Reviews of Garmin GPS Navigator, Factory Refurbishes

Garmin nüvi 265W/265WT 4.3-Inch Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator with Integrated Traffic Receiver (Factory Refurbished), Save US$135 or 61% down from US$ 219.99 to be only US$ 84.99...Buy Now!

Best GPS I have ever Owned, December 10

By Michael Simpson "Owner of KronosRobotics.com" (Leesburg VA)

This review is from: Garmin nüvi 265W/265WT 4.3-Inch Widescreen Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator with Traffic (Electronics)

I have owned quite a few GPS units all including Phone, Laptop and Dedicated. Flat out before I even get started the Garmin Nuvi 265WT is the best I have ever owned. Let me just make a couple of comments on the most important features.

Touch Screen Interface
Very intuitive and easy to use. Touch screen is responsive but not instantaneous. What I particularly like is the ability to switch to a top down view by touching the screen. Once done you can use your finger to drag the map around at any zoom point. Once done you can hit the back button and resume your 3D view.

Turn by Turn
You have two options here. You can use one of the Text to Speech voices or one of natural voices. The text to speech voices will give you more information such as street names. This is what I use and even though you can tell it's a computer generated voice its quality is superb. The 265WT does a good job at keeping you updated. Also at any time you can hit the turn Icon and it will speak the distance to the next turn, giving you street name as well as direction. The audio is quite loud and in my noisy little Scion I have no problem hearing the messages.

Maps
I have found the map accuracy quite good. I live in Northern virginal and it seems to be very well updated as many of the very new streets included.

Automatic Routing
Very effective. You can choose between the quickest or the shortest with options to avoid U-Turns, Highways, Toll Roads, Traffic, Ferries. The automatic rerouting is faster than my TeleNav phone and my Laptop computers.

Points of Interest
On my TeleNav phone GPS system I can enter any business in the national database and I can get directions, address and phone number. This is where the 265WT falls short. The TeleNav system has the advantage of searching online. Since the 265WT is limited to onboard memory there is a limit to the number of points of interest. A good example is I was looking for "Off Broadway Shoes" and the unit could not find them. However a search for "Payless Shoes" worked very well.

Traffic Alerts
The lifetime free traffic comes at a price. You will get popup adds. These are very small popups that supposedly only come when you are in the menu. This is not true. I have gotten them while in the navigation screen. For now they it seems to be once per trip but there is nothing to say they wont start getting more frequent. The other thing I don't like about the messages is that you have to hit them to continue and doing so takes you out of the nav screen to a kind of favorites screen. You have to hit the back button to get back to your navigations screen.
How well does the traffic system work. I live in Northern VA and have coverage throughout my area. The included radio fails to pick up a single signal without using an external antenna. Sadly you can just go down and purchase an FM antenna.. The Power cable has a 3/32" jack. What I did was to pick up a 3/32" plug from Radio Shack and soldered a 4' wire to the tip pin on the connector. Once draped out one of the windows I get very frequent traffic updates.
Once you start getting traffic reports I found them to be accurate and they do help. You can automatically avoid high traffic arias or do it manually as they accrue.
I am still debating if the popup adds are worth the effort.

Bluetooth Integration
This is my favorite feature. I can keep my keyboard locked Motorola Q in my pants pocket and use my 265WT to make and receive all my calls at a touch of a button. All my phone features are available on the 265WT. Phonebook, Call history, Voice Recognition. The voice quality is quite acceptable on both ends. As a matter of fact the echo I get on my Motorola is not there when using the 265WT as a hands free set.

Picture Viewer
I found this to be a very useless feature. If the photos are very big it takes forever for the 265WT to load them. This may be due to the slow access to the SD card slot.

There are other features like the ability to connect the 265WT to your PC and automatically add favorite locations using GoogleMaps. All in all I am very happy with my purchase and would purchase it again.

FYI the Nuvi 265WT is the same unit as the Nuvi 255W without the Bluetooth ability and the FM reliever cable (GTM 25). You can even purchase the GTM 25 from Garmin. If you don't want the Bluetooth feature and don't currently need the traffic feature you can pick up the Nuvi 255W cheaper.


Impressed!, December 5

By Russell Madaus "In My Opinion" (Streamwood, IL)

This review is from: Garmin nüvi 265W/265WT 4.3-Inch Widescreen Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator with Traffic (Electronics)

After doing extensive research I decided on this unit. Mainly because the 265wt is one of their newer NUVI products and it had the features I was looking for. If you look at the sites that have reviews on the 265wt, most are from nov/2008. I think this unit was released about 6 months ago. Anyway, here's my opinion on some of the key features of the 255WT.

1. Windsheild mount - works great. The suction cup is very high quality and I have no concerns that it will accidentally detach from the windsheild. I love the swivel capabilites and it allows you a perfect view no matter where you put it.

2. Satellite aquisition time - incredible! once you perform the initial aquistion, you are set. Now when I turn the on it's ready to go in usually under 3 seconds. Awesome!

3. Map directions and screen - wonderful. The GPS unit so far has given me perfect directions and the re-route capability works flawlessly. The screen is clear, bright and easy to navigate.

4. Free traffic alerts - works as described. I love this feature and I hardly saw any ads.

5. Bluetooth - giddy up! I had my Motorola KZR1 synched up in about 15 seconds. Easy to use and sure makes talking on the phone alot more enjoyable when driving. I've had conversations with multiple people and they could hear me fine. One cool thing is if your phone has voice dialing; because it allows you do it through the GPS unit. Also, all my contacts show up (even with multiple phone #'s).

6. And finally...the internal speaker. If you researched the 265WT like I've done you'll see ALOT of people complaining that the speaker is too quiet to hear anything. That was a big concern of mine but I felt I would give the unit a try and if it was that bad then I would return it. My thoughts on the speaker are this. The speaker size/quality could and probably should be improved. It's a cheapy speaker...BUT...I CAN hear the directions perfectly fine and can here the other person talking to me when using the bluetooth phone capability. Side notes: You HAVE to turn down your radio if you want to be able to hear it. Also, I was driving with the windows closed (it's friggin winter), so I cannot say how well you'd be able to hear the directions/phone with your windows rolled all the way down.

Bottom line - it has met or exceeded all of my expectations! I bought it on the day after Thanksgiving (aka Black Friday) and I got an incredible deal! $199.99 with free shipping, no tax, and got %50 off a $25 case logic travel case. I would have spent an extra $150 if I would have bought the same unit from a local retailer.

Finally if your in the market to buy any GPS my suggestion is wait until it gets closer to X-mas and see if the price drops. I'm guessing they'll do it again. I was fortunate to get it when I did and hence saved a nice chunk of change.

Hope this helped!

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