Customer Ratings & Reviews

Got this product since we have a lot of Alexa enabled devices and it just made sense to get one for use in my car. Set up was easy enough and it basically worked with most skills you’ve enabled on your Alexa app. The display while small is bright enough even with my car’s sunroof open. Once paired with your car’s audio via Bluetooth the direction is gives are very clear. The display just helps you not look at your phone and just glance to see if you have turns coming. Playing music was easy too and even with loud music, when you say Alexa it lowers the volume and waits for your command. All is well and good last week until Apple released iOS 11.2 update. Now even with full bars on my iphone the Garmin displays poor internet connection and disconnects it’s BT connection. I’m made a call to Garmin and they said a fix is on the way in a few days. I’m going to check this Friday and see if there have a fix. So today Dec 5, I have a useless Garmin in my car. I cannot recommend this product until they issue a fix on why iOS 11.2 bricked the product. If a zero rating is possible right now that’s how I would rate the Garmin Speak. Once Garmin issues the fix I’ll put a new rating on this product.

Enjoyed have Alexa in the car so much I ended going back and buy one more. I only have two complaints. One, Alexa’s voice is to soft. If I turn up the volume to hear Alexa, then the music will be too loud when she stops talking. Two, Alexa stops functioning if cel reception is poor.

I installed in 2 vehicles and used on a couple road trips. Loved the navigation arrows with voiced lane guidance and light function to signify when to turn. I used Alexa to tap into my playlist and some Q&A just for the heck of it which worked out pretty well. I do recommend installing the APP before trying to install the speak unit. Installation in my older model car with Auxiliary connect function well. What I did not like is the many wires, well power and Aux cable which junked up my center console along with taking up the only power source I had. I could no longer charge my phone while using the Garmin speak unless I purchased an adapter with dual or multiple power ports. Installing in my 2017, well I really did not need as I have GPS and app functions tied in from my Iphone but tried to install via Bluetooth which did not work out for some reason so I had to fall back to the Aux cable/port connection. The upside is that the newer automobiles have multiple power source. Pros: • Small • Clear sound • Visual clarity • Responsive • Alexa on the move where ever you go • Alexa recognizes voice commands better than Siri Cons: • Price • Needs Smartphone/app to communicate and operate • Easy to install with Axe input, possible problem with Bluetooth connect • Needs constant power source • Single mount, single use mount pads • Power cable needs to be tucked in and hidden in the panels and ceiling cover • Not needed if you have a good provider and smart phone. I liked the concept but for the cost I would not recommend purchasing, if you have a good smart phone and or GPS installed in your car as it will cover all the functions the Garmin Speak unit provides.

I have wanted an Amazon Echo in my car since I got my first Echo in early 2015. That said, I resisted buying this device because of the obvious limitations. I hate exposed wires, and I wasn't sure I wanted to always leave my stereo on Bluetooth. I have an Echo Dot attached to a stereo at home and anytime I'm using another input I can't use the Dot. First the positives. The cable was pretty easy to tuck around the trim in my car and it's unnoticeable. After the first software update, it seems to be better at responding. Also, and this didn't seem clear in any review I'd read, but when using the Other/Bluetooth setting for audio, the sound comes from the phone, not the Speak. The Speak is more of a remote control for what's going on with the phone. This is significant because I can use either the car's Bluetooth connection or the iPod connection, which also charges the phone and is a more stable and higher quality feed, for audio. Plus, it provides track data to the radio through either connection. It is annoying to have to open the Speak app pretty much each time I get in the car in order to play music through Alexa. This is only required for playing music through an Alexa compatible source. Even without opening the app, Alexa will respond to queries, and if you try to play music, Alexa will instruct you to open the app. This may be an iOS limitation that prevents one app from taking over controls from another app without user input. I haven't said much about navigation. I didn't buy it for navigation, but I am using it, and look forward to my next road trip. My car has built in navigation, but it's cumbersome. I plan to use them in tandem, so I can see the roads on the built in system and get up to date, live traffic updates on the Speak. I think they'll be a nice combination. Plus, it's so easy to request it to navigate home, that I do it on every trip now just to get the ETA and warnings about any traffic issues. Spotify is noticeably missing still, but it's supposed to come in a future update. I think this device has a great deal of promise. It puts my favorite voice assistant in my favorite car.

