Garmin nüvi 860T sat-nav - tested

01st December 2008

Voice recognition technology is creeping into the car and, in particular, the new generation of sat-navs – with Garmin’s nüvi 860T the latest to benefit.

The large widescreen display is easy to read and understand, using graphics and interface systems that will be familiar to any current Garmin owners.

Mapping was reasonably accurate as well, although it did miss a major road on our test route. And while the casing is nothing special to look at, the mounting is neat and we particularly liked the integrated power and Traffic Message Channel jam alert leads. But voice activation was where this unit excelled – you simply press a button on the steering wheel to launch it. Only in the noisiest of environments did the device struggle to understand us, and it gave lots of time for commands. The main problem we had was the low volume of the instructions. At motorway speeds, we had trouble making out what was said – for a top-end unit, that’s disappointing.

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