Garmin nüvi 1695 5-Inch Portable Bluetooth Navigator with Google Local Search & Real-Time Traffic

by Garmin

Product Features

• 5-inch backlit TFT color touchscreen display with 480 x 272 WQVGA pixel resolution
• Preloaded with City Navigator NT North America maps for the U.S, Canada and Mexico
• One-year subscription to Garmin nuLink services: Google search, fuel prices, weather, white pages, and more
• Advanced navigation features include turn-by-turn directions, lane assist with junction view, fuel-saving ecoRoute
• Smart features like trafficTrends historical traffic and myTrends predictive routing help you get there on time

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Product Description

Amazon.com

Enjoy the convenience of receiving certain real-time online content on the go with nüLink! 1695. From fuel prices to Google Local Search, you'll be the first to know with Garmin nüLink! services*. The 1695 also includes preloaded maps, lane assist with junction view**, hands-free calling and ecoRoute. Plus it has nüRoute technology with trafficTrends historical traffic and myTrends predictive routing to make daily driving even easier.

Enhance your travel experience. Click to enlarge.

Travel Like a Local with Garmin nüLink! Services
With Garmin nüLink! services, accurate real-time online information is delivered wirelessly to your nüLink! 1695. In the U.S., each nüLink! 1695 comes with a free 1-year nüLink! subscription. After the 1-year period ends, service costs $60 a year--that's only $5 a month! With nüLink! services, you'll get Google Local Search to find local points of interest (POIs) and traffic services that deliver alerts for delays and road construction then automatically guide you around them in the shortest time. Need fuel? Find up-to-date fuel prices near your location for regular, mid-grade, premium or diesel. Other convenient services included in the subscription: Ciao! friend finder, weather, movie times, local events, Send to GPS, flight status, currency converter, White Pages and myGarmin.

See Even More
It's easy to see where you're going on nüLink! 1695's 5" (12.7 cm) touchscreen display. View map detail, driving directions, photos and more in bright, brilliant color. With its big, bold display, you won't miss a thing.

Lane assist with junction view guides you to the correct lane for an approaching turn or exit.

Accurate real-time online information is delivered wirelessly to the device.

Get voice-prompted, turn-by-turn directions that speak street names to your destination.

Get Turn-by-turn Directions
nüLink! 1695's intuitive interface greets you with 2 simple options: "Where To?" and "View Map." Touch the color screen to easily look up addresses and services and get voice-prompted, turn-by-turn directions that speak street names to your destination. It comes preloaded with detailed City Navigator NT street maps for the U.S, Canada and Mexico, nearly 6 million POIs, 2-D or 3-D maps and speed limits for most major roads. Its digital elevation maps show you shaded contours at higher zoom levels, giving you a big picture of the surrounding terrain. And with HotFix satellite prediction, nüvi calculates your position faster to get you there quicker.

Experience nüRoute Technology with trafficTrends and myTrends
Smart and good-looking, this uniquely personal navigator comes with advanced routing capabilities that include trafficTrends and myTrends. There's no subscription necessary, no added costs, your nüLink! 1695 just does it.

With trafficTrends, your nüLink! 1695 automatically learns daytime trends for traffic flow to improve your routes and better predict your estimated time of arrival based on time of day and day of week. With myTrends, when you save your regular destinations in your "Favorites," your nüLink! 1695 will, over time, begin to figure out where you're going even without your telling it! It provides time of arrival and relevant traffic information. So whether you're driving to and from work or a regularly scheduled weekly event, your nüLink! 1695 will help you get there on time.

Know the Lane Before It's Too Late
No more guessing which lane you need to be in to make an upcoming turn. Lane assist with junction view guides you to the correct lane for an approaching turn or exit, making unfamiliar intersections and exits easy to navigate. It realistically displays road signs and junctions on your route along with arrows that indicate the proper lane for navigation for most metro areas.

Select Fuel-efficient Routes
nüLink! 1695 saves you gas and money with ecoRoute--a green feature that calculates the most fuel-efficient route, tracks fuel usage and more. With ecoRoute, you have a "less fuel" option as a routing preference. When selected, the 1695 will determine if a more fuel efficient route exists based upon road speed data and vehicle acceleration data for a given route.

Route Planning
nüLink! 1695 includes advanced navigation features to take the worry out of traveling. With route planning you can save 10 routes, specify via points and preview simulated turns on the 1695's wide screen. In addition, nüLink! 1695 automatically sorts multiple destinations to provide an efficient route for errands, deliveries or sales calls. It also displays speed limits for highways and Interstates. A trip log provides an electronic breadcrumb trail of up to 10,000 points, so you can see where you've been on the map.

