt pocket and take it most places.
A great GPS. Pricey, but wonderful. This is the iPhone 4 of the GPS world. Nothing comes close to the beauty of the 3790.
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Update 7/6/10
The Junction Views on this appear more often than they did on my 1690. Same map version, but obviously updated Junction Views. I have read that in Europe they have photo realistic Junction Views and from the pictures they look very good. Hopefully they will update the US Junction Views to photo realistic ones.... makes for a much nicer picture. (UPDATE in portrait mode the junction view is on the top half of the screen and you still see the road and your 'vehicle' moving in the bottom half of the screen. In landscape mode junction view takes up the entire screen.)
Also, the software user interface is different in this unit and while it offers pretty much what the 1690 software does, many things are in different places. For instance the last position you are at when you remove the unit from the mount in the 1690 was found under favorites. In the 3790 it is found under parking last stop.
Best thing is to explore all the menus and see what's there. Very nice indeed.
7-10-10... Some tips.... To power on push the on/off button and wait to hear the click. Let go at that point. To power off, you need to HOLD the power button down until you see a power off screen asking you to make a choice. Otherwise, if you hold the on/off button down briefly and let go, it goes into standby and when you push the on/off button to turn it 'on' you get a lock screen, at which point you hit the lock icon and it comes to life. This is not turning the unit off just putting it into standby mode. For a quick return to where you left it, standby works great, but not for long periods of time as it uses up the battery. If the car power is lost the unit goes into standby, not power off. If you pull it off the mount, nothing happens. Interesting.
Honest reviews on Garmin nuvi 3790T 4.3-Inch Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator
This is a beautiful little unit very slim, large, bright screen. The voice command system gets things right about two-thirds of the time, which means you can get going almost as quickly using voice as you can using the touchscreen. It switches between portrait and landscape effortlessly. And, having upgraded from a Nüvi 670 to this, I appreciate the new nüvi features such as displaying speed limits and cameras. Having included lifetime traffic is really handy too.
The integration of traffic into routing seems smoother than prior Garmins, although I drove in "red" traffic today that was moving really well, so maybe it overstates the problem sometimes. The new "mytrends" feature, in which the unit gets used to where and how you drive, sounds nice I haven't seen evidence of how it affects things yet.
There is also a lot of new environmental and fuel economy software built in. The concepts will be familiar to people who drive hybrids you get constant feedback, and can also access a lot of data, on whether you are doing too much stop-start driving, too many bursts of acceleration and too much rapid breaking. You get fuel economy and absolute cost estimates, all of which is handy. However, I don't like having the little "leaf" indicator taking up screen space, telling me whether I'm being naughty or nice. I wish I could remove it in the display options! A firmware patch is needed from Garmin.
OK . . . now on to the PROBLEM. This thing has POPUP ADS. Yes commercial popups, like "Crabfest at Red Lobster" and "Best Western Rewards Get 1500 points" and "Unlimited lunch $6.90" that pop up while you are driving, and take up screen space, obscuring the damn map. I called tech support, and they said that these are not supposed to pop up while you are moving, only while you are stopped. But these came up while I was driving today. Tech support says there is NO WAY THE POPUP ADS CAN BE DISABLED. Apparently it's built into the license with Navteq and will happen whenever you are receiving traffic information, and they cannot disable it. How is this OK? They don't mention it in the product specs, or on the box. I am paying hundreds of dollars for this device, and I cannot opt-out from popup ads?$#@!% Garmin seriously needs to get a firmware patch (or a hardware patch if it's part of the traffic receiver) out to allow people to disable this. The popups don't even have an "X" in the corner for you to press to get rid of them.
Having got that off my chest, I'm still happy, overall, that I bought this unit.
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I have owned many gps units for the past 10 years. I am very picky when it comes to gps units and I do not think twice about sending back units that I do not feel are good and accurate. I currently own Nuvi models 360 and 780.
I received my 3790T last week and for a brand new model this one has blown me away. One main thing to remember is to make sure you uncheck most of the choices on the avoidance screen so your routing is more accurate. For instance on my unit the only thing I have checked is to avoid ferries.
I downloaded the voice Dr. Nightmare and is by far my most favorite voice and is excellent quality. The maps that ship with this unit are April 2010 and Garmin support indicated the next map update is due out in July and they indicated I would get that update for free.
So far the 3790T has exceeded my expectations and I will keep this unit.
It has not locked up or rebooted at all during the first week so far, so hopefully the hardware issues other models have had are not going to occur since this model is a new design.
I would highly recommend this unit !
***Update***
Well after writing my previous review the 3790T starting to do some strange things. When I left work or my house I did not go the direction that the gps had suggested which would of normally prompted the gps to recalculate the route. In both cases the gps correctly showed my position on the street which was 1-5 blocks away from the suggested route and it did not reroute me until I crossed the suggested route and then it recalculated.
Next I had problems getting the unit to power up when getting in my car one morning. I placed the 3790T into the cradle with the car turned on and it would not power up, I removed the 3790T and tried to power it up holding it in my hand and still nothing. I then placed it back into the cradle again and after about 1 minute it power up. Keep in mind the battery was fully charged.
The last and most puzzling issue was I had told the gps that I wanted to go home so it calculated the route correctly, then I decided I wanted to stop for gas on the way home and searched for the gas station and selected to add it to my route which it did successfully. While still driving towards the first stop at the gas station I added a stop at Wendys into my route which occured about 4 miles after the gas station and 3 miles before my home.
I arrived at the gas station just fine, then it wanted to route me home first even though I was driving right past the Wendys that happens before my house, then once I arrived at home it wanted to have me do a U turn and go back to the Wendys.
I cancel the trip and put it back in again and it still was going to route me home, before the Wendys.
I called Garmin tech support, held for the usual 1 hour and then explain the various issues. Since there are no software updates for this new unit yet the only suggestion then had was to do a reset all and see if it happens again.
Well I decided not to keep the unit because I can't justify keeping a gps that does not route correctly. I purchased a Magellan Roadmate 3045-LM on sale for $169 that includes lifetime traffic and map updates that uses Navteq maps and traffic just like Garmin does and works correctly.
So if you are looking for a dependable no frills gps I would highly recommend the Magellan Roadmate 3045-LM. Also if you are a AAA member, once you register your Roadmate you can extend the hardware warranty for 1 extra year for free !
