Garmin Drive™ Reviews

It’s a little tricky to get started sometimes but once it’s started it usually works great. It’s great at showing what’s going on in front of me while I’m driving especially in today’s society where they want to back up and hit you then say that I rammed them or something. All I gotta do is wait until the cops get there and tell them I got proof on camera that they backed up into me trying to scam me and/or my insurance company. One thing I’m really happy about is that it doesn’t record what speed I’m doing because depending on what stretch of road I’m on and how heavy my foot I would be in some real trouble. Let’s just say that I have the potential to go more than 2.5 times the interstate speed and go from there. No I won’t admit to how far I’ve pushed it either lol.

Ok, just a little sarcastic, but yeah... I drive professionally, and this thing makes it so I can concentrate on the road while it handles getting me where I need to go, and usually haven’t been before. A couple things I would like to have it do, though, to help professional drivers.

1. Allow for ‘learned’ routes. Multiple drives to a certain address that don’t follow the suggested or alternate route due to destination issues.

2. Allow map editing to indicate areas that are off limits, such as an area that doesn’t allow a company vehicle/bus in their townships. Yes, Windcrest, Texas, I’m talking about you.

3. Have a “Pro” option where the directions always put the destination address on the right at arrival. Also would like to see tighter address control. No one knows how to standardize house addresses, and finding them in the dark is a pain if the directions tell you that you’ve arrived two blocks from the actual house.

4. HUD MODE. Projection technology exists, there should be a way to project the display onto the windshield.

I’ll leave my wish list at that, but even without those items, you’re a fool if you need something like this and don’t get this one.

GarminDrive works - at least for me flawlessly. I use voice commands for “take a picture” and “save video” all the time with no issues. The only reason I am rating GarminDrive is that there are those having issues with it and I simply wanted to say that I have zero issues. It easily connects and stays so until I turn off my car; then you must obviously reconnect.
The vault makes little sense to me as the SD card saves everything. It is hard to beat the Garmin Dash Cam Mini 2 (with its app) size, quality, and convenience. I have a friend with the Mini 2 who agrees 100% with the above review.

I’m having nothing but problems with all things “Garmin” I just purchased the expensive top of the line Garmin GPS at a truck stop recently. It’s nearly impossible to use, and no it’s not a lack of know how on my part. Any address I enter simply cannot be found. It will list nearby services but not anything in the out of state are I’m heading to.
I thought maybe getting the Garmin Drive app might resolve this issue.
Nope, it’s just causing me more problems. It’s stuck at the user agreement screen and the switch that allows you to agree and move forward is virtually nonfunctional!
I’ve been trying for weeks to get past this problem but Garmin customer service is nonexistent as well. I pray that this GPS can be returned for a refund. If not it’s a $300 loss. Either way I’m done with this piece of trash, I’ll find a better brand because when you travel your in a hurry and there’s not time for these kind of headaches

So I found a bug in the way this setup works, so if you have “wireless” Apple CarPlay and you want to view the cameras the system doesn’t work and you won’t be able to connect and view footage as the iPhone is trying to connect to the WiFi network generated by the radio for CarPlay so it never connects to the dash cameras. I called garmin support and was told I was added to a ticket and they were aware of the issue. I haven’t heard anything as of late....In today’s world were most radios are supporting CarPlay you would think this is more of a priority... anyway in case anyone else comes across this issue how to side step it if you need to connect to your cameras is go to the WiFi networks while your phone is connected to CarPlay and disable auto join on the WiFi network your radio generated and reboot your phone. Your phone won’t be able to use wireless CarPlay however you will be able to access the dash cams if needed.

