Garmin nuvi 205W Review:
The Garmin nuvi 205W is simply a great GPS and the best value of any widescreen GPS. It has a no extra bells and whistles (no MP3 player -LOL, doesn’t speak road names - annoying, no maps of Alaska or Canada - not needed, no FM transmitter to listen to MP3 - useless gimmick, etc.). The Garmin 205W is a useful widescreen GPS - plain and simple. It has over 6 million POIs (restaurants, lodging, shopping) and can be customized to add your own POIs. It has a trip computer which I used last week on a road trip to Hershey Park which was pretty neat (tracks time traveled, speed, distance, etc.). This newly released Garmin GPS has the new user interface which shows the road speed limit, your speed, next turn arrow and distance to next turn all on the main screen. The mapping information is the best available on the market and will provide you with clear directions on where you want to go.

The Garmin nuvi 205W can route to addresses, restaurants, hotels and more with turn-by-turn directions and voice guidance. nuvi 205w will say “Turn right in 500 feet.” New appealing features include MSN Direct compatibility, HotFix, Garmin Connect Photos, digital elevation maps, automatic time zone updates and smoother map updates. Garmin 205W is compatible with an optional MSN Direct receiver (GDB 55). This optional MSN Direct receiver provides premium content such as traffic updates, weather, gas prices, enhanced movie listings, stock info, news, local events and a send-to-GPS feature for trip planning. nuvi 205w is the most affordable option, with mapping coverage of the lower 48 states, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. It offers five million points of interest, including hotels, restaurants, gas stations, ATMs and attractions. The map data is provided by NAVTEQ, a world leader in premium-quality mapping.

Speed: the Garmin 205W is every bit as fast as the 60CSx, if not just a tad faster, and that, in itself is amazing. It gathers satellites easily and once obtained, reconnects almost instantaneously after being turned back on. Get off Interstate 35E in Dallas and try to get back on … it’s a nightmare. But for the Nuvie 205W it was easy and very clearly described and stated.

Garmin nuvi 205W PROS:

Best routes. This may be one of the main reasons Garmin dominates in the US — good routing. Of course, I wish it had more a brain and could think about traffic lights and general traffic in certain areas at certain times (not actual traffic reporting), but I guess needing brains is good.

Where Am I? This will list your nearest street address. In this screen it also shows altitude and your coordinates.

Easier broad map access. On my c320, you had to dig in the menus to find a broad map view, so you could touch areas on the map and go to it. On the nuvi 205W, you can just touch the map while driving and it will take you to the broad map. You can then touch an area that you want to make a Via Point and change your route that way.

Speed Limit sign. You can set it up to show the current speed limit on the screen. It has been super accurate to the instant of a speed limit change in real driving. If the sign is missing on the screen, you also then know that it doesn’t really know how to calculate arrival time from the road. You may want to use that information to take or avoid that road on your next trip.

CONS:

Touchscreen. This may change as I use it, but the touchscreen is no where near as sensitive as my c320. Garmin 205W requires some hard touching. It also shows fingerprints much worse than my old GPS unit.

Ball mount. This gives a better range of motion than the mount on my c320, but it feels like I need to push really hard on my GPS unit to get it to snap in. This may change in age, too.

Keyboard speed. When I’m typing in a city, street, etc., the keyboard is a full QWERY keyboard, which is an improvement over my c320 (I think you can choose ABC keyboard), but there are two things I don’t like: 1) there is a delay from when you type to when it shows, so if you type fast, you can’t see what you’re typing, if you make a mistake, you don’t see if very fast; 2)the spacebar is tiny and way off to the right, while dumb menus are in the bottom middle — very annoying!!

Charging cord. On my c320, the charging cord would plug into the mount and there wasn’t a charge jack in the GPS unit itself. This was nice because you could leave the power cord in the mount all the time and take the GPS with you - you never had to plug in, just clip the GPS in and out. Now, the power cord won’t stay put and it falls out the door, etc. because it must be plugged into the back of the GPS. I suppose with the mount the way it is, it’s not possible to have a jack in the mount and GPS, but I think they should work on that.

Current road. The TomTom XL 330 did show what road you are currently on and what the next road to turn onto was. nuvi 205W only shows the next road name.

Routing pet peeve. Sometimes I won’t want to take its routing because I know of a better way. Let’s say I turn off of the normal route — it will recalculate and have a shorter time than before I turned. What’s up with that? Why didn’t it take me that way to begin with?

