Garmin Nuvi 57 5-Inch GPS Navigator

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Product Specifications

Foursquare - Search millions of additional new and popular restaurants, shops and more with Foursquare
Garmin Real Directions - Garmin Real Directions guides like a friend using landmarks and traffic lights
Direct Access - Simplifies navigating to select complex destinations, like malls and airports
Backup Camera Compatible - Take the worry out of reversing with the BC 30 Wireless Backup Camera (purchased separately)3

Product Description

Size:5 in. | Style:Base Model | Product Packaging:Standard Packaging With bright 5” dual-orientation displays, spoken turn-by-turn directions and innovative features, the value-priced nüvi Essential Series are easy-to-use, dedicated GPS navigators that do not rely on cellular signals and are unaffected by cellular dead zones. nüvi arrives preloaded with detailed maps; select models offer free lifetime map updates1. Spoken Garmin Real Directions guide like a friend, using landmarks and traffic lights. Foursquare data adds millions more points of interest, so you can discover new and popular restaurants, shops, services and more in your area. Direct Access simplifies navigating to select complex destinations, like malls and airports. Lane assist with junction view helps you navigate interchanges with ease. nüvi displays current street, speed, speed limit and arrival time, and cautions with school zone alerts that you see and hear.

Product Reviews

Above expectations.

This unit is more than I expected. It warned us of an accident that took place on the road 20 miles ahead of us while driving at night and on the return trip it warned us of an interstate closure because of a severe accident, then directed us on an alternative route to not get stuck in traffic. Awesome!

No brainer, the best.

I got this to replace my nearly 10 year old Garmin StretPilot 2720 (which amazingly is still being sold used by some sellers). The Garmin StreetPilot 2720 was a top of the line unit back in 2006 and I was pleased to find that the “cutting edge” tech of 2006 is now in the “low end” Nuvi series of modern models. Amazing that a sub $200 GPS does way more than a $1000+ 9 year old GPS could do.For those wondering, YES there are still reasons to own a standalone, dedicated GPS in 2015. Those reasons include (1) Smartphone battery drainage. The GPS on a smartphone tends to drain it, then you have to have a cable running to your lap or a windshield mount and I find it a big pain in the you know what. (2) You don’t need cellular coverage, or more importantly DATA coverage. This isn’t a problem if you never leave New York City or San Francisco, but for those of us who live out in the country or do field service of some sort and travel all over (big cities and small towns), there are still places where my phone can’t get 3G or can’t find any data connection. You do not need data to use your “real” GPS. This is the biggest reason I have a real GPS in 2015. Nothing worse than not being able to use Google Maps because you have no data signal. (3) It more easily saves all of my favorites which is nice when I have over 100 customers I store in the unit.I went ahead with the 6” screen but a 5” model (57LMT) would be the same but smaller. I also went with the lifetime maps and traffic. The traffic feature runs off of the antenna which is the power cord itself (no external antenna used). It seems to work well but not as fast as crowd sourced traffic such as Waze.The directions are very accurate and if you hook it up to a PC and download Garmin Express you can get alternate voices and vehicles. If you don’t mind dragging and dropping files directly into the file system of the unit there are sites with HUNDREDS of custom vehicles which is cool, but I won’t go into that process here.I love the school zone warnings and the light shade of red the speed display shows if you are exceeding the posted speed limit. Like any other data there are rare times that the speed limit in the GPS doesn’t match the actual speed limit if it has been adjusted in the past few years.The new turn by turn directions work well especially with the supported voices that do the “real speech” thing, it may say “turn left at traffic light” or “turn left before the CVS” which is nice. Of course the built in voices do Text To Speech and will say things like “In half a mile, turn left on Miller street”. The volume adjusts to very loud, which is nice if you’ve got the radio cranked and the window down. The screen CAN be a tad bit hard to read compared to my old 3.7” Garmin StreetPilot 2720, but just a small turn to the left or right will fix it.I went ahead and sprung for the beanbag dash. I never liked windshield mounts and my old Garmin 2720 only had a beanbag which was nice to move car to car. The extra $15 or so dollars was worth it.The unit has tons of points of interest such as restaurants and gas stations. The “Where To” screen is also customization in terms of icon placement and the items on there! For example I added a shortcut to the “Fast Food” section in addition to the standard restaurant icon as I frequent those the most (hey, don’t judge me).I was able to export my old 2720 favorites to a program call MapSource from Garmin, but that program couldn’t see the new GPS, so I exported the MapSource database and installed a program called BaseCamp by Garmin. I was able to open the database file in BaseCamp and drag my favorites into the new GPS. THEN I installed Garmin Express which is the current software and from there you can backup your favorites to a single file.This thing acquires Satellites in a fraction of the time it took my old GPS. The only two things I found that I wish I could change would be (1) having a north indicator (red arrow or letter N with a pointer) on the screen at all times. My old GPS had this. There is a field in the bottom right that you can use it for, but that leads me to (2) only being able to display one extra data type. In the bottom right you can display arrival time, time left to destination, driving direction etc, but not more than one. I would gladly sacrifice a bit more screen space (of which there is plenty) to be able to display two fields. But overall its not a big issue.I would highly recommend this to anyone who still wants a “real” GPS.