I previously had a competing brand Dash Cam and their app was more intuitive and informative in regards to the meta data stored for the recordings. You could easily access an overview displaying map location, speeds, Etc. GarminDrive is so bland when it comes to accessing those features. I shouldn’t have to pull my memory card and export to a 3rd party program on my PC every time I want to review my trip info. Example: let’s say I want to show Law Enforcement a location of an accident where there is no obvious indications of where it was, say the interstate or highway. Ideally it would be nice to pull open GarminDrive , click the video for that trip or selected recording and display a map location with time, Etc. Catching on to what I’m saying here Garmin? This applies to us Dash Cam only drivers.

Great picture quality with the Garvin Mini2. The lens filter I had to order separately, which I believe should be included with the camera. I wish it downloaded the videos onto my phone permanently, instead of only being able to access them from the memory chip on the camera. I can’t download them onto my laptop, but dragging my laptop out to the car is a pain in the neck. And removing the camera from the windshield to bring inside, it’s also not convenient. I’m looking forward to getting a second camera for the rearview, and see how the system works with multiple cameras. Overall very good system for the money.

I updated the software to the latest version and it started showing the hands free phone even though I have all the notifications shut off on the phone and the Dezl OTR 800. I even deleted GarminDrive on my phone and unpaired everything and set it all up again making sure all notifications were off. This is annoying!!!

Called tech support on Monday and they said that there had been many calls about this and they are working on fix

Software update came out later that day and fixed the issue

Update: I thought I had fixed the constant pop ups from Drive asking for Bluetooth to be turned on. But I did not. No matter what I change in the settings, I get this pop up every time I wake up my phone. Annoying and unnecessary.

I kept getting pop ups from Drive asking for Bluetooth to be turned on after upgrading my phone to iOS 15. I solved this by removing my dash cam from GarminDrive and deleted both dash cam Bluetooth connections. Then reinstalled the dash cam from scratch and all is working well now. I also upgraded my Mini 2 and it now has an independent sensitivity setting for parking mode. Nice!

Everything worked great until a few days ago when I updated my device firmware. Now I can't get "smartphone services" to connect.

Typical garmin. They make a pretty solid device but the smartphone integration is spotty. Why need an app? Everything should be wifi and done on-device. Scrap the text messages and voicemail/missed call notifications. I'm on a Zumo XT with a motorcycle. I don't even want calls or texts. Just basic properly working functionality. Weather is nice but you can do that via wifi anyway.

Also, I had all my service history stored on device but a firmware update succeeded in wiping all that out. Guess I won’t keep service records.

I honestly was going to buy a Rand Mcnally but then I heard from a manager that works on Love’s Truck stop and said that Rand Mcnally have a lot of returns but the Garmins doesn’t have any returns. Then I decided to give a try at the Garmin DEZL OTR700 and honestly it blow my mind with so many features that the GPS can offer for truckers. If you are a trucker or even someone that it’s looking to buy a GPS for the car. I recommend 100% the GPS have both features for truck & car routing. Greay buy honestly! If you want to buy it go to a Love’s travel center since they have discounts.

When I had my 66W, it would record 1.5 minutes before and 1.5 minutes after an event or voice triggered recording. Now with the 67W it only records 15 seconds before and 15 seconds after an event or voice triggered recording. This is absolutely useless. I have been a user of garmin products for over 10 years and it seems with every software update they get more and more useless. GarminDrive never stays connected to the camera and if it DOES manage to stay connected during an export, it’ll ready 80%-90% and then say “WiFi connection was lost” I DO NOT recommend GarminDrive and I NO LONGER recommend any garmin drive cam system. There are currently better options for less money.

I use GarminDrive for my small business to transport handicapped, Senior Citizens, dialysis and regular people with needs. I prefer it 100% more than Smart Link! I like the fact Advance Weather and Photo Live are free vs. $4.99 on Smart Link. It’s a blessing to be hands free while earning money. Oh no need to link Facebook or Twitter your message automatically come across the screen. Just log into FourSquare once. A basic looking screen which is HIGHLY functional. Sincerely Marvin Lewis Barksdale of Barksdale Reliable Transportation LLC.

