Spring is my favorite time of the year. Apart from the warm weather and the flowers, it's when the latest GPS devices announced at January's Consumer Electronics Show finally start landing on my desk for testing. Say hello to the 880, the newest member of Garmin's nüvi family. And when I tell you to say hello, I mean it. The $1,000 nüvi 880 is the first portable GPS product to boast full speech recognition capabilities. It's true that other devices, such as the Magellan Maestro 4250 and the TomTom GO 920, offer limited speech functionality. But what really sets the nüvi 880 apart is that you can perform almost all of its functions using your voice—in fact, only a few tasks require the touch screen. I found it a truly amazing (albeit expensive) device that works surprisingly well.

At first glance, the nüvi 880 looks almost identical to the nüvi 700 series. Upon closer inspection, you'll find that the 880 has a slightly more rounded appearance. At 3.1 by 4.9 by 0.7 inches, it's a bit slimmer, too. And measuring 0.7 inch thick, the nüvi 880 now shares bragging rights with the thinnest GPS devices on the market, such as the Maestro 4250 and the HP iPAQ 310. Some subtle differences can be seen as well. The 880 has two forward-facing speakers and a microSD card slot, while the 700 series features a single speaker and a standard SD card slot.

As Garmin's new top-of-the-line automotive GPS, the nüvi 880 has nearly every feature I've come to expect in a premium navigator. Like its 600 and 700 series siblings, the 880 features a 4.3-inch, 480-by-272-pixel, WQVGA resolution screen. The device relies on Garmin's simple main menu with large icons for Where To and View Map. Two smaller icons at the bottom of the screen provide access to the volume controls, as well as the tools menu. If you've paired the device with a compatible Bluetooth phone, a phone icon also appears on the main screen.

There's built-in support for Microsoft's MSN Direct service. Available from the Tools menu or the Where To screen, MSN Direct provides access to a host of useful information, such as live traffic, weather, movie times, news, stock information, local events, and even gas prices at nearby service stations. (See the slide show for examples.) The receiver/antenna is integrated into the power cable, so there are no messy wires strung across your dashboard. All power and data is supplied through the mounting cradle, too, so you can undock the unit easily, without unplugging any cords.

For good measure, the nüvi 880 also contains a number of handy travel tools, including currency and unit of measure converters, a four-zone world clock, a four-function calculator, and 11 games. You also get a music player, an Audible audiobook player, and a picture viewer. The Where Am I tool gives you your exact latitude, longitude, nearest street address, and current intersection. And the utility gives you one-tap directions to nearby hospitals, police, and gas stations.

In menu structure and operation, the nüvi 880 is virtually identical to Garmin's other nüvi products. The big difference here is the addition of speech recognition. Garmin takes a different approach from other GPS manufacturers, however. Magellan, for example, activates its voice command mode when it hears the keyword Magellan. When I was testing the Magellan Maestro 4250, I found that because its microphone is always active it would frequently misinterpret snippets of conversation and erroneously enter into its voice command mode. Garmin solves this potential problem by equipping the 880 with a small wireless remote designed to be strapped to the steering wheel. A large push-to-talk button on the remote puts the nüvi 880 into Listen mode, whereupon a green icon appears in the upper right-hand corner of the screen when it's your turn to speak. A red icon tells you that the device isn't accepting speech input at that moment, or didn't recognize what you've said. The smaller button on the remote takes the navigator out of Listen mode. Alternatively, after about 10 seconds of silence, the speech icon disappears and the device reverts back to normal touch-screen function.

I'll admit that I was skeptical when Garmin first touted the nüvi 880's speech recognition abilities. Having spent hours training Naturally Speaking software on my computer only to have it mangle what I dictated, I couldn't imagine how a GPS device, without any voice training and in a much more acoustically challenging environment, could possibly achieve an acceptable level of accuracy. But I found that the device was surprisingly on target. For my first test, I decided to ask the nüvi 880 to plot a course to a destination in a different state. I activated the push-to-talk button, said "Where to" in a conversational manner, and was prompted through the correct menus—including changing the state and entering the street address and the street name. When there were several possible matches, I got a numbered list and was asked to select the number corresponding to my choice. I was also pleasantly surprised that the device was forgiving of how I spoke street numbers. For 3245, I said "thirty-two forty-five," and the nüvi 880 got the number right. In another test, I said "one hundred fifty-one," and the navigator smartly confirmed 151.

One minor disappointment is having to say "Page Down" to negotiate long lists of information; the process definitely takes more time than successive screen taps. Even so, speech recognition has its advantages. When searching points of interests for restaurants, instead of scrolling through categories I just said "Italian" and the GPS immediately jumped to a list of appropriate eateries. Then, with my cell phone connected via Bluetooth, I could dial listings directly. Speech recognition also gives you direct access to the Main Menu or the Map View screen from anywhere within the menu structure. In terms of operating performance, route calculations and recalculations, the nüvi 880 performed, as expected, exactly like the award-winning nüvi 760.

The Garmin nüvi 880 is priced at the very top end of the GPS market, with a list price of $999.99. But this top-notch navigator has all the bells and whistles you should find in a luxury device, including text-to-speech conversion, multisegment routing, Bluetooth connectivity, and even media players and travel tools. Its well-designed speech recognition feature is the real showstopper, though. Frankly, I'm hooked. This is the GPS device I want on my windshield, and therefore it earns our Editors' Choice.

Compare the GPS devices mentioned above side by side.

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