Garmin nüvi 260W 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator
by Garmin
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List Price: Our Price: $189.00 You Save: $40.99 (18%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: GPS or Navigation System See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Garmin nüvi 260W 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator
Customer Review: Pretty happy with our 260w
Summary: 4 Stars
I received the 260w as a birthday present a year or so ago. Its helped us to locate houses in town, has taken us to Gettysburg, PA, and all the way down the eastern seaboard on a trip to Disney. By in large we've had pretty good results. It didn't know where our rural home was, but we were able to set that and now have no issue.
I will have to agree with those who say it takes a while for the GPS to lock in on the satellites. If we're leaving from home, or know the general direction to start off, that's no big deal. Otherwise, I guess you sit in the parking lot and wait for the Nuvi to come online.
Once its up and running, the 260w works great. Nice clear screen with decent - if not great - volume levels. By tapping at the top of the screen you can see the next several turns. Other screens available will show your total miles logged, speed, and compass direction. The database is pretty decent providing you with nearby points of interest such as restaurants, gas stations, or even movie theaters. It doesn't cover everything, as our local megaplex doesn't seem to be there. Maybe in the next version.
As far as bells and whistles, you can dress this GPS up a bit. There are various voice styles to choose from, many which feature TTS(reads the street name to you). You can choose male and female versions in most areas. There are also different vehicles yo represent your position on the map. Choose from a car, monster truck, or spaceship if you like.
In the end, its a reliable road warrior for the most part. Its given us the rare wrong turn, but a bit of common sense has always put us back on track. Four stars for above average performance. I'm sure other brands are fine. That said, I would not hesitate to recommend a Nuvi to someone looking for a traveling companion who seems to know the way.
Customer Review: Great GPS after trying many others
Summary: 5 Stars
The Garmin Nuvi 260W is a great little GPS:
The text to speech is clear, the screen is more than bright enough, the maps are large on the 4.3 inch screen. Route calculation is fast.
I regularly use it on battery power which is long, 4 or 5 hours, even more if you turn down the screen brightness.
However, it seemed at first that satellite acquisition was very slow, sometimes as long as 12 minutes.
I think I found a way around that.
If I turned the GPS off at home, it located satellites within 30 seconds of being turned on again at the same location; if turned off before arriving home, which I was in the habit of doing, it took about 12 minutes to acquire the present location.
It seems it did not know where to look for the satellites, and took a lot of time finding them. A software fault probably, but workable.
After I discovered this, I left the unit on up to my destination and the problem was solved.
Something nobody seems to have mentioned; when a store or restaurant is located by this unit, it gives the address AND the phone number of the intended location, and I can call ahead and make sure they are open and have what I want. This has saved so much time.
Also, touching the car icon on the map gives you a workable "Where am I?" which can be saved to favorites.
The 260W does not have all the features of a higher end Garmin GPS, like routing, blue tooth, traffic, etc, but Garmin has deliberately omitted these from the (slightly) lower end products.
The documentation is very limited, but reading a downloaded pdf for the Garmin 350 helps with the 260W.
Garmin seems to believe that no one wants to read a manual.
All in all, a very good GPS, very easy to use. Garmin may have proved that no manual is needed.
Customer Review: Impressive unit for GPS, but....
Summary: 3 Stars
I picked up a Garmin 260W on sale at Future Shop a couple of weeks ago. It was my first "automotive" GPS, although I've owned a Legend for many years and am familar with how GPS works and it's limitations (I'm a land surveyor).
I was very impressed with the units ease of use, really a "no brainer". It takes a minute or two to locate satellites when it's been "out of touch" for a while but that's the nature of the technology. Some competeing units may appear to pick up satellites faster, but they just use software trickery that is fallible, so don't be expecting too much in that regards.
A common complaint for the 260W is the poor voice quality. Well, it isn't Bose, but I found it performed just fine for me, and I'm half deaf in my right ear. Bottom line; no complaints.
The reason I returned it to the store has nothing to do with the unit itself as it does with the poor quality of the source data all automative GPS units rely on. Although the 260W would certainly get me to my destination, during the short while I used it it rarely picked the "smartest" route to my destination, and in fact was pretty dumb much of the time. Give me 2 minutes on google maps and a road atlas and I'm willing to bet I could get to the destination faster than following GPS directions most of the time. The road datasets just don't have the details needed to know things like number of stop lights, time of day, paved roads, construction etc.
This is no fault of Garmin, of course, but my experience underscored the fact that automotive GPS is of limited use to me until NavTech and co. builds more intelligent databases. This will happen in time, but until then I'll use my brain, google maps, and keep my handy road atlas close -- and I'll get there sooner than relying on GPS, guaranteed.
Customer Review: Nuvi260W Very Good
Summary: 4 Stars
This was an upgrade for me from the C330. This unit finds satellites much faster when first turned on. Garmin will be the first to tell you all the things that are great about this unit, here are a couple things I would like to see improved
1- Voice street names only pronounced in one voice "Jill"
2- I get really annoyed with the redundancy of the voice command, i.e "Turn right in 200 ft" ....... "Now turn right" ..... And the infamous "Recalculating!"
3- I really believe someone programmed sarcasm in the voice when she says "Recalculating!"
4- Would like to see food/gas/etc icons on the screen as you travel. Touching them would bring up description like Magellan, Garmin should consider adding.
5- I don't like the UNIX style of navigating menu screens. If you want to get back to the main screen, you must enter a series of "back" commands rather that moving to the main screen in one option. To get to food POIs you must touch screen 4 times to get there and 4 times to get back to the map if you don't select anything....this is a pain while driving.
6- When keying an address the machine should default the city/state you are located; instead you must input this data every time you enter a new address.
7- 2009 load maps are really poor in NC (Winston-Salem to Raleigh)
8- Custom POI with warning messages do not always work correctly. Sometimes they are late and sometime not at all. However, they never seem to work unless the POI is on your direct route. It would be nice to be notified if your custom POI was on the up coming exit. (I recommend POI Factory.com)
9- I really like the interface with google map where I can send a series of address directly to my devise before I take the trip.
Hope this helps you in your decision.
Customer Review: Gadget from Hell
Summary: 3 Stars
I received this unit in the mail yesterday from one of the Amazon suppliers. Today I check on Amazon and I find that the price has dropped since I bought mine. Is that supposed to make customers feel good about this company ?
Since the arrival of the unit yesterday, I spent more than a few frustrating moments with it. Here are the worst:
The unit comes without an a/c adaptor (this would be "optional"). Well, to do any of the set-up at home, not to speak of registering the unit on your computer, you need the adaptor. I ran out to Radio Shack (those crooks !) and they charged me $30 for this piece of equipment. True, I could have waited a week and bought it on line for half of that, but that would be an extra week. I think that it's chintzy of these Garmin people, to say the very least, not to include the adaptor in the first place. Or the USB cord needed to connect to your computer (I had an extra one of those around the house, thank God).
After I did the original set-up, and then waited an excruciatingly long time for the satellite connection in my back yard, I connected to Garmin by computer and did what they tell you to do: register the new purchase. What a shock to the system to go through that procedure ! The registration, and the "free" download of updated maps (why didn't the unit come updated to begin with ?) will take "hours," Garmin warns. Well, it took me about an hour and a half. Their recommended system of downloading simply stopped in the middle, and their less recommended system took long enough ... Unless you are VERY patient and VERY much enjoy fiddling with this sort of thing, in other words, unless you are downright masochistic, STAY AWAY from this gadget from hell.