The Garmin Speak is only as good as Garmin's Navigation maps, your cell signal strength, and the interface provided. I am a huge fan of Waze and I don't think Garmin is as accurate and up to date navigation/routing-wise. To be frank, this device isn't easy to use as a GPS using only voice, but as an "echo" device this excels. You have to go to unsaved addresses using the Garmin Speak app by keying in the street address then pressing go. It has potential, but I am unsure of how quickly Garmin developers will do their part improving this device. It lacks the ability to save places aside from the 3 locations provided: Home, Work, and School. Let's dive deeper into this thing. I will review this in two separate aspects: as an Alexa device and as a navigation device. -=Setup=- If you already have an Amazon account, this will be easy to setup. You need to download the Garmin Speak app and Garmin skill to link it to your account. I was up and running in under 5 minutes. There was an update to the device immediately after linking it to my phone so I am sure this addressed some of the other concerns listed in prior reviews. You can use the provided USB cigarette lighter cord, or you can use a USB port to power this device (which I tried and it worked). The next step is to stick it to the windshield and you are done. -=Alexa Capabilities=- First, this uses the Bluetooth you established in your car or the AUX port to tap into your car speakers. There is a bit of delay (maybe 1-2 secs) before you can hear the Garmin speak in your car if you aren't already connected and listening to something. This is normal. If you like Alexa, you will like this in your car. You get all the functionality you're used to at home minus the "drop in" feature and calling using Alexa. The Alexa portion is fast and provides things like your to do list, calendar, and shopping list while you are on the road with a simple command. You have access to your home automation you have setup which is a huge plus. I can unlock my front door while it's raining so I can reduce time getting wet. I can turn on lights and turn them off with the same commands I use at home on my devices. Have you ever thought, "did I forget to lock the front door?" Using your command (if available with your lock skill), you can ask Alexa and then lock it if necessary. This whole thing works using your data through a Bluetooth connection between the Alexa app and the Garmin Speak app. This is where it can be spotty of you do not have more than 3 bars of signal. -=GPS Capabilities=- I must say I am disappointed with the entire experience as a GPS. You cannot simply say "Alexa, ask Garmin for directions to and a street address". You will be required to type it into your phone and send it to the Garmin Speak. What is the point of having a voice assistant if you still have to use your device to enter an address? Very disappointed. The GPS signal is spotty and relies heavily on your cell signal strength. If you go under 3 bars… you get the lost connection red ring of death until you get better signal. -||What I love||- + Battery Saver - I love not having to have my cell phone sucking up battery with the screen on for directions. This uses its own power source and uses Bluetooth transitions which saves your phone. + HUD Display - You can put this literally ANYWHERE you want as long as your USB cord can reach. It provides clear instructions including lane guidance and a green ring to get your attention when a turn is coming up. + Alexa - I just love Alexa and having it with me on the go is a major plus. It makes any car smart. I am a sales person who travels and I like hearing my agenda and to do list while my eyes are on the road. + Home Automation Access - You get access to your home automation through your Alexa skills you have setup. -||What I Would Change||- - Garmin Speak app - I won't be too hard on this, but the app is SOOOOOOO BASIC. There isn't much you can do with it. It doesn't integrate with Alexa and you have to remember the correct syntax to get it to work. Using "Alexa, enable Garmin" seems to help with voice directions since it prompts you for where you want to go. - Audio Routing - I wish Garmin would separate the directions from the Alexa/Media setting. I would rather have my Garmin Speak give directions and use my Bluetooth in my vehicle for Alexa functions and media. - No Turning off Guidance - This is a simple fix, make an option for those who do not want to hear voice guidance. There is visual feedback so audio isn't always required for every user. Not providing that simple customizable option shows a lack of planning on Garmin's part. - No Location Saving - Garmin allows you to save a Home, Work, and School address that is all! Are you telling me you don't have the option to save a place on your regular GPS units? Poor planning and execution again! - Lack of Additional Mounts - Are you telling me you thing someone will buy one of these for each car they have? Do they do that for the REGULAR GPS units you sell? You provide a removable mount and an option to mount it somewhere else. You include a simple piece of iron to mount, why not provide another so we have options? - Connectivity Issues - There must be a way to not rely on a cell phones signal strength for GPS positioning. You are using Bluetooth from the phone for everything including data transmission, there has to be another way for GPS position information. - Uses Cell Data - Unlike a regular GPS unit, this uses data from your cell phone plan. If you are one of those who do NOT have unlimited data like I do, this may not be for you. -=The Verdict=- With all the negatives here, why will I keep it? I believe this product will be better with time since it is Garmin's first attempt at Alexa in a car. Most of my complaints are with the software. Software can easily be updated and so can the Garmin skill. There will be bugs, and if you are an early tech adopter you know this. Short and sweet, buy if you want Alexa on the road with you… wait if you need a GPS unit or just buy a standard GPS device.

