Garmin Nuvi 250W (06/20/2007)

Review: find it for $95 check this out
http://ebuyerstore.com/2010/05/04/garmin-nuvi-250w-gps-personal-travel-assistant-94-99/

Review: GARMIN has blown me away with their customer support! My 250W suddenly would not turn on and nothing via their troubleshooting help would work. The on-line chat rep, at his own suggestion and on his own initiative, authorized a return for free repair. It was sent in on the Thursday before the Labor Day weekend. A refurb unit arrived via UPS at my doorstep the FOLLOWING TUESDAY!!! I can't imagine how they did that, but I'm a lifelong Garmin customer!

Updated on Sep 8, 2009

Forgot to note that my unit had performed faithfully for the two years that I've had it and it was well beyond their written warranty!

Review: I have not used any other GPS unit, so my comments are based on experience only with this one. It's invaluable for my many out-of-town trips to new destinations, and I have no regrets about having bought a model with the features (and lack of high-end features) that this one has. The directions are USUALLY quite good, sometimes finding quicker routes that wouldn't have been obvious to me. That said, there are some minor and major problems. Minor: The database is far from perfect. Particularly in downtown Milwaukee, it has completely wrong information about some of the freeway interchanges, even though I bought it long after any recent construction was complete. At another location, it thinks that a surface road connects with a perpendicular elevated road when it fact it deadends just short of it, which means the directions are useless until you find another way to the other side of the elevated road. In short, you have to keep alert and not just follow it blindly, though 98% of the time, I have no problems.

Also, it's annoying to have to always enter the state and city when entering a new destination; there should be an option to just enter a new street address within one's current city.

The MAJOR complaint I have is that the keyboard has been getting steadily corrupted with time, showing an increasing number of doubled letters, missing letters, and wrong letters. This isn't just a display problem; if you try to type the key in question, you actually get the wrong letter. There is supposedly a simple fix (which I haven't tried yet) that involves simply connecting the unit to the USB port on a computer; purportedly, the problem vanishes forever once you do that. Nevertheless, this problem has been reported by a lot of people for different Nuvi units (e.g., the 200), and I have a strong hunch that it's not an isolated bug or hardware problem but rather a deliberate "planned obsolescence" feature designed to prod people into connecting their Nuvi to their computer and, hey, while they're at it, buying database upgrades at $60 a pop. I HOPE I'm wrong about that, because it would anger me greatly if it turned out to be true. But it's hard to understand the issue in terms of conventional hardware or software bugs, especially across multiple models. I would be very curious whether EVERY owner eventually experiences this issue or just a lucky few.

Review: Bottom line: this gadget is an excellent introductory model to the amateur and part-time traveller on the go. This product does not offer voice recognition or Bluetooth, but will definately get you where you need to go with better than budget pricing. I am satisfied with my Garmin Nuvi 250W and would recommend it highly to anyone looking for an introductory first GPS unit.

Review: Would highly recomendto anyone interested in an "entry" level nav system. Very, very good value.

Review: I just got this GPS and I'm in love with it. Clear instructions visual on the 4.3 screen and by audio. The system refreshes very quickly and there are many options including many Points of Interest, several languages to choose from. Really the best value for the dollar.

Review: I just received my new Nuvi 250W a couple of days ago from Costco.com ($300 + s/h). Until then I'd been using the Magellan Maestro 4040 which I passed on to my wife. My first surprise was that the box does not include a USB cable, wall charger,or protective case. Very surprising since even the similarly priced Magellan includes all of that (also $300 at Costco). Unlike the Maestro, the Nuvi does not have blue tooth capability, which is not important to me anyways. The Nuvi has a brighter screen and a much extensive POI than the Maestro. The manufacturer claims to have a database of 6 million businesses. I found all kinds of businesses around my area (San Diego, CA), and all the In-N-Out on the route from San Diego to Santa Barbara (250 miles apart). That is a weak area of the Maestro. Entering addresses & names is very easy, and re-routing is also very quick. I intentionally missed some turns, and the Nuvi would re-route within 3-5 seconds. The voice instructions do not mention the name of streets/exits, just "turn right in 400 ft". I have found the mention of the street name useful especially in busy urban areas with short city blocks. I also wish the main map screen could be customized. For example, the "arrive time" is always there prominently on the lower-left corner, when for me the distance to my destination is more useful than arrival time. Also it would've been nice to be able to customize the color schemes of roads/freeways/route.
Overall, I like the Nuvi 250W slightly better than the Magellan 4040 just for the slimmer design and more complete POI.