Garmin Nuvi 205W Customer Reviews

Real Reviews Submitted by Real Users!

I've had a a built-in navigation device in my car for several years and I love it, but I decided to try this unit for a rental car I was going to be making use of. Needless to say I was amazed by how easy it was to use, and just how sophisticated it actually was. After all, it only cost a small fraction of my factory installed unit.

This is a very intuitive system as I found out, and the screen is quite easy to read. The accuracy is amazing, and unlike many other systems, I found that this one actually keeps track of your vehicle's current speed.

Sadly, this one doesn't do voice control, but it can be programmed pretty easily. You will of course need to take it off the mount to program it, and to enter addresses easily.

While the vehicle is moving, complex functions cannot be performed.

With everything that this GPS offers, there is really no reason to spend more.

I bought this GPS unit for my wife at Christmas and she loves it. Where she would have had to make a phone call, she can now simply rely on her GPS unit.

This unit provides a clean interface, it is easy to use, and I found it to be very intuitive. It can resolve our location almost the moment we turn it on, though while we're moving it will take a few more minutes. We found that saving locations and choosing favorites is simple, and finding a hospital, gas, and police stations can be done by simply pressing a button.

There are three view modes which we found to be quite useful. For instance you have the 3-D view, the 2-D always pointing North, and the 2-D always pointing ahead. 3-D is the default view, but we always preferred the 2-D pointing ahead as this is standard in the majority of cars.

When it comes to choosing routes, the unit does a great job and we honestly have no real complaints. It has our own local roads on file which is interesting because we live in a county area with a new subd. The battery life is decent, even though it only lasts for about four hours.

The widescreen edition is quite nice and it lets you see much more of the area. There is a Google maps integration feature which we haven't tried, but we can't wait to investigate it as we visit some of the more unfamiliar cities.

The faster processor in this unit is supposed to speed up the operations, but I never felt that anything had actually sped up. Before this unit I actually had a Nuvi 350 as well as a TomTom One. Neither of these were any slower than what I have now.

One other problem I have is the fact that the unit malfunctions while I am stopped. If I am sitting at a red light, the unit will show the car making odd movements which causes an immediate route re-calculation. When I begin moving again however, it goes back to normal.

Further, it takes a pretty long time to acquire a lock on satellites signal It really pisses me off. My only device slower than this is my Nokia E71 cellphone (sucks at GPS).

Another issue of course is that it seemed to take a long time to get a lock of the satellites signal. The only slower device I have is my Nokia E71 cellhphone.

If you're wondering whether or not to get the widescreen over the regular, I would recommend going with the widescreen as it at least provides a better viewing area.

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