Garmin was once a leader in navigation products. I remember when one would have to hide their navigation device so it wouldn't get stolen from the vehicle. Then smartphones came along and included navigation apps for free that are very smart and up to date with live traffic, automatic rerouting, lane assistance, etc. If you have enough data on your data plan, these are excellent choices for navigation. Most smartphones these days also come with some sort of personal assistant built in, also for free. Just ask your phone a question and it will try to answer it for you. Then there is the Garmin Speak, which does those things, not by itself, but in tandem with your phone. A problem with this is a) it doesn't really do anything that your phone won't already do, b) it requires long wires to be run along your windshield and dash/floor to a power outlet, and c) it still uses data from your phone's data plan. There is one saving factor for this product. If you can't find a safe place to put your phone so you don't have to take your eyes off the road while driving, this product gets stuck to your windshield so your eyes can better stay on the road. The Garmin Speak works best in vehicles that have Bluetooth enabled car stereos. If you can play music wirelessly through your car stereo, then you are good to go. You can still use the Garmin Speak if you don't have that capability in your vehicle, you will just need a second wire going from the 12v outlet plug to your stereo's aux input. If you don't have an aux input for your car stereo, then you will have to listen to the Garmin through its tiny built-in speaker. Unless only Alexa's help will do (as opposed to other smartphone assistants), or if you don't have a good place to keep your phone for safe usage of its nav features, then I would pass on this item. Otherwise it may be a good fit for you.

