Garmin NÜVI 250 W

...and it's alert sounding. This Garmin seems to sound the alert at it's own preset distance warning which you can't change from the menu system.

It also seems to take a while to find the satellites. We went to our local park on saturday which is about a mile from home and we were practically on the car-park before it locked on. The worst part though was how innacurate the maps seem to be. On one trip, It didn't have a roundabout on its ...
...point it tried to send us up a one-way street against the flow of traffic.

Also it gives you one direction and then immediately tells you which direction to turn next, even if the turning isn't for another 100+ ft. Should you decide not to listen to it's direction it then spouts off "Recalculating route, recalculating route" until you're back on it's calculated course. This is really annoying in the city if you know where ... more

Edit: My review here is based on the Nuvi-250 (non-widescreen version).

I bought one of these recently as my old ipaq-based TomTom is getting more outdated each day and there doesn't seem to be a reasonably-priced way to update it. I have to say I was expecting better.

The manual is small because there aren't as many features as you get with TomTom. For example TomTom allows you to set the distance between your POI and it's alert sounding. This Garmin seems to sound the alert at it's own preset distance warning which you can't change from the menu system.

It also seems to take a while to find the satellites. We went to our local park on saturday which is about a mile from home and we were practically on the car-park before it locked on. The worst part though was how innacurate the maps seem to be. On one trip, It didn't have a roundabout on its map which has been there for years and at another point it tried to send us up a one-way street against the flow of traffic.

Also it gives you one direction and then immediately tells you which direction to turn next, even if the turning isn't for another 100+ ft. Should you decide not to listen to it's direction it then spouts off "Recalculating route, recalculating route" until you're back on it's calculated course. This is really annoying in the city if you know where you're going as it insists on repeating this phrase over and over each time you ignore its next turn. Again you don't get this with TomTom (even my old one).

So it's unreliable, possibly dangerous and lacks features. Does it do anything well?

Well it's small and compact so it fits in your pocket. It has a USB socket so it's easy to update the software (if you register your serial number you get 30 days to order a free map update - mine is on order so will redo this review if it fixes the problems). You can also download a Points-Of-Interest (POI) uploader so you can take advantage of all the POI databases out there for TomTom (although they have to be converted to CSV but this was a painless process using free online services). You can also link the device to Garmins mapsource software and this is where it gets interesting.

The device can be set to car/bike or pedestrian mode and since Mapsource can upload waypoints you have a satnav which can also double as a GPS which makes it sort of usable for Geocaching etc. The only problem with this is when you use the zoom functions, it sometimes redraws the map without the POI's.

It also has some other tools such as a currency convertor, calculator, unit convertor and world clock. It's also easy to install your own start-up splash screen. It does have a very good speed camera warning system built in which alerts you to the type of camera and also displays the max speed of the road you're travelling along. This is great and if you could just increase the font size or change the colour scheme it would be fantastic. The white text on a red background in a small font is not very user friendly though.

So there you have it. If I had the chance to try this out I probably would have bought a new TomTom instead but since I'm just getting into Geocaching I've decided to hang on to it as it's one of those devices with faults but there's just something that makes you want to keep experimenting with it. If they ever release the source code I can see all sorts of extra plug-in applications springing up for location-aware computing. With it's built-in SD card slot this gadget could so easily do much more with the right programming. You can use it to preview photos on your SD card and if you've found the perfect paradise you can install that photo as the startup splash-screen very easily.

Update: 14 July 08
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Since this review was originally written I've had a chance to use this device to travel further and on routes I wouldn't normally take. It has drastically changed my oppinion. We ran it from it's internal battery so that we could also take our old TomTom as a backup. The two devices both have their good and bad points but the routes provided were very similar. We also didn't have any problems with one-way streets so it may be that the device was in pedestrian mode when that happened.

I found it much easier to mark waypoints on this device than our old TomTom because you can mark points on car-parks for example (our old TomTom struggles unless you hit the position marker right on the road boundary). It was also great to have the speed restriction information as well as the camera warning.

The internal battery lasted for about 3 - 3.5 hours which isn't great but it did get us to the point where we were back on roads we recognised. If you're going further than 50 miles though or through slow moving areas it would be wise to use the cigarette lighter adapter provided. Today I've turned the satnav on again for the first time since it was recharged about a month ago and it is still fully charged so at least the battery doesn't seem to run itself down when it's not in use.

During our trip, when the other half took a wrong turn and we ended up in Huddersfield it was this device I used to get us back on track and it did a really good job when we needed it to. I still stick by my original comment about the voice prompts but turn them off and this is a very usable device. We also had a go at geocaching and the nuvi put me right next to the cache (although at one point I was on a woodland track with a good view of the sky but it still lost its signal so maybe more useful to urban cachers rather than forest trail types). I'm glad to say I didn't notice any missing roundabouts or other dangerous mistakes through the peak district so maybe it just needs its map of Stoke updating.

The update I ordered online arrived approx. two weeks after we bought this but I still haven't got around to installing it yet. The device has really started to grow on me though and I'm really glad that my oppinion has gone from poor (2 star) to good (4 star). I really like the ability to switch between 3D and 2D view (with either North fixed at the top of the display or the map rotating according to the direction of travel). Add to this how easy it is to scroll the display just by rubbing your finger across it and see all the street names just like an A-Z map and it becomes a great tool for navigating around cities. It even names nearby rivers and urban green spaces as well as showing railway tracks so there's no reason to get lost ever again.

If I had the chance to choose again however I would probably go for a higher model. Some of them are now able to play location-triggered multimedia presentations (photo's and voice guides when approaching touristy-type places - great idea for the kids). 

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