Garmin nüvi 265W/265WT 4.3-Inch Widescreen Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator with Traffic
by Garmin
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Garmin nüvi 265W/265WT 4.3-Inch Widescreen Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator with Traffic
Customer Review: Great GPS for money, but could improve in areas.
Summary: 4 Stars
I purchased this GPS right before a trip across the country to move my mother-in-law. As far as the trip went, this GPS was wonderful. The POI database got us to anywhere we wanted to go. The POI's were logically arranged and easy to use on the fly. For example, one of the members in our excursion had special dietary needs. When we needed to decide where to stop with the next ## minutes in order for that person to eat, we were easily able to see what was in upcoming towns with time to make a decision.
The device is intuitive. Even grandma could use it with ease. Very little learning curve for normal stuff. Bluetooth may need a bit of knowledge to set up.
Navigation is outstanding for highway travel. It is good for in-town travel. I do not like how it is designed to choose the "quickest route." Instead of processing multiple options and choosing the quickest one, it appears to make the decision based on a road selection scheme. It will do whatever it can to put you on an Interstate (assuming it is always fastest), then walk down a US route, a State Road, then a local road. I have seen the device plot a course within 20 miles sending me 5 miles further on an interstate, going an exit beyond and backtracking, rather than taking a US route that parallels the Interstate and turn off on a local road. Now, one might say that I know better only because I know the local roads are quicker [saw someone say this in a review]. This is not so. The device should know better as well. I know this because the ETA of the initial route updates when I drive the other way. It initially says an ETA of 8 minutes. As soon as it recalculated the ETA, it says 5 minutes. This tells me that the device is not comparing routes to choose the quickest; it is merely working down a program decision scheme. It Texas, where all highways have access roads the device twice told me to get on the highway and immediately get back off onto the access road with a 1/4 mile rather than stay on the access road. That's a safety issue in that I had to merge with traffic twice rather than stay on the same road. The first time I wasn't expecting it and followed instructions. The second time, I knew better.
Traffic awareness: For the most part, I'm pleased. There are times when the information on delays is old, but I think this is a function of the city's system, not the device. For example, Memphis is always late; whereas Dallas was quite up to the minute.
Features I'd like to see:
1. Password protection, so I can stop my children from playing with the device.
2. Traffic Light awareness. It constantly routes me on MS-302, which although it has a fairly high speed limit, one can never obtain it due to lights. The device should know lights and factor in additional time if on a road with them.
3. An option when looking for a POI to turn off the POI's behind you. This should be optional, because there may be times when going back is best. However, most of the times on the highway, you're looking for the next gas, restaurant, etc.
I would recommend this GPS to my friends without fear that I would lose a friend. LOL
Customer Review: Non Techie - I Heart My Garmin
Summary: 5 Stars
I wanted to chime in with my own Amazon review about my Garmin even though there are already so many glowing reviews of the Nuvi 265WT model because I am not one of the early adapters of electronics technology and yet I do love my Garmin.
I have to tell you, the first time someone handed me a Garmin in April 2008 to use when I was visiting Santa Monica, I thought it was really sorta superfluous. The Garmin took a few minutes to program to enter my "TO WHERE DO YOU WANT TO GO" info, when I was literally only driving 3 blocks and knew how to get there. So, to start, I had this slightly resistant attitude about it.(Me? Resistant to change? You can't relate, right? lol)
And then when I was moving to a new city 18 months later, I became a tremendous fan of the Garmin. In fact, I borrowed my brothers for a few months to get myself grounded with my new city and not get lost, or at least no terribly lost. Now I have my own!
MORE SPECIFIC DRIVING DIRECTIONS THAN EARLIER MODELS:
The 265WT model differs from the earlier models in the driving instructions given. Earlier versions would often just tell you to "Turn Right." The 265WT gives more specific driving directions, "Turn Right onto Las Vegas Blvd."
NICE GUI:
The level of detail in the maps is really nice when I am driving. I can tell we are getting close, and there are a series of parallel streets. The Image of the Map displays the NAMES of each of the streets, not just an image of a road, and combines it with an arrow image so I can see where I am and that it is at the 3rd consecutive street where I need to turn.