Make Hands-free Calls
For hands-free calling, nüLink! 1695 integrates Bluetooth wireless technology with a built-in microphone and speaker. Just pair it with your compatible Bluetooth phone and talk hands-free through the 1695 while staying focused on the road. Simply dial numbers with nüvi's touchscreen keypad to make a call. To answer calls, just tap the screen and speak. Enjoy convenient 1-touch dialing for contacts and POIs.

Go Beyond Navigation
Navigation is just the beginning. "Where Am I?" emergency locator finds the closest hospitals, police stations, fuel stations, nearest address and intersections. nüLink! 1695 helps you remember where you parked by automatically marking your position when you remove it from your car. It also includes travel tools, such as JPEG picture viewer, world travel clock with time zones, currency converter, measurement converter and calculator. Photo navigation lets you download pictures from Garmin Connect Photos. The 1695 features Garmin Lock, an anti-theft feature, and is compatible with Garmin Garage where you can download free vehicles and voices. Enhance your travel experience with optional plug-in microSD cards.

*One-year data subscription to nüLink! services included with purchase of nüLink! 1695 while offer lasts. nüLink! services only available in select coverage areas. See the nüLink! coverage map for coverage details. nüLink! Traffic services are available in select areas. See the nüLink! traffic coverage map for included areas.

**Not available at all intersections/interchanges in all areas.

Compare the nüvi 1600 Series Features

nüvi 1600 Series Features nüvi 1690 nüvi 1695 Detailed Mapping Coverage U.S., Canada and Mexico U.S., Canada and Mexico Traffic Compatible Compatible Display Size 4.3 Inches 5 Inches Included nüLink Subscription 2 Years 1 Year nüRoutes Technology N Y nüLink App Store N Y Lane Assist With Junction View Y Y Hands-free Calling Y Y

What's in the Box
nüLink! 1695, Preloaded City Navigator NT North America (U.S, Canada and Mexico), Free 1-Year Data Subscription to Garmin nüLink! Services in the U.S., Vehicle Suction Cup Mount, Vehicle Power Cable, USB Cable, Dashboard Disc, Quick Start Manual

Product Description

Enjoy the convenience of receiving certain real-time online content on the go with nüLink 1695. From fuel prices to Google Local Search, you'll be the first to know with Garmin nüLink! services. The 1695 also includes preloaded maps, lane assist with junction view, hands-free calling and ecoRoute. Plus it has nüRoute technology with trafficTrends historical traffic and myTrends predictive routing to make daily driving even easier.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

55 of 60 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Lots of cool features, mediocre design and navigation November 9, 2010

By HK

Amazon Verified Purchase

upd Mar 2011: Firmware update v2.6 released in Feb resolved issues with map scrolling and slow route calculation (so Garmin does listen to the customers). These improvements and the new price range makes it a much more reasonable purchase. Routing and estimated arrival time still remains an issue.
Most likely, Garmin silently disabled TrafficTrends feature with firmware update with firmware update in Feb. Traffic trends don't make any difference to routing, estimated arrival time or calculation time. This has been confirmed on GPS forums by some owners of 1695 and 3790. Garmin customer service rep did not think this is the case and I haven't pressed the issue further.
I lost the unit in March so this review might not reflect the most recent changes, let me know if this is the case.
The review below is as of Oct 2010 with minor edits as of March.
******
Bright side:

- Surprisingly stable for a device that have been released only recently. No major functional problems like freezing or lost satellites.
- NuLink traffic allows immediate traffic acquisition in most cases. Traffic data in reasonable. Coverage is decent. Garmin gets NuLink signal even in areas where my cellphone does not work.
- Lane assist works very well. There are occasionally junction views for those who think they are helpful.
- Google local POI search is sometimes helpful although I tend to use Garmin's categorized POI more often. Both Google search and Garmin's POI are much easier to use than POI search on TomTom.
- I really like local event search (sports, music, arts, etc). Flight status, gas prices and movie times, weather (including weather radar) are also interesting features. Not that I really use them, but they are nice.
- Safety camera information is available and you can report cameras on-the-fly by clicking on speed limit indicator. Reported cameras should become available to other users within minutes. However, according to Garmin customer service, you need to download safety camera updates manually from the website ( I checked twice). Their website suggests that camera updates should come from NuLink, so may be it was not done yet.

- The screen is big and bright, the voices are loud (I have volume and brightness set at 10%). Icons and menu items in many cases look better.
- There are map themes available. You can select one of the pre-defined themes, or you can copy and edit theme .xml files to create your own (you will need a couple of hours of time and at least mspaint to work with hexadecimal colors).
- Pedestrian mode is looks beautiful, was much easier to use on older units.
- Also route planner is very well done and you can drag-and-drop destinations to rearrange your route.

