the garmin that handles heat best

When hotter weather begins, I switch over to a Garmin that can handle the heat, because if I didn't, there would be problems.

While my Garmin DriveSmart 76 is oh so nice (it truly is), having a capacitive screen mounted to the windshield during hot summer daylight driving makes me nervous.

This is a followup to what I said here, because it contains some additional info.

The maximum temperature the DriveSmart 76 can handle is 131F (45C) while plugged in, according to the manual. For most of the year, I have no worries about the temperature of the 76, except summer.

I always take the screen of its mount and place out of the sun whenever I park where there isn't any shade and have been doing that for years, so that's not the problem.

It's two very specific driving situations where I get concerned. Slow city traffic and long journey highway driving. In both situations, there are longer periods of time when sunlight is coming through the glass and beating on the back of the Garmin screen. Yes, the A/C is on, but the 76 has a capacitive screen than runs hotter...

...hence the reason I switch over to an older resistive matte screen model, the Garmin Drive 52. True, it's not as big nor as advanced as the 76 and doesn't have voice control. But the speaker is loud enough, the matte screen is daylight readable, and most importantly runs cooler.

A Garmin GPS navigator with resistive matte screen handles hotter temperatures better. It's not that the operating temperature is any better, but rather the screen itself doesn't generate as much heat.

Also, the fact the older matte models have a thicker bezel means there's some extra area for the heat to spread out. It may not look like much, but it counts.

In the way my car is laid out on the inside, I can't mount a Garmin screen in front of a vent because then I can't read it. This means it has to be on the glass at lower left corner.

I have two options. Use the 76 and pray it doesn't overheat and get damaged, or just switch to a 52 and use that until the weather cools down.

The 52 works for me for the hotter months. And yes, I did say before that I use a over-decade-old matte screen model for hot weather driving. While that works and I still could use it, I found that I like the extra features of the 52 (specifically, the on-map Turns list, which is very nice to have).

Published 2025 May 15