Routing choices. I don’t like the fact that I can choose either Fastest Time or Shortest Route. I would imagine that some of the time, the best route would be in between those to extremes.

Missing POIs. There are just so many cases where I’ll be looking for something and it’s not in the Garmin — even for stores and restaurants open for years. I know you’ll have this will all GPS units, but for the #1 seller in the US, can’t they figure out a way to get the users involved? How about incentives for users to fix problems online and give them discounts on map updates? If you have the best maps and POIs by far, why would anyone buy any other company?

Tinny speaker. I’m not impressed with the speaker, it is much worse sounding than the deep c320, but you can hear it. It’s just not pleasant.

Voice choices. It would be nice to choose your voice, but I don’t see that option, unless you choose another language.

Nearest intersection. This is within the “Where Am I” place in the menu. It could be very useful in an emergency to have the nearest intersection in addition to the nearest address. However, I’ve found that they should have labeled it, “random intersection within a few miles.” It will generally show me a major intersection, and sometimes ignore dozens of closer small intersections that would be much more beneficial to the police, fire, ambulance, etc.

Volume. I hate how they have the volume setup. On the c320 there was a wheel on the side of the unit — that’s best. On the TomTom, there was a place on the main driving screen that you touched and then moved the volume slider. On this Garmin nuvi 205W, you must hit Menu, Volume, move it, then back, then View Map. This is just awful. I want a Mute button on the driving screen and a separate volume button there, too. This is widescreen after all. I hope this doesn’t cause accidents, because I think it will. When I answer my phone, I want fast access to mute!

Need customization! Let me choose 3 shortcut buttons for the driving map view. That way I can put Where Am I, Volume, and POI on the main screen. Please!! I also want to change my route color to red instead of light purple.

POI choices. This is something I’ve never found a GPS that does this how I want it. If I’m looking for gas or food, it is usually on a long trip. If I want to go to fast fast, let’s say (that wouldn’t happen!), I would choose Restaurant, Fast Food. It will show me all the restaurants by how far they are from me now.

By Brian Morris

Garmin nuvi 205W Features:

Handy extras
The nuvi 205W includes Garmin’s trademark travel extras, such as world travel clock with time zones, currency and measurement converters, calculator, and more. A built-in digital picture viewer lets you enjoy your vacation photos — just slip your personal microSD™ memory cards into the microSD card slot. You can also purchase SD cards from Garmin with travel guides and coupons for use on your journeys. Garmin’s security feature prevents unauthorized people from accessing your itinerary or personal information.

See More
With nuvi 205W’s widescreen display, you’ll always get the big picture. View map detail, driving directions, photos and more in bright, brilliant color. Its sunlight-readable, antiglare, landscape, 4.3-inch display with white backlight is easy to read — from any direction. nuvi 205W features MSN Direct compatibility and a host of new, exciting features

Navigate with Ease
nuvi 205W comes ready to go right out of the box with preloaded City Navigator® NT street maps, including a hefty points of interest (POIs) database with hotels, restaurants, fuel, ATMs and more. Simply touch the color screen to enter a destination, and nuvi takes you there with 2D or 3D maps and turn-by-turn voice directions. In addition, nuvi 205W accepts custom points of interest (POIs), such as school zones and safety cameras and lets you set proximity alerts to warn you of upcoming POIs.

Take It With You
Like the rest of the nuvi 200-series, nuvi 205W sports a sleek, slim design and fits comfortably in your pocket or purse. Its rechargeable lithium-ion battery makes it convenient for navigation by car or foot.

Go Beyond Navigation
Navigation is just the beginning. Garmin nuvi 205W includes many travel tools including JPEG picture viewer, world travel clock with time zones, currency converter, MSN® Direct compatibility, HotFix™, Garmin Connect Photos, digital elevation maps, automatic time zone updates and smoother map updates. It also comes with Garmin Lock™, an anti-theft feature, and configurable vehicle icons that let you select car-shaped graphics to show your location on the map. Optional plug-in SD cards let you add additional features. Purchase Garmin Travel Guides for detailed data on attractions and our SaversGuide for information on nearby merchants offering discounts to customize nuvi for your travel needs.

• Navigation features:

• 4.3″ display (480 x 272 pixels) with touchscreen control
• 6 million points of interest
• preloaded with maps of the contiguous U.S., Hawaii, and Puerto Rico
• allows custom points of interest
• built-in travel kit including world clock, currency and measurement converters, calculator, and more
• security feature allows you to disable most functions with a user-entered password
• multi-destination routing: allows 1 stopping point
• transport modes: auto, pedestrian

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