******
Serious issues:
(note: I'm not familiar with 1xxx and 37xx series, so some of the things I'm complaining about can be common to these units. All comparison is again 2xx/7xx or TomTom 930 or 140)

- Traffic trends (historical travel speeds), advertised to provide better routes and estimated time of arrival, do not quite work (yet).
My driving experience so far:
In New Hampshire, Vermont, Western Maryland and Western Pennsylvania I don't see any significant difference compared to 255W. TomTom has slightly better ETA on mountain roads where it might be tough to drive at 55 mph.
In Florida (Orlando, Miami ) traffic trends worked surprisingly well. Have seen some meaningful detours and quite accurate ETAs on busy streets. Can see an improvement compared to non-traffic trend models.

On NYC streets a route estimated to take 25 minutes normally takes 35-40+ , mostly due to failure to account for traffic lights. As a result, the routes are often not optimal and in some cases worse than the routes with traffic trends disabled. If it's solely due to lack of historical traffic data, we might see an improvement as new map updates are released.
UPD: As I mentioned above, the feature seems to be disabled in firmware 2.6 and everything defaults to standard Garmin routing, which is not necessarily a bad think unless you're on busy streets. In NYC 60 minute actual travel time on estimated 25 is not uncommon, even without traffic jams. On highways the unit gives amazingly accurate arrival time.

- Performance issues. Very long calculation times (UPD this is a non-issue since traffic trends are disabled. Without traffic trends route calculation is relatively fast. The times below are for firmware 2.4 where the TT was turned still enabled)
200-mile NYC to Boston used to take 2.5 minutes on my first device. I exchanged the unit and it normally takes about 50 seconds on the new one. It gets longer if you're driving or if traffic information is available (not yet sure what matters more). Last weekend it took it 2 minutes to recalculate a 30-mile route after I missed a turn. By that time I was 2 miles away, so it decided to recalculate again and took another 2 minutes. The problem is even more acute on city streets.
In part, longer calculation times are due to the overhead created by TrafficTrends. Garmin recognizes the problem in 37xx and 2xxx series (but not in 1695) and advises to turn off traffic trends. They advertise a feature, charge a hefty amount of cash for it and then advise to turn it off - this seems like a very weird marketing strategy to me.
Switching between different map displays can also take a while (up to 10 seconds). I understand that it might be difficult to squeeze high-performance hardware into some compact-size unit, but 1695 is relatively big and heavy, so it's not clear why it doesn't match performance of smaller gps units.

Again, TomTom used to have similar problems with slow route calculation when they introduced IQRoutes a couple of years ago. They were later resolved by firmware updates.
Another note is that when the unit is used in the area where road network is not very dense, slow route calculation is no longer a problem. However in those areas, you don't really need 1695 and can get the same performance from a much simpler unit.

- Avoidances.
(upd: Feb 2011. This feature was announced to show up in Garmin 24xx serites. Most likely 1695 will not be retro-fitted)
It's not a surprise, but it's still not possible to avoid specific part of route. Something that was(!) available on older Nuvis and is available on every TomTom (starting $70). For example, I have a toll tunnel nearby that costs $5 and takes about 3 minutes to avoid. It takes a couple of clicks on TomTom, but becomes a difficult task on Garmin. There are standard workarounds, like avoiding all toll roads or adding a dummy via point to force Garmin to route through a different road. If necessary, I can go into details and give examples why this is not always an option. Again, given the price tag, one might hope to be spared the necessity of creating dummy via points and have basic functionality available.

- Map scrolling (Resolved in Feb. Thanks, Garmin!)
Without exaggeration, scrolling a map in 2D mode is by far the worst touch screen experience I ever had in my life. They tried to introduce some iPhone-like "inertia" in map movement while scrolling and failed miserably. I often use "browse map" mode to select a point on map as a destination. On this unit it becomes a very painful exercise. The map would occasionally overshoot, jump in the opposite direction or, occasionally, select a new destination when you simply tried to browse the map.
This only concerns map scrolling. In all other modes the touchscreen works like magic.
Screen calibration helps a little bit, but touch screen behaviour is irritating to the extreme (press and hold in upper-left corner of the screen when switching the unit on, keep holding for ~20-30sec, the calibration screen will show up). Before buying this thing, go to a local store, try to browse the map and decide if you can commit not to smash the unit against the wall one day after trying to select a point on map.
upd: after a month of suffering I figured that touchscreen is a bit more predictable if I scroll with the back of my nail with minimal pressure (although at $400 per unit it is kind of weird and there is a risk to scratch the screen)

- Ergonomics
For quite some time now I've seen TomTom doing much better job at routing but nevertheless preferred Garmin because of amazing ergonomics, beautiful map display and ease of use. With this unit (and I understand this is also related to other new models) most of it is gone. I'll give more examples below not to overload with details here.

*****
To buy or not to buy:

- Cost
If you decide to own this unit, here is a simple cost breakdown:

>=$80 to purchase lifetime map updates. TrafficTrends are only updated with map updates, so you'll have to buy it if you want a hope that TrafficTrends will have a decent performance. TomTom similarly requires map updates to update IQRoutes data, but the big difference is that their IQRoutes data is mature and does not require much updating, while Garmin's TrafficTrends are in their infancy.