Look, there seems to be a lot of negativity surrounding this device from not only reviews here on Amazon as well as other places like tech sights. Here’s the deal, most of these were shared back when the Garmin Speak first hit the market. That brings us to today, and the Garmin Speak has vastly improved. I highly suggest that you give this a chance. I am a huge Alexa fan and before I installed the Speak in my car, I had an Echo Dot in there. The Echo Dot was/is a fantastic device and it works really well in the car but it’s a bit big (even for the Dot). So when I saw the Speak, I was initially intrigued but put off by the negative reviews. I decided to wait. And a few months later, the big complaints that were voiced have been addressed, updated and improved. I don’t use the Speak for GPS navigation much. I have tried it a few times and it works well but I primarily bought this as an Echo Dot replacement. I use it to control my music, get my news briefings, play games (Jeopardy is fun!) and pretty much everything else that Alexis does. And it does it wonderfully. I haven’t experienced the lag that others shared and it’s just as instant as my Dot. Granted I have had full signal on my phone which is what the Speak relies upon but I don’t think it’s fair to ding the device based on a poor connection. Your mileage will vary depending on your cellular data connection. The Speak plays wonderfully through my Bluetooth car stereo and upon boot up (car start), it takes about 20 seconds on my time to receive the “Garmin Ready” notification. One thing I experienced on my Dot installed in my car was that many times, it wouldn’t connect at all and would drop the connection entirely causing me to have to go through the entire setup process. I do not experience this on the Speak at all. The OLED screen is nice and unobtrusive which some might not like. It’s not meant to be large and in your face. The overall device footprint is small, very small and I was quite surprised at how small the thing actually is. And due to that, the mounting options are vast. I have installed mine on the front headliner, on the overhead dome light control. There’s a perfect spot to stick the magnet and I ran the cable through the headliner and hard wired it so there’s no big and bulky car charger. Nice and clean. It was reported that third party cables wouldn’t work however I can assure you that it works perfectly. Keep in mind that if you need to use an AUX port for audio then you WILL need to use the supplied car charger as it has the AUX port built in. For Bluetooth users, go nuts with another cable for a cleaner install. Overall this thing is excellent and if you’re an Amazon Alexa user, this is a great option for your in car system. Like I said, I didn’t touch much on the GPS as I use Waze on my phone but the times I have used the Garmin service, it’s worked wonderfully. It does take a bit of adjusting to not having a full screen map view but it’s not all that bad. And the device lighting up green and filling the circle as you get closer to your turn helps a lot of the uncertainty of just navigation arrows.

This small device needs some refinement. I thought by having an older car that this would bring my dated car up to speed without wires and hassle. So far that is all I see when I set it up. So if your car doesn't have Bluetooth built-in, or a AUX port then you'll have to listen to the commands over the built-in speaker. This device lacks a built-in FM transmitter. That would make this go the distance and to be able to stand going that distance. I'm not such a huge fan of having to permanently add an adhesive sticker to my windshield so that the Garmin Speak can sit. So that is a bummer. Looks cool, the colors are as bright as depicted in pictures and the box (if not brighter), the directions aren't as jazzed up as I thought. Their glow is washed out where I expected sharp white hues. The idea of something the size of a tennis ball guiding me through a busy city like mine is awesome because it doen't add clutter but after realizing i'd have to buy another cord to beam over audio to the speakers, buy new adhesive stickers when this one becomes loose and I didn't realize to use this i'd have to nearly open two apps at a time to manager the Garmin Speak App and the Amazon Alexa portion of it which means there is some refinement needed here. The plus side to the Garmin Speak is the Garmin Maps. I have used Garmin maps for over a decade and they are always updated, especially when you have a Garmin that has the traffic transmitter! I wish there was more to this little guy but it is the first of it's kind so hopefully there is a heartier, beefed-up version next time!

I own Echo devices and enjoy Amazon services. The Garmin Speak is great for Alexa in the car. The speakerphone works pretty well with some occasional noise through the auxiliary port. Not being able to place calls is an annoying limitation. Instead, I resort to "Hey Siri" to place a handsfree call. The navigation function is limited and poorly implemented. I'm uncomfortable not being able to see a route and rely solely on arrows for turn by turn directions. Many times I want to know the route before I go and this doesn't allow it. It seems ironic that this is a Garmin product with poor navigation function. I hope Garmin implements software improvements to use a standalone map app with the Garmin speak in the near future. Garmin Speak operation requires the Garmin Speak app to be running which is also an annoying limitation. Overall, Alexa is great, speakerphone is ok and navigation is not good. On a side note, when I upgraded my iPhone to iOS 11.2, the Garmin speak stopped working citing poor internet connection. Reinstalling the Garmin Speak from the beginning did not fix the problem. The problem was fixed by resetting network settings in the iPhone general settings.

A bit slow to route at first but after that it's good, alexa is awesome you can play any music you want and it all comes thru the vehicles speakers, a must have for the person on the road !!!!!

At first I had no clue what this was or what it did. The simple design of it was what intrigued me. I went into the local store looking for one and made my purchase. Afterwards, the rest is history, I love it! It’s the most easy to use GPS along with the ability to use Alexa and have the Bluetooth music streaming feature that my vehicle never came with makes it all worth it! I’m looking to grab another one for my other vehicle even though I already have OnStar for it, but the ease of use of this just makes it worthwhile!

