The Garmin Nüvi 865T is almost identical to the Nüvi 860. It has the added feature of guidance on multi-lane roads. We invite you to take a look at the
article on the Nüvi 860 for further information.

The kit

With a 4.3 inch screen this sat-nav has a clear, legible display. The Micro-SD card format is not necessarily the most practical. Many users have SD cards from digital photo cameras but the Micro-SD format is less common.

A small remote is delivered as part of the bundle. It can be fixed to the steering wheel and allows you to control the GPS with your voice. The suction mount is discreet and easy to use and the cigarette lighter cable is fitted to it and has the TMC aerial built in.

The socket is a proprietary one. This system is practical if you want to remove your GPS rapidly from the mount without disconnecting the sockets. You can then simply replace the GPS on the mount to re-establish the connections. The problem is that very few drivers dare leave their suction mount on the windscreeen… and you can understand why. So the system falls down because of ill-thought out security.

Build and design

When you turn it on, you immediately notice the lack of responsiveness of the menus. There is often quite a delay after you touch the screen before the GPS reacts. Often you think you haven’t pressed properly and do so a second time on the option you’ve chosen.

The predictive feature is not a good example of its type either. The addresses are not recognised while you’re entering them. You have to enter pratically the whole name of a street before the Nüvi 865T recognises it. In case you’re thinking you’ll be able to use the voice recognition instead, think again as this feature is no better than with the competition. You lose a lot of time trying to get the Nüvi 865T to recognise an address vocally and you end up entering it directly.

Overall the build and design isn’t bad but it is far from perfect. This is a bit of a shame as the menus are well conceived and beginners wont have any difficulty navigating them.

Route guidance

The Nüvi 865T has pretty much everything you can get on a sat-nav: lane guidance, standard TMC traffic tracking (you’ll pay extra for the Premium version), speed camera warnings, speed limit alerts, display of signs showing which direction to take and Text-to-Speech.

Unfortunately the voice for this last feature is robotic and very disagreeable. In addition it isn’t possible to adjust the distance for speed camera warnings. Lastly, watch out for the TMC traffic tracking as, although it can be useful for motorways, it isn’t that effective in towns where it doesn’t cover all roads.

Extra features

In addition to route guidance the Nüvi 865 includes amongst other things, a Bluetooth hands-free kit, a photo  viewer and mp3 player, an FM transmitter so you can listen to road directions and music on the car’s speakers, as well as a PIN id code, like the ones you get with mobile phones.