Garmin nuvi 750 Car GPS Receiver

I'm a long-time satisfied Garmin customer. My first GPS was a Garmin 45 handheld in the '80s. My first car GPS was a Garmin i2. The one feature of the i2 which I will miss is using 2 AA batteries when away from the car, or when the 12v lighter outlet dies, etc. It fits the same mounts as my i2, and I prefer a Garmin portable dash mount.

The large touch screen display is great. The user interface (menu navigation, etc.) is not absolutely how I would have done it myself, but usually pretty close. It's fine to use without even reading the manual.

Assume the device and user interface are nearly perfect except for the things I mention. The number of things which are ingenius and work far better than you have any right to expect, are too numerous to list.

My pet peeve is the lack of a "go immediately back to the map" button once you are down in the menus, preferably with a button on the map to toggle back to where you were at in the menus. I hate being in the middle of naming a saved waypoint or perusing a list of all Citizens Banks, and having to choose between ditching it to use the map for an upcoming turn, or having to navigate totally by trusting the voice. Not every "keep right on Main Street in 0.2 miles" means the same thing. It's good to see the map when looking out the windshield at a 6-way fork in the road! Sometimes it takes hitting the "back" button many times until the main menu screen comes up, then having to hit the "map" icon. Just put a map button on EVERY screen!

Similarly, zooming in and out one level at a time using just + and - buttons is slow...a zoom scale with all the choices, or at least a choice of zooming several levels at once would be better.

The little "turn maps" shown when reviewing future turns, don't follow your map orientation configuration, and aren't "North up" either. Why they chose to apparently orient the map of a turn 100 miles ahead, in some seemingly random direction (maybe my current heading which changes as I go around each curve in the road...or maybe the average heading since the previous little "turn map"?), baffles me. Maybe I should read the manual.

The v9 maps on my 750 are more up to date than the v7 maps on my i2.

The 750 finds optimal routes extremely well, including choosing the fastest way to hit multiple intermediate destinations ("via points") on the way to a final destination. Or you can build/enter your own routes with waypoints. It recalculates in a flash after you deviate or detour.

But on a 14-hour trip, adding a via point along the route (even a McDonalds 5 miles ahead), sometimes let it find even better routes for the remaining part of the trip than it initially had, and bring the ETA down. So on long trips, doing that (and not necessarily actually taking the exit to McD) or canceling/restarting navigation every hour or two, to recalculate the remaining route to your final destination, might help.

I bought it Garmin-refurbished. It was flawless, except the battery had apparently not been discharged/recharged enough by the previous owner and lost capacity. The first time I unplugged it, it ran 7 minutes. 2nd time 37 minutes. 5th time 2h15m. I may ask for a new battery, depending upon how well it performs after I experiment some more.

I haven't tried any of the music, photo, or "voice through car-radio" features yet.

I consider the Garmin Nuvi 750 a great bargain.