This is a great product for early adopters who use bluetooth in their cars on a daily basis already. With the exception of playing Spotify, it plays all my music and audio sources including SiriusXM without distracting me from the road. I’ve had a couple iffy directions, I’d still pull up Google Maps if I was going somewhere new as a result. Excellent addition/extention to my smart home!

I am a fan of both Garmin and Alexa, but this unfortunately is not a good combo. The Garmin unit has to magnetically attach to the window, so you have a magnet all the time on your windshield. The hideously long cable is hard to hide as they described, so cable was running in my glove box making it difficult to close. Then actually using was a chore. Sometimes it would connect to my new Moto with a minute or two, sometimes 5 minutes. It would frequently say no connection or internet when my phone was fine. Then actually using the navigation was mediocre at best. Onscreen messages can be misleading, but the light ring was nice when turning. The Alexa integration was okay when the connection worked. I spent 30 minutes getting music and podcasts to work before giving up and just using my phone. I like the idea of Alexa in the car, but this was a poor attempt by Garmin to integrate it. As is, don't buy it.

The product is good with integrating alexa and garmin. For the alexa users switching between using echo products at home and in vehicle is like relearning the commands with adding alexa, 'ask garmin...etc'. only for navigation related. Otherwise, for general usual alexa nuances work. The search application in garmin speak is not dependable if the location searched is latest to within a year or so. Comparatively google maps is updated faster than the database; whatever the alexa speak uses. So have to navigate intelligently when using garmin speak. For me when I was doing long distance travelling across USA, a new hotel location 800 miles away was giving out a message as "..trouble finding the location.." So had to find a location near to hotel address from google maps, such as, a reputed place which existed for long time, for eg., airport or other hotel in the vicinity was fed as preferred location to reach within 0.5 to 1 mile distance to prefered location, and use google map navigation when close by. Positives: My reasoing for buying this product was to upgrade my car which doesn't come with in-car entertainment, such as bluetooth hands free gadget, and playing music via bluetooth using phone. Would have been good if the product worked similar to android play or airplay applications.

My Phone has Home/Alexa-this is a GPS with no screen

I’m completely blown away with the quality and amount of content packed in this small genius Garmin-Alexa gadget. radio,audio books,music,news, shopping, information ,games Plus gps!… it’s a must own!

But if you have music subscription from Amazon, you are all set. The recognition in the car is not very good, but the GPS is fantastic. I am enjoying the product very mush.

I've had the Garmin speak in my car for about 3 months and I have finally decided to get rid of it. On special occasions it does seem to function as the company intended, but those times are far out weighed by the times it DOES NOT WORK. Pretty much 90% of the commands the unit received had some problem and could NOT do what I wanted, the reason for this was because of no data connection, (my phone did have LTE but the Speak would not work) lost connection to the app, the app force closed it's self and was no longer running in the background on the phone, and finally there were some times where everything was functional but it would just light up and then turn off after the command, giving no result. While this is a very neat idea, I decided because of all the aggravation this device was causing me to simply get a 40 dollar echo Dot and put it in my car, has the same functionality and honestly a bit more. Only draw back is you have to have a mobile hotspot, which I did. The Speak is (like to other reviewers say) a half baked product and not worth the trouble or the money, try the echo dot if you really want alexa in your car while using something that works ;)

I Love this but it did take time remembering to say "Alexa ask Garmin to" rather than just "Alexa". Traffic updates not the best but it is much better than my traditional Garmin

when I saw it on sale for $100 I had to snag it and I love it. I can get in my car and tell Alexa to play my pandora and it will do it. my only issue is you can tell it where to navigate you too BUT to stop navigating you have to open the app on your phone. overall its great if you want to keep you phone in your pocket for media streaming and not run down your phone battery for music and navigation.