Customer Reviews:
 Very nice navigator July 23, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I am very pleased with the Garmin Nuvi 250W. It does a very good job for the price; it is easy to use; it has remarkably good coverage. You will not be disappointed in it. More expensive models have some more features, but everything you need is in the 250W.
A reasonably good value July 10, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I've had okay results with this model, with a few caveats (which are probasbly not specific to this device):
No case is included with the device.
Some locations, such as restaurants which have been there for years, are not in the map database (even after the multiple-gigabyte download to upgrade the database).
Occasionally, it gives the wrong side of the road for a destination.
Losing satellite lock while driving, and never getting it back, can be a real irritation.
I'd trade the Canada map (I don't plan to drive there) for a bit more details in the US. For example, a "Park" can be just about any size (including a swing set at the public library), with no way to tell from the GPS itself. A little bit of detail regarding amenities, etc. would be nice. (Perhaps a future model will support Wi-Fi to bring in location details when requested?)
All in all, way cooler than a plain map, but the technology as a whole is not yet perfected...
Garmin Nuvi 200W - Great GPS unit July 10, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a great little GPS. I live across the border from Canada, and needed the North American (and not just US, as the 200w has)maps.
The item works great. Sometimes it takes a minute or 2 to acquire the satellites, but other than that has been great.
Never let me down, but was missing a couple little handy features July 10, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I used this Garmin for almost a year before my car got broken into and it got stolen (side note: if anyone lives in an urban area, I recommend getting the friction dassh mount...I left my car on a street in Manhattan for about 20 minutes, and the only thing on my dashboard was the small black mounting disk, and my car got broken into and the GPS was stolen, along with other valuables. The friction dash mount is a great investment, you can hide it easily and leave no trace of the fact you own a GPS.)
It never led me down the wrong street, its arrival times were always accurate, and its routes were almost always perfectly chosen. I never had any functional problems, and the fact that the display automatically switches between night and day display depending on the time is very handy. The maps were very detailed, I usually had great reception, etc etc.
So why did I only give it 4 stars? I just recently bought a new GPS and decided to go with the Tom Tom. The tom tom is slightly less reliable in terms of choosing routes to take, but the Garmin lacked a few tiny features that I really wish it had.
The main feature it lacked was the inability to choose to avoid certain routes along your destination. With the Tom Tom, you can look at the whole travel route, pick one certain road anywhere in the route, and choose to avoid it. The garmin doesn't offer you that feature, it just offers you a simple "recalculate route" function - BUT, it only recalculates it to avoid the very next road you're about to take, meaning you could eventually end up back on the road you wanted to avoid! Not that big a deal, but I live around the Westchester/NYC area and I know certain routes are trouble for traffic and/or other inconveniences, and it was a pain not being about to choose what to avoid.
The battery life is fantastic also.
Overall, the Garmin is very very reliable and never steered me wrong, but the Tom Tom (although slightly less reliable) has more little adjustable features that I liked.
 takes forever to get signal July 8, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
when I first received this product, I liked everything about it--the big screen, the loud speaker, and all the features come with it. However, once I turned it on after not using it for a couple weeks, it took a LONG time to get the satellite reception, several hours!! I could have arrived at the destination and come back home with that much time. I ended up just looking up directions online. And this same problem occured every time after not using it for a while. Then I tried using it on a daily basis for a week, it worked fine. Signal was received quickly after turned on every time.
So I guess if you use it on a very frequent basis,such as daily, you should be fine with it. But if you only use it when travelling to places you are not familiar with, I suggest you turn it on the night before and give it hours to receive the signal, so the next morning it won't take long to receive signal again.
I think this is a big flaw for GPS unit, because most of us don't drive to places we don't know on an everyday base, and most of us who buy this product do not have built-in GPS in our cars. So the only time we carry it and use it is when we have to go to places we are not familiar with. And if it takes this thing several hours to be able to navigate us, it simply doesn't work!!
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