So I’ve had issues with GarminDrive working properly. And some issues getting some things to work. Like if I don’t save a clip, I have a hard time grabbing the video editor thing to shorten the video from the beginning of the video. It tries to have me go to the last page because you can swipe to go to the last page. And it’s really frustrating to not be able to edit down your video. I’ve also had connection issues when uploading a unsaved on the dash cam video clip to my phone. It will say that it lost connection to one of my cameras, and then stop the process.

GarminDrive is an improvement from the VIRB app that my previous Garmin Dash Cam 55 had to use. I like this apps ability to connect multiple cameras but it seems to hang loading the images when the secondary camera is not powered on.

The improvement I would like to request is the availability to filter the parking videos from the in motion videos. The only filtering is for video or photo only in the gallery. I have the camera in my truck constantly recoding and the gallery has way more “saved” video than the moving ones.

The Garmin mini 2 dash cam has worked good since I purchased it, however, it seems there is an overheating issue. If the cam is left plugged in and your vehicle is parked in the heat it will not function properly when you crank your car back up. Normally I’d have to unplug it and wait 15 minutes and then plug it back in to get it working. A simple solution is to unplug it when you park your car and plug it back in when you go to leave. Please note the overheating issue came from leaving my car parked in the heat for long periods of time.

GarminDrive does not appear to allow dash cams to pair properly. I successfully had a prior version of GarminDrive pair with a Dashcam 46 and a Dashcam Mini, so I know it’s not my phone. GarminDrive asks you to initiate pairing from the Dashcam, and then it says “you will need to select your accessory from the pop-up menu” and… no devices show in the menu which pops up. The phone itself shows a successful pairing, but within the Garmin app, nothing. Have tried with two Dashcam 47Ws and two Mini 2s. No dice. Other users have reported the same problem. This is occurring on a Xs with the newest iOS 14 and 15 releases available over the last six months. Garmin, please fix this or I will have to return all the devices.

Hey Garmon for heaven sake’s I’ve had Garman drive an Alexa working for several years suddenly the end of October they get a divorce Alexa doesn’t want to even think that she wants to deal with garmon Inc comes up with every excuse so they’re not speaking do I get to a counselor I get them back together a lawyerTo assist in my quest for a class action lawsuit or will you listen up to the people were having problems reach out to the people at Alexa get your act together and fix problem According to your company you’re aware this is happening and you’re not fixing it at this point folks I would stay away from this company until they get their act together

Used Waze for many years but with its changes I found it not very helpful as much. I returned to Garmin and love it. The Garmin Drive app is like using Waze. I program in my phone where I want and it always finds the location and tells me traffic. I must be Bluetooth to Garmin for this to work but that is fine. I think the only thing I miss from Waze is where the police are hiding out but as long as you drive with speed limit you don’t have to worry.

The latest version (from early Dec 2021) - still not working!!
Cannot connect new Dash cam mini 2 to iPhone with iOS 15.2 - cannot finish the setup in GarminDrive . After I select the device it remains on the same screen without finishing the setup. I do see under Bluetooth settings two active connections with the device name (one ends with “_BT”. But that’s it. I tried it all - delete the connections, delete GarminDrive , restart the iPhone, even updated the dash cam to the latest software through pc. I have a dash cam mini 1 and it reconnected from scratch again without problems. Disabled content blockers and new privacy features o. iOS 15.2. Didn’t help :(

I really like GarminDrive when I can get it to pair with my iPhone 6S or iPad Pro, but you usually only can get a day with successful pairing. Hard restarting, forgetting device and removing GarminDrive and re-downloading don’t always assure you that the pairing will be successful. Message states “make sure the Garmin device is on and nearby” even when phone and GPS units are touching! I travel frequently into major cities and rely on the active traffic functionality which enhances the regular traffic notifications of my Garmin DriveSmart 65. If Garmin can get this fixed, I could give it a solid 5 stars-when it works it rocks.