Gets Me Where I Want to Go

It gets me where I want to go! What more can I say? Directions are clear, and I appreciate the way the Nuvi warns me about getting into the correct lanes so that I can make subsequent turns. The photos featuring upcoming obstacles or confusing corners is also very helpful.

Best one yet!

This is the sixth GPS I purchase in ten years. The first became very bulky and outdated, the second got stolen, couple of others went to new owners that really needed them. All this to say that I’ve become very familiar with these Garmin navigation devices through the years and this one is by far the best. Instructions have become clearer and so has the display which now allows you to see way ahead of your route. The road lines are very well defined, making it much easier to avoid going on the wrong road when things get confusing.In all honesty, I received my new GPS for our second vehicle yesterday afternoon, so it’s not like I’ve tried it for a long time before writing this review. Last night I went to the Garmin site, registered it and downloaded any new maps and updates, transferred all my favorite locations from the older GPS to this new one and got it ready to use this morning. Because I had a longer drive than usual this morning, I was able to test it well. From the very beginning I noticed a quicker and smoother response than with previous devices.I really like this new model. By the way, it bears mentioning that my car has a built in navigation device of its own, so some may question why I would spend $170.00 unnecessarily. In my experience, the clarity and ease of a Garmin GPS, and specifically this new device, far outweigh the benefits of a built in GPS or cell phone. Well worth it for stress free charting of road trips.Only complaint: Garmin has gotten rid of the ability to change the little cars from the display and the different male and female voices. That for people like me with severe arrested development, was great fun, and now Garmin forces us to keep the same boring settings. Not happy Garmin, an excellent device is not good enough, I need cute!!

Great Garmin Edition - Love it!

We had a Garmin for years that served us well, but I think someone dropped it and the screen became distorted. I shopped around a little and found this one and so glad I did. This one was fantastic right out of the box. It was all set up, I plugged it into my laptop and it pulled in information from our other Garmin and I didn’t even need to re-enter my favorite locations. Plus this one has some new updated features which I can appreciate. I used it to go out to a rural area, I had no idea where I was some of the time, but the Garmin stayed on and true and got me to my destination. I was in a remote area with limited service, but this little machine did a great job. I would highly recommend this version, it was $99, that was less than in stores like Best Buy.

I like this GPS

I am very happy with this unit. I didn’t need a lot of bells and whistles, just a basic GPS. This unit replaces my previous Garmin which was about 8 years old. The screen is a little bigger and overall I think it works better while being quite similar. The lifetime maps is worthwhile and that is something I didn’t have on my old unit. I was a little apprehensive when I updated the maps on the new unit but all went well. In my opinion this GPS is well worth the money.

Five Stars

very good / would recommend

Excellent upgrade from my old Nuvi 55. Larger, easy to see screen. Excellent spoken directions without the mispronouncing of street names. Easy to use, quick to learn!

Four Stars

very good gps

Five Stars

Works very well.

Pretty worthless just use google maps

Pretty worthless just use google maps. I bought this for a trip from Vermont to Nova Scotia. Turns out doesn’t cover Canada at all and to update with a Canadian Map you need to…

stopped working after maybe a dozen uses

I really loved it the 10 times I used it for emergency - but then not even a year of use, I used it last april to get to chicago then I went to use it again when I was lost a few…

Five Stars

Easy to use, easy to read, seems to be more accurate than my old Garmin.

Great value

Works great good value

No voice command = Useless piece of junk!

No voice command, I should have read the list of answered questions more carefully. No way to use this hands free - don’t buy a garmin if it doesn’t have the voice command…