Garmin nüvi 255W 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator

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4 Customer Reviews

1. Chuck T. Moser says:

   Rating

   I’ve never owned a GPS personally, but have had the occasional opportunity to use friends and family’s GPS that comes with the cars, most notably the ones in Honda’s CRV’s… and have wanted one ever since.
   After picking up the Nuvi 255w, I gotta say, this comes pretty darn close to the experience with the expensive factory-installed units… only smaller. In short, I can’t think of much I don’t like about it.
   It picks up the satellites quickly (I’ve never noticed a lag), routes fast, has good animation (maybe 6-8 frames a second?), and is very, very accurate. The preloaded maps don’t include some of the roads that have been built in our town in the last year (which is to be expected), but does include our street, which isn’t even available on Google Maps yet. (Go figure) It’s light, looks good and comes with everything you need EXCEPT the USB cable to hook it to the computer. If you don’t have this, the only way to charge it is to use the cigarette lighter adapter that comes in the box. I just used the one that came with my digital camera, and it works fine. The screen is easily readable in the sun, and I love how it automatically dims to 20% at night.
   One purpose this can be used for, which I never thought of before, is a portable yellow pages. Not only does it give you the address of the business, it also gives the phone number. Pretty cool. I didn’t have the problems with the sounds of the voices like others have. They sound good to me… a little mechanical, but good.
   The interface is a seller for me. Keep in mind that I don’t really have much experience to compare it to, but it’s obvious they’ve put some thought into it. The icons are a bit garish and cartoony, though… it’s no iPhone.
   The cons: The documentation sucks. Not that you really need it… the directions didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know after fiddling with it for 10 minutes.
   It doesn’t ALWAYS speak the street names… most of the time, though.
   Some of the voices are annoying. The British accent seems to talk in slow motion, but I think it’s the easiest to understand.
   I think they could work a little harder on the interface from a design standpoint. Nothing major, just a few tweaks here and there could really make it shine.
   The Mac support is little lacking.

   All in all, I’d buy another one in a heartbeat. It truly is a great value, and I have no regrets. My only advice to Garmin is to reduce the number of different models by more than half. It’s a nightmare to try and make a confident decision with the sheer amount of choices and features that seem to make little sense as to why some are more expensive than others.

2. Kelly Cardona says:

   Rating

   I want to start out by saying that I spend about 2 weeks going back and forth between products, the manufacturers make it so hard to make a choice with so many products on the market. I was leaning more towards the Nuvi 650 that my boss has, I was 100% sure this was the right one for me. This all changed when I saw the Nuvi 255W and well I changed my mind real quick. I saw it had newer software than the 650 and with the Where am I? feature I was sold on it. I was buying this for my wife as she travels a lot for her job. Enough of why I bought it, let’s get into the features.

   The device works as advertised and gets you from point A to point B, yeah there might be times that it won’t recognize the road you are on this happens on rural roads, and and newer roads though once you get on the highlighted route it works like a champ.

   The text to speech is great for not having to look down at the screen endangering yourself and others on the road and after the voice updates the Garmin put out for the 255W the scratchiness and robotic sounding voice became crisp and very audible.

   The widescreen is a plus and I highly recommend it, even though it has the wide screen you can stick it in your back pocket which can be conveniently used for walking directions. The screen is very bright and easy to see with direct sunlight and at night time. It is very user friendly and for the basic features it does not require the manual. I also like the option of going from a qwerty keyboard to a standard keyboard. Acquiring satellites is very fast though if you are moving while the acquisition is taking place it will take a little longer to acquire a satellite and of course on a overcast day you may experience difficulty acquiring a signal though understandable. I would say that 90% of the time it acquires a satellite within the first 2 minutes or less, the other 10% is due to the above events.

   The points of interest feature is great and on top of already uploaded points of interest there are thousands more that can be downloaded making the 255W a great tool for traveling in unknown territories, there are some great websites for points of interest on the Garmin website or by doing a Google search. The POI loader software is great for loading the custom POIs you get and or create.

