Give a Garmin - no kidding!

Author's Rating:

Pros: Easy to use, fun, dependable

Cons: Full user's manual only online, not in box

The Bottom Line: 
If my next new car came with a built-in GPS option I'd turn it down and continue to use this 255WT.

Author's Review
THE BACKGROUND
My husband is one of the best gift givers I know.  He listens to the off handed comments I make throughout daily life and always comes up with something that I love having and use wildly even though I never knew I needed it before.  I have been eyeing GPS systems for a couple of years now.  Not because I drive to a lot of unfamiliar places in my 2008 Honda Pilot, and not because the Yahoo maps I make on such occasions are not sufficient, but just because I am always interested in finding the best route.  When there are five ways to get somewhere, I want to know which one is fastest time wise and which one is shortest mile wise.  I often re-draw the Yahoo maps to come up with better routes than the suggested one.  So, with all my eyeing and redrawing and timing and distancing, I was sure I was getting a GPS for Christmas last year.  Instead, he surprised me with a Sony Cybershot.

Although I still fancied them I gave up on ever receiving one and therefore was very surprised when I got one this past Christmas.  My husband confessed that he actually bought and returned about four of these units in different models and from different stores before Christmas as he tried to navigate the differences between models and obtain the best value for the money.  Then the unit he finally settled with from Best Buy went on sale for $40 less than the sale price he initially bought it for so he went in and got an extra forty dollars back.  But he encouraged me to be sure it was the model I wanted so before I opened the box I checked out eOpinions and also went to the Garmin website to compare features across their models.  The Garmin website is very user friendly and has a nice feature comparison process.  When I narrowed it down to things I would like, this 255WT model came in 2nd.  The other model would have cost quite a bit more only to gain Lane Assist, Parking Assist, and a music player.  I reasoned that the 255WT may not have lane assist but if I chose the wrong lane and dont make an exit, the 255WT will re-route me.  I also figured that I've made it this far in life and never lost my car in a parking lot so until it becomes a problem, I don't need to spend the extra money to have my GPS unit remind me where I parked.  And finally, if I want an MP3 player, I can certainly get one from my teenage son who owns 3 of them.  Therefore I stuck with this 255WT that has now, by way of reason and not oooh-aaah, has become my first choice.

THE START UP
So I opened the box and sat down to read the User's Manual.  I learned that the power switch slides to the left for both on and off but springs back to the middle as the default position.  The right is a click slide that locks the unit.  The instructions say to acquire sattelites for the first time you should be outdoors in a clear area.  It was cold outside so I sat right in the middle of my living room on our five acres or property just outside a small town and received the satellites just fine.  There wasn't a lot of battery power on the unit initially but I did have time to tell it where I lived.  I turned the unit off and continued reading the book.  However, I was soon disappointed when I realized that there were only a couple pages of instructions which were more like warnings such as don't type in a location while driving and the remaining pages were copies of the same warnings in a variety of languages.  To read the full user's manual you have to go to the Garmin website.  Highly disappointing but somewhat acceptable in today's techonology age.

THE FIRST RIDE
So we set off to run some errands and start by going to check our post office box.  There are two or three good ways and several bad ways to get to this particular post office.  Since we didn't know the exact address we put an address in proximity and set off on the route.  When we got about 2/3 of the way to the destination the Garmin said to drive to some road that we'd never even recalled seeing even though we go by that area on a very frequent basis.  So I set off on my usual route and the Garmin set off recalculating - always trying to get us back to the original route.  I realized that the proximity address we used was not as proximate as we thought and wound up just stopping the route.  While my husband was in the post office I tried pushing buttons (since I still hadn't read the online manual) to locate the pysical address of the post office.  I searched for Post Office and wound up with several locations except the one we were at.  Our second destination was also to an unspecific address and therefore just as frustrating.  I didn't even try the Garmin to our third stop but I did let it tell us how to get home - which it did very well.  Interestingly, once we got home and turned into our driveway which is about .25 mile long, it noticed we were off-road and told us to get back on the street.  I suppose it is not built for people who have driveways farther than a few hundred feet from the curb.

SUBSEQUENT TRIPS
I did finally breeze through the online manual and subsequent trips have gone much smoother.  I've now discovered that if I just drive to a regular location in Map mode and then click on the car icon once I am there I can add the destination as a favorite for future navigation use.  There are so many things that impress me as well thought out about this unit.  I like that the street name appears at the top.  In the top left corner I like the arrow showing which way you will be going and how many more miles until you reach the next instruction.  Sometimes the street name at the top is the one your on but it seems as you approach the next direction the name becomes what you are looking for.  I'm impressed with how sensitive the map is that it constantly adjusts the screen for each curve in the road.  I like that if you don't think the traffic feature is working automatically you can press the green (or yellow or red) circles on the left of the screen and confirm for yourself.  I like that the unit picks up the speed limit on most roads and displays it like a speed limit sign in the bottom left corner.  I'm not sure how I feel about the car's actual speed displaying along the bottom banner - not sure if I always want my passengers to see it that easily but on the other hand it keeps me in check.  I like that the unit figures your arrival time for you - that alone is such a reassuring feature to know that if driving conditions continue as they are, you will or will not arrive on time.  Then you can adjust from there.  The unit recalculates the ETA when conditions change.  And I think it's so cool that the daytime background is white while the nighttime background is black.  I'm impressed with the ease of application for the suction cup cradle.  I've used it on the window a couple times with no problem but then decided to just stick the base into my ash tray and close the drawer as much as possible.  It's just as sturdy and much easier to put in and out of sight when I park the car.  I'm also surprised that I don't have to clean the screen after each fingerprint.  Even with the screen at only 20% brightness I've never had a hard time seeing it, even in full sunlight.

ON THE OTHER HAND
I'm surprised that I sometimes get a mile from my house and the satellites still haven't acquired yet.  But sometimes they are faster.  I don't like that every time I turn on the unit I have to agree to something (I've never actually read it).  If you wait long enough it will go away on its own but who wants to wait when you are finally in the car and ready to go?  I would rather have the Favorites listed alphabetically rather than how far they are from home - but I can live with it.

JUST FOR FUN
I'm also surprised at how many fun features the unit has.  The EcoChallenge within the unit lets you receive a score for your driving habits.  There's a calculator and a conversion tool (meters to feet, etc.)  You can put pictures into the unit to represent locations or just to have.  You can also upload different symbols for the car and different voices.  While these features don't really affect getting you from point A to point B, they make it personable.