We just put our brand-new Garmin RV 770 LMT-S to the test. We received the unit on May 16, 2017. We charged it and downloaded all of the current software and maps. Why do I have to choose between FASTEST or SHORTEST? I want LEAST CONGESTED! I did NOT do any of the cell phone programs, like traffic or weather, etc. The ONLY avoidance I set was for U-Turns. We played with it at the house and tried to program the first leg of our trip before we left on May 22. We were to drive approximately 2500 miles throughout California, Oregon and Washington in our 24? Class C with a toad. We are savvy enough to know that we should never depend upon a GPS of any kind as our only means of navigation, so we had Google Maps on the phone and paper maps.
The Garmin was a disaster from day one. There is NO setting for a motorhome pulling a toad. There is either a motorhome by itself, a vehicle with a trailer, or a 5th wheel. All of the aforementioned rigs can be backed up. We cannot back up. This should be accounted for.
We wanted to program it to take us from the central coast of California up through the Golden Gate Bridge to a campground in Duncan Mills, CA. We knew exactly how we wanted to go, but the unit would not program or ?shape? the route, either in map mode or in Trip Planner. I wanted to avoid congested freeways. I tried to zoom in on the route and ?shape? it by touching the highway I wanted to take, but the unit kept re-routing back to the original route, giving me a route which eventually ended up looking like the EKG of a very sick person. I tried taking it out of RV mode and doing it with just the car mode, but that didn?t work either. I tried using intersections, adding stops to a route, and points of interest, just trying to get the route to go the direction I wanted to no avail.
So we started out anyway, thinking that the talking lady would re-route as we went, once she realized she needed to. But NO! She kept trying to turn us around. It does not say ?Re-calculating?, so if you deviate from the route you are unaware of why it is taking you on a wild goose chase.
We got so frustrated with the device that we finally had to shut off the volume.
The next test was to see if it could get us from point A to point B on a short road where there was no turns at all. The crazy talking lady told us to turn left, turn right, MULTIPLE times! Time to re-install the software and maps!? Nope. That didn?t work. By this time I figured I wasn?t a techy as I thought I was and there was something I was doing wrong. I really didn?t think that I was that stupid. Calling Garmin Support was not an option because, as many of you know, cell service is pretty sketchy most of the time on the road. We thought we should continue to give it a chance.
We programmed it to take us to a campground in Washington that was on the other side of the river. It seemed to know that there was a campground there, but it directed us to turn left into it, which would have been fine if there had been a bridge! The actual route was quite different.
The final straw was another campground in Washington. I had programmed in the exact address and it appeared to know that this was a campground and the correct location, but when it drove us 6 miles further up the road (we caught it before it took us further and we had to find a place to turn around) we were ready to send the unit back. At the campground I double-checked the settings, and indeed it was correct, but why it wanted us to go 6 miles further then backtrack was beyond comprehension.
Many many many roads have multiple names, or change names at an intersection, and the Garmin is limited in that capacity, causing MUCH confusion.
Other than leading us astray, this unit has way too many useless bells and whistles and we couldn?t figure out how to disable them. All I really cared about was the ability to see far enough ahead at an intersection to know which lane to be in to turn. This it WILL do, and does it nicely, once it figures out where you are going. What I DO NOT need is the continuous alerts for school zones, speed limit changes, traffic cameras, animal crossings, sharp curves (totally useless), elevation changes (only downhill). I would like it to tell me if there is a passing zone ahead, but NO!
It does show campground icons. Finally got it to quit showing me ATMs and restaurants because all of those icons were covering up the view of the map!
I could further comment on features of this gizmo, but we have been gone a month and just got home today. I have this thing boxed up and ready to send back to Amazon. I have an email assuring me that it is OK to return beyond the 30 day deadline, so I do hope this works out because it is a $400 piece of *&^*(&(!