I have a iphone xr and it has no issue at all. Works great and i move this from car to car as i rent alot. Alexa works great with only a few features not available like playing video. I would love if it would show nest and blink camera. That would make this product perfect. i can run my home lights, alarms, temp, irrigation and all other smart home features (less the cameras). Garmin features are hands free and very easy to use. I could not be happier with this product.

I set this Dash 46 for the front window and the mini for back window in 2 cars and Sienna van. For van I extended its cord with a 2’ male/female USB cord and that gave enough to hide cable along the path.

Works great. Overwrite feature and ability to give front camera a verbal command to save is nice.

Mini cam for back window does the trick, could have used for front window too, but like the other warning features of the 46. Video feed at 1080 is plenty good.

So far so good. The only issue I’m having is Bluetooth connecting with the 66W. It takes a very long time to connect to view the live feed on my iPhone. Sometimes not at all. My other Bluetooth devices connect reasonably quickly.

Other than that issue, I like what Garmin has done to view live feed, adjust the Dashcan settings and install firmware updates on thru my iPhone.(Although there has not been a firmware update yet to try the function out.)

I work in security and I use it every day. Had few incidents in the past where I was unable to document but now I can ;) I like the notification that I get on the device as well in terms of the speed limit, forward collision, lane departure, proximity alerts. It's like I have upgraded my vehicle from a regular class to a platinum class :)

GarminDrive /device connection keeps getting disrupted and requires a hard reset/re-pairing to work again. The BT connectivity is fine. Going through the reviews this seems to be a known issue that has been doing the rounds for a while. When it works, it works great. I would expect a company like Garmin to atleast get such basic connectivity issues fixed. Garmin definitely needs to hire some good SQA people to do their jobs correctly before releasing a buggy product.

I went to Canada and the GPS didn’t fail me at all! Amazing! Traffic, weather, LIVE traffic, connect to your incoming calls. And other features I haven’t tried but I will soon. Best GPS I have every purchase in my life. I highly recommend. Also, tells you ahead a time when a red light cam is coming up!

An obvious feature would be to be able to access my phone contacts and then push the location to the GPS to either start a new route or save the location to the device. Why can’t I do this? For that matter, why doesn’t GarminDrive simply share my address book with the GPS unit so that I can just use voice commands to access my address book for destinations?

I don’t do very many reviews but I have to say that everything about this is excellent. I know there are some that will want more but for me every time I use it I feel that I am getting a great device and app that works together. Keep up the good work guys and gals.

Thank you
David Murphy

1) please add a Select All button so I can delete footage in bulk. With hundreds of parking mode clips, selecting and deleting in app is an exercise in frustration.
2) GarminDrive often has connectivity issues with my Dash Cam Mini. Failed to join the network is a pretty common error.
3) please update the firmware to use 1/2 the storage for parking mode and overwrite the oldest files as needed. I hate formatting my card weekly because parking mode videos accumulate. This thing should be “set and forget”.

Whether you use a business name or street address the database makes several suggestions and you pick the one you want and tap GO. What more could you want or need. At least until the AI start telling us where we want to go.

When I start my car in the driveway, my phone is still on the home wifi. As I drive away and the phone switches to cellular, Garmin Drive loses connection and never reconnects until power cycle. Developer claims that my cell signal is low; however, I have 5 full bars. Clearly there are issues and they refused to acknowledge. All these updates, yet none resolves this issue—since they don't think there’s any issues.

Must easier to use than the mapping portion of CAD. However, the map might not be up to date in areas where new developments are being built. At the same time though, even Google maps may not be either.

I use it to connect my DriveSmart 65 to iPhone 8 for traffic. First time in connects fine but next time I am in the car, it just doesn’t connect. The only option is to use the option of ‘Forget this device’ and then add the device again- wastes about 10 minutes trouble shooting. Got another DriveSmart 65 and still the same issue. Unless they fix this issue, the extra you pay for new gen GPSs are a complete waste.