FEATURES FEATURES FEATURES:
I have not yet even begun to tap into all the great features on my Garmin. Where I am staying right now, there is a Toll Road area and the tolls are quite high. Generally, I want to avoid the Toll Roads, if at all possible. There is a setting I can select so that my Garmin does some thinking for me to "Avoid Toll Roads," and provides me with an alternative route.
The Garmin also gives me an Expected Arrival Time which helps for travel planning and communicating with others.
Additionally, while I was in Las Vegas recently, I even took my Garmin out for when I was walking along Las Vegas Blvd. The MAP is a touch screen, and I can move it with a touch my finger. I could then see what Stores, Restaurants, Bars, and Casinos were nearby and choose accordingly.
The only challenge I find, and I don't that it could be any better, is that in places like Las Vegas where there is a lot of construction going on, thee maps just aren't current. I really don't expect it to be 100% as of last week's construction update, just that is an issue. Additionally, some intersection and freeway junctures are just incredibly creative designs by some civic engineers and the Garmin expresses the directions only so well when the roads are arranged in a convoluted manner. I have had to go around and reapproach the route I needed to take because the roads were just weird.
All in all, I adore my Garmin.
Customer Review: Has some cripling functionality, but overall does what it is supposed to do
Summary: 4 Stars
This GPS is fairly easy to use for a person that is somewhat intelligent. Meaning if you give it to a person who does not easily get along with electronics, person may have to read the manual couple of times as not everything is obvious. The menus, they are easy for someone that ever used a cell phone, but could have been simpler as some features I find burred within menus and require several clicks to get to. The construction of the unit looks good and not cheap. The best feature so far was Bluetooth which sounded pretty good for me and worked without any problems. The one thing to mention is if you dial the wrong number, hitting the hang up / disconnect button does not work until someone already picks up the phone on the other side, so about 5-10 seconds delay, oops :).
I have used it first time on a local highway, going to a nearby furniture store. It took me the longer route as instead of making a right and a left into the shopping mall, it had me drive past it then all the way around, adding about 2 miles and extra 10 minutes in traffic. It did the same thing going from the store back to the house, so instead of making a right out of the mall and left onto the highway, all within 200 yards, it had me make a left and drive in a huge roundabout which was very frustrating.
When driving on the straight road that I need to travel on for about 10 miles, there are no splits as it is a straight highway, it keeps telling me go straight 2 miles, then in two miles it will change and say go straight 1.5 miles, very annoying and hard to tell when to change lanes if unsure of where you are going.
Last thing to mention which is a huge drag on the usefulness of the unit is that you CANNOT select East or West streets, meaning if you wanted to drive to 1 East Main Street, the unit puts you into 1 West Main Street automatically, and there is no way to tell it otherwise. As a workaround I ended up using the map to add a point where I thought that address would be and then the unit routed me just fine. So my suggestion is to look these up on Google maps first then enter the destination on the map before leaving the house.
When coming out of my house, it maps the directions correctly, but then it puts me off the road on the map and keep telling to get to the local road that is about 3 turns, and 1/2 mile away, so if I were lost in the local street where i live I would be really displeased. Once I get to the highway, it starts working just fine.
Overall, it is not a bad unit if you need it to navigate a familiar route in traffic (cause it has free service) or getting to a new destination without having to print Google maps, and be able to locate nearby points of interest when already on the go. It does have several good features and several malfunctioning ones as well, most of which should be possible to correct with a software update, if Garmin were to acknowledge and release working fixes this would be the best and most affordable unit with a feature set that is indispensable in every GPS.
Customer Review: Good for Driving - Not For Walking
Summary: 4 Stars
Good for Driving - Not For Walking
I was totally new to GPS units when I recently bought this. The day after I bought it, we used it to guide us on a car trip from Indianapolis to Washington, D.C. When I unpacked the unit, I noticed that a quickstart manual was the only documentation to ship with the unit. The unit has features that are omitted or barely addressed by the quick start manual. If they can include a map of the entire United States on ROM, would it kill them to put an entire owners manual there as well?
It was easy enough to install the unit on the windshield hook it up and enter the address of our hotel. The Nuvi 265MT led us from our home to our destination flawlessly. The computerized voice notified us at just the right time when a turn was coming up. The spoken street names are a good feature.
