- Average user rating: 4.0 stars out of 6 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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3.5 stars
"Nice basic unit with some bugs"
Pros: Easy to use, generally gives good directions, excellent screen brightness.
Cons: Some problems with database, inefficient address entry, buggy keyboard!
Summary: 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.
Where to buy
Garmin Nuvi 250W:
$149.85 - $359.99
| store | price | in stock? | rating |
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Amazon.com Marketplace
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$359.99 | See Site |
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$149.85 | Yes |
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Flash-Memory-Store.com
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$268.38 | No |
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