   In conclusion, I am very pleased with my purchase and so far very happy with direction our Nuvi is taking us on the road. If you are looking for a simple wide screen GPS the Nuvi 255W is the right choice.

3. Prao says:

   Rating

   Overall the Nuvi 255W is a great GPS unit. The unit takes very quickly locks on to satellite signals, tracks very well and when you miss a turn or do something unexpected, recalculates a new route very quickly. I recently took it on a trip from Michigan to Washington, DC and it proved to be extremely useful. There are some quirks that I elaborate on below.

   Good points: Hotfix (TM) to lock on to satellite signals works well. Tracking is excellent and without noticable lag. Likewise, it quickly notices that you’re off track and recalculates a route quickly. Display is excellent – the layout of information on the screen is very good showing upcoming turns at the top, your speed, the local speed limit and the estimated time of arrival at the bottom. The automatic zoom in and out of the map works well too. I never came across a situation where I felt that the map showed too little (zoomed in too close). On I-76 in PA, I travelled through a mile long tunnel and it tracked me perfectly even though it obviously could not get satellite signals inside the tunnel. There is a sharp turn left just out of the tunnel (going east) and it had no trouble locating me at the turn so soon after I got out. Very commendable.

   Not so good points: The quality of the voice (for announcing street names) leaves a bit to be desired. It is robotic as many people have commented and the pronunciation isn’t great. It took me a while to recognize the word “ramp”. I first assumed it was some Australian term! (I used the Aussie gal to do the announcements – I found her voice the least annoying). But as I got used to it, it ceased to bother me and I could recognize all she said.

   I noticed several mistakes in the POI list – for example it did not list the Mobil station nearest my house but listed a party store as being a gas station (about 1/2 mile from the Mobil). I could not locate any of the Smithsonian Institution Museums in the list – a very glaring omission. In fact when I tried to locate museums near Washington, DC, it would not identify Washington, DC at all. It listed several Washingtons all around the country but not in the District of Columbia. I could not even locate the District of Columbia when doing this. It was annoying. Strangely it found a Smithsonian Institution somewhere in Virginia (No, not the Udvar- Hazy center though it located that as well) – I did not follow up.
   It would not let me locate a commuter store in Herndon/Reston, Virginia that was closest to my hotel. When I tried to use the street adress it would not accept the Building # (12530 Sunrise Valley Drive, Herndon, VA 20171 ). It was listed in the POI database but at the wrong address.
   When I tried to go to Safeway located at 413 Elden Street, Herndon from the Vienna station parking lot, it chose a route that while direct had me make a U-turn to get into the store parking lot. That would have been OK except that the road did not have a left-turn lane at that point and so making a U-turn would have been dangerous. Even stranger, when it asked me to make a U-turn, the symbol indicated a U-turn to the right! but the store was on the left side (as it knew). That confused the heck out of me the first time. I traveled the route again the next day just to make sure that I wasn’t reading it wrong and it did it again. However on other occasions, it did correctly show a U-turn as being a turn to the left (all those were legal U-turns). All of this was a little disconcerting.

   The 255w does feature a compass – but not a good one. In the map view, if you touch the display button to the left of the “Menu” button (bottom center), it brings up a display that features some stats about your trip and includes a compass of sorts. It gives your heading not in terms of degres but only in terms of one of eight directions (N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW). This is not as useful as the heading in degrees.So it you’re into Geocacheing as I am, this might be a bit irritating but it is usable.

4. Daddy & Sam says:

   Rating

   Just got the Garmin 255W yesterday. It is easy to set up and worked immediately without any difficulty. One thing that was not clear in the product description is the fact that it comes with an in-vehicle power cable (plugs into the cigarette lighter). This was not mentioned in the description, so I ordered one thinking that I needed it. I did not, so will be retunring to Amazon for a refund.

   The voice descriptions of the routes are clear and easily understood, even for me with a hearing loss. So far, it has been great at identifying nearby businesses in the search function, a great asset since I am always looking for the nearest ATM when I run out of cash. I tried a Garmin out by renting one when I was out of town and renting a car. Was very impressed with the ease of finding my way around a city that I had never been in before. This is the first GPS unit that I have owned and I am impressed.