garmin drivesmart 76, four months later

I talked about the vintage Garmin 200 series earlier this week, so I figured I might as well give a report on what I'm using currently.

I bought my Garmin DriveSmart 76 in December 2024, which at the time I write this is about four months ago.

Before I get into how it's been working, I'll note up front that I do not connect my phone to this thing, but do receive traffic reports via the built-in traffic receiver. This is possible only using the "full" 76 and NOT the "EX" model. If it's a DriveSmart 76EX, that does NOT have the built-in traffic receiver while the non-EX model does. And, of course, I do live in an area where there is FM traffic coverage.

In addition, I do use what my 76 came with to power it. The charge block goes into the 12V port, and I use the provided USB-C cable. This means I do not use a separate USB port in the car (which is impossible anyway since my car doesn't even have any).

So far, the 76 has been a solid performer. Only once was there a slight route miscalculation, I think. I do have the unit set to automatically reroute me around major traffic events. On one (and only one) particular drive, it seemed to route me around highway traffic that didn't exist, but I think that was because the traffic event had cleared and the unit hadn't updated that information yet. Either that, or whoever was doing the traffic reporting did not send out an all-clear. I can't confirm whether it was the 76's fault or not on that one. Ultimately, all this did was add in a few minutes to my trip, so it wasn't a big deal.

One map update has happened since I've owned the 76. The map information is good, but obviously not as up-to-date as OpenStreetMap would be. Then again, to keep receiving the traffic reports, the Garmin-issued maps have to be used, so that's what I stick with.

Position accuracy is very good because the 76 gets it from three satellite networks. GPS, Galileo and BeiDou. It's the only model I have with all three of those. On other models I have, it's either GPS+Galileo or just GPS alone.

Legibility is decent, although I wish Garmin would go back to the old font they used to use, which I think was called Prima Sans. The Arial/Helvetica/whatever sans font they're using now is skinnier and not as good. It would be good if every use of the font was semi-bold to bold, but that's not what happens. It's normal, bold and nothing else. Normal is the font style that's too skinny, causing the appearance of vibration/blur. Again, this wouldn't be a problem if they just went back to Prima Sans like on the DriveSmart 65. Or what would be really good is a CHOICE of whether to use the Arial/Helvetica or Prima Sans. That would be nice.

Speaker volume is good. No complaints there.

The dual MEMS microphones are definitely better than the single microphone used before, so voice commands go through easier. HOWEVER... the fact I cannot issue a detour command is stupid. On older models it was, "Voice Command [say a command], Detour", done. On the 76, there is no way to do that. Issuing a detour command requires a bare minimum of 4 screen taps (menu > Edit Route > Detour by Distance / Detour by Road > choose detour). That's dumb.

No heat issues with the screen, although summer is right around the corner, so... will have to wait to see how it handles hotter weather.

Overall, the 76 has been reliable and good. Nothing extraordinarily bad has happened with it aside from what I said above.

Lastly, I did not need to add a memory card to fit the map update. It had plenty of room for that data and for the next update for whenever that comes along.

Published 2025 Apr 24