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Garmin nüvi 255W 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator with Accessory Bundle

$185.54

User Reviews about Garmin nüvi 255W 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator with Accessory Bundle

This is my first gps. Easy to use. Works fine. The only problem, I consider big, is that the battery does not allow a trip of more than 2 hours, and having to use it connected to the car outlet is not what I was looking for. The gps summary advertise for "Key Features/Benefits for all 2x5 Series Navigators" says "Rechargeable lithium-ion battery for easy portability (up to 4 hours per charge)"; this not true. -- poor battery working time per charge

Ordered this GPS for my husband, he LOVES it! It is simple and easy to use for getting from here to there. A few glitches in the directions on occassion but I hear other brands are the same (mapquest on my computer internet can be wrong too). He likes the two mounting feature choices and extra plug, I bought him a case for it too (WalMart)to keep everything together. We compared units and this one was the best for the price. -- simple and easy to use GPS

Love it, love it, love it. We have factory installed GPS in another vehicle but not the one we were planning to take on a long trip. We purchased the Garmin and found it to be easier to use than the one in our other vehicle. Besides getting us from point A to point B (which was the reason we purchased it) we found that we were able to find restaurants, hotels and other points of interest so easily. At one point we missed a turn and normally would have panicked but the GPS recalculated our position and got us on the right road very quickly. We entered our vehicle data and were able to track our gas usage so easily. Love the graphics! Easy to see street names! Glad we chose the larger screen size which was more than adaquate. We purchased it with the adapters and different mounts and the case. It was cheaper than purchasing these items individually. Overall, a great product for the price. -- Garmin GPS

I bought this after years of owning a Garmin Street Pilot, and I've got to say, while it's acceptable and much cheaper than the Street Pilot, I probably wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Unfortunately, the Street Pilot isn't made anymore.

PROS:
The Nuvi is small and easy to stuff into a airline carry-on or even a large pocket. It will run off batteries for those short trips when you don't want to plug the thing into the cigarette lighter (aka accessory outlet). The bundle of accessories included with this package is great. It uses the industry-standard Navteq maps.

CONS:
The things has a bunch of usability issues. There is no "Speak" button as on the Street Pilot to get the voice to repeat its last instructions. The keyboard beeps when you touch the keys, but not always. Often I've pressed a key, heard no beep and seen no character, and then pressed the button again, only to get two characters. The screen, because it's so light, sometimes vibrates with the car dash. The battery life, advertised at 4 hours, really seems to run about an hour, and there is no warning when the thing's about to die. Beyond that, the Nuvi seems to take longer than the Street Pilot to notice movements of my car; it doesn't seem to track my position as well. The built-in speaker, combined with the automated voice, is often difficult to understand, particularly on common words like "left" and "right", which is all the more annoying since the instructions can't, as I said before, be repeated.

Finally, I find it hard to believe that this is a function of the Nuvi in particular -- my Street Pilot would probably do the same thing -- but on my last trip with the Nuvi, it repeatedly told me to do impossible things: take a left turn across a median, make a left turn onto a one-way street heading right, etc. Again, this is probably a function of the Navteq maps for that area (in and around Cocoa Beach, FL), but it was really disconcerting.

In short, after my previous experience with the Street Pilot (which I still have, in my wife's car), I'm pretty disappointed. The Nuvi is a lot cheaper, but it's a poor economy. When this thing dies, I won't miss it. I don't like the Magellans I've used, but I will definitely be checking out brands other than Garmin for my next GPS. -- Disappointing, after Street Pilot

got This little baby a few weeks ago. Took it on a little road trip, and discovered alot of new ways that I never knew you could go.
I would highly recomend the lifetime update. The software that is preloaded is a couple years old. Took it on vac. last week, drove from WI to AZ. It was a real lifesaver.
The only minor issue was if you pulled off the highway for some reason, and didn't add a stop point before you did so, yo would have to listen to the lady's voice recalculating your turns every couple of seconds, telling you to pull a u-turn. The mute button was a nice feature at that point though.
The acc. pack is a great deal. If you bought all this stuff seperatly, you would easily spend another $60 -- 255w is good for the $$