$50 per year to keep NuLink traffic subscription. Over 3 weeks that I own this unit I've never seen a real traffic jam on the road that would be reflected in NuLink trafic but would not show up through ClearChannel FM traffic subscription on my older Nuvi. NuLink reports more traffic events, but many of them don't seem to be real. I appreciate the potential of connected traffic, but don't see a clear benefit yet.

$2.99/months (~$40 per year) to keep safety camera subscription. The design of their traffic cameras is cool, no argument here, but I'm not sure it's worth it. If I'm not mistaken, TomTom updates traffic cameras for free. Read more ›

50 of 58 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Not even meh... October 29, 2010

By Mike Stepchinski

I'm quite dissapointed in this unit, as I expected more. First, I really don't care for the ads that pop up when stopped. I certainly didn't intend to buy an advertising kiosk for my dashboard.

Second, I am not fascinated with the routing and traffic functions. Many GPS's learn your route and estimate traffic on that route. This unit also will not route to the roads I take to work, even though it shows a shorter commute time once I turn to take the back way to work. My known route saves on average about 15 minutes, and the GPS tries to route me through a congested area each morning.

My unit also takes quite some time to recalculate a route when downtown - can get frustrating sometimes.

Another irritating issue is the inability to independently adjust volumes for bluetooth connected phones and alerts. The phone is way too quiet when alerts sound ok, and alerts blare when the phone sounds ok.

For the amount of money this unit costs, paired with the ads that pop up, I am inclined to return it for a refund. Better luck next time Garmin..

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Much superior to the older 1690 April 16, 2011

By Ken C

Amazon Verified Purchase

I got this 1695 a couple of months ago, and I've found it vastly improved (but not yet perfect) over the 1690. I am very glad I upgraded.
To understand my reasons, I should first begin by saying that I'm an avid GPS user. Each of my two boats have GPS, I've taken piloting (i.e., inshore navigation) and offshore (i.e., celestial, as with a sextant) navigation courses, and even when driving on a vacation trip, I like to know exactly my position just for fun.
Garmin's old StreetPilots (I had them, too) used to allow a display of latitude and longitude on the map screen. When I upgraded to the NUVI's (1490 and 1690) this was no longer the case -- first of several big disappointments (and not fixed with the 1695) wtih the first NUVI, only some of which are corrected in the 1695.
I also missed the StreetPilots' display of the name of the upcoming street on top of the map screen (yes, you can see them on the map itself, but it's written too small to be useful). But happily this has been corrected in the 1695, which I discovered to again display each cross street's name as I approach.
Another big gripe with the first NUVI's is that, while I could measure distances to the nearest hundredths of a mile with the StreetPilots, I couldn't measure distances in the 1490 and 1690 to less than the nearest mile (rounded); happily, the 1695 lets me measure distances to the nearest tenth of a mile, and even better, the 1695 offers not one but two trip odometers, so I can keep an overall log of a trip as well as measure smaller portions of a trip (e.g., miles on a tank of gas, or the distance to a landmark or waypoint).
I do definitely prefer the NuLink airwaves link (of the 1690 and 1695) over the other services (of the 1490) -- the necessarily thicker and stiffer power cord of the 1490 (incorporating its antenna) is a pain to position on the dash (not a problem with the slenderer cord of the 1690 and 1695). And while I like the NuLink's traffic and 'safety camera' warnings and weather reports of the 1690, I also like the enhanced weather reporting (actual weather maps!) available on the 1695 -- their costs are a real bargain if you're a serious traveler/vacationer-by-car as I am (pulling a camper).
One final comment: I like some, and dislike other, aspects of the 1695's routing function compared to the 1690 and 1490. LIKE: compared to all previous NUVI's, the 1695 uniquely allows me to choose a route to a destination offering the alternatives of shorter travel time, or shorter distance, or better fuel economy (I guess, mainly lower speeds), which I think is terrific. DISLIKE: However, because I use Garmin's MapSource software on my computer to save a permanent record (and a backup from my GPS in case it's stolen) of my waypoints, tracks and routes, while the 1490 and 1690 let me save my routes in MapSource, the 1695 doesn't. MapSource doesn't recognize the 1695's version of saved routes, and related to this, I can't plan my route ahead of time on the computer and upload it to the GPS -- apparently, the flexibility of the 1695's routing (with the several options just noted before) is not compatible with the old MapSource application. Thankfully, I can still save my 1695's waypoints to the MapSource, and I could still transfer them from the 1490 to the 1690 and to the 1695, allowing me to upgrade to the several NUVI's without tediously reentering my hundreds of waypoints manually.
Nevertheless, I am happy I upgraded to the 1695.