Although this unit has traffic alert, we planned our vacation around peak traffic times, and I'm not clear how this feature works. We also didn't use the bluetooth feature. For future models it would be useful to hook the bluetooth communications capabilities with a bluetooth-enabled OBD-II engine scanner. WIth this feature, you could read engine codes on the fly as well as directly monitor fuel flow and engine performance. It could be a great tool for hypermiling.
Once we got to our hotel in Washington, I took the unit out of the car to use it on our walks to museums and tourist destinations. It's here that the 265MT falls down. Although it has a pedestrian mode, it appears to be an afterthought. For example, the GPS unit still tries to route you around one-way roads. Also, in the pedestrian mode, the unit doesn't seem to know which direction you are going. It would be very useful to always have a compass directional indicator while you are in pedestrian mode, but it doesn't. If it has the ability to show all of the nearby points of interests of a certain class (e.g. restaurants) in relation to your position on a map display, then I don't know how to access it. That certainly would have been useful. In its current form, a map and a compass beat the Nuvi 265 as a pedestrian guide. I only took off one star for the poor performance as a pedestrian guide, but if I could give half star ratings, I probably would only rate this unit 3 and a half stars.
Finally, although the display tells you how far it is to your next turn off, and which direction to go, it would be very useful to display under that how far it is to your ultimate destination.
As a side note, the unit charged to an indicated 100% (4 bars) through the car charger. The only other charger supplied in the box is a USB cable. For some reason, I could only charge it to 75% (3 bars) with the USB charger.
In summary: The Nuvi 265W is good at the core feature of guiding you where you want to go in the car. Its pedestrian mode needs a lot of work. Because you can download software upgrades and enhancements, I am optimistic that we will see upgrades.
Customer Review: Overall a solid product
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought this in November to replace a Magellan GPS unit.
I know my area relatively well, and I still love the feel and usability of a map book, but a GPS is useful for a number of reasons, among them being able to not have to look at a book while driving and seeing distances. And with this unit, the traffic.
Pros:
-A very good mount. My last GPS unit's mount was large and awkward. Garmin's ball joint-style mount allows for precise and easy setting.
-Directions are good. I drive an ambulance and use this unit to get to emergency scenes. I'm still wary and we always use the department-provided directions as a backup, but the unit hasn't misled us yet. In personal use, I haven't had many problems not uncommon to GPS units in general. In either use, the maps are the most useful feature. It's good to see what roads are coming up or where I am.
-The speed limits are useful and accurate.
-Traffic is typically fairly accurate. Sometimes I hit some slowdowns before being alerted to them, but in routing mode it will alert you of backups anywhere on your route. It does use a small ad when stopped to support the free traffic, but it takes up so little space and is gone the moment you start moving.
-The connection to the satellites is quick and accurate, and even tracks when it's off so if I travel across the county and turn it on it gets location quickly.
-Pronounces street names in Australian English. I know it does it in North American English and probably British English. In case you were wondering.
-Garmin's online portal is very good and interacts well with the unit. Updating is very very easy, and the extras the provide (different icons for the car, for example) are fun.
Cons:
-In the US at least, should display secondary roads with a name and a number in parentheses, and the opposite for primary roads. Example: it says and displays "Turn right on VA-637" (it pronounces "Virginia"), but the road isn't readily signed or referred to as 637, but rather Cascades Parkway (a minor route). Conversely, it will say and display "Turn left on Harry Byrd Highway", which is more well-known and signed as Route 7 (VA-7, a major primary route), but is at least signed with the road name. This is not a problem with the unit, but Garmin's software and maps. Still a minor annoyance. While that might be ideal in some locations (SoCal?), it should at least display and speak both.
-Requires a more forceful touch than the Magellan I'd been using. With that unit, I could just barely touch the screen and it would register my touch. This just feels like I have to add the extra force and a little more time to type.
-Bluetooth is so-so. It doesn't store/access my contacts so it requires me to know the number or use my phone to find the contact. I personally don't use it and haven't.
Overall a good unit, and I am very satisfied. I will probably stick with Garmin from now on and would definitely recommend this unit to anyone.