clicq's Full Review: Garmin nuvi 205 Car GPS Receiver
After my friend got tired of me borrowing his Garmin GPS all the time, I saw this Garmin Nuvi 205W on sale near Christmas so I decided to get my own.
This is a basic, no-frills GPS. It will give you directions, has a large points of interest (POI) database, and has a nice, big screen. It will not play MP3s, tell you street names, or integrate with your phone. It also doesn't include a traffic receiver. But most of these are pretty minor -- my car stereo hooks up to my iPod for music, I can read the street name from the screen, and my phone doesn't have bluetooth anyway.
If you're still reading, I assume the features the GPS offers is good enough for you. I'll break down my review into a few sections:
Directions How well does this route? First, I've used this in Philadelphia, the New York city metro area, and central NY. I have never gotten lost following it, and for most routes it follows the route I would take anyway, but it does have some strange quirks. For my house, it tells me to go around the block, probably because it doesn't require left turns and puts me on the side of the street where my house is, but it does take longer.
It also has somewhat confusing directions when dealing with some complex road situations, like two exits right following each other -- it will tell you to exit right, but then the text on the screen is ambiguous (this only happened once). Also, on highways where an exit is a major highway, the GPS will tell you to "keep left" when it really just wants you to stay on the highway -- it made me switch lanes a lot until I figured out what it was trying to tell me. This becomes annoying if you're ever in the situation where you have major highway exits on the left and right; the GPS will tell you to keep left and then keep right (to avoid the exits), but it's easy to confuse it for telling you to get off the highway.
I also noticed that the road name displayed on the screen is the next road to take, not the current road you're on. This is fine if you're driving in the city, but if you're going to be on a highway for 50 or 60 miles, I think it should just say "continue on I-95".
The unit is fairly quick to respond to wrong turns/missed exits. I've only had one instance in the city where it did not reroute me before the next street.
Overall, once you get used to the quirks, the directions are fine. They could be better, but I haven't found a GPS that's perfect yet.
Interface I've always liked the Garmin interface for its simplicity. The main navigation screen is uncluttered, with a direction arrow and mileage for the next manuver, the name of the next street/exit to take, the current speed, and the estimated time of arrival. On most streets, the speed limit will also be listed.
Entering a destination can be done by either entering the address, selecting from the POI database, by intersection, city, GPS coordinate, etc.
One annoyance -- it always asks for the city when entering an address. This makes it a bit annoying if you're just driving around town, but I guess if it always assumed the current city, it might also get annoying.
Searching for POIs is easy; you can search by name or category, and the closest ones will show up first. Sometimes it takes a few seconds to do the search though.
The screen is large and bright, though it does get washed out if it's being hit by direct sunlight. This is widescreen, so you get more view of the area to the left and right, but the interface doesn't make very good use of the widescreen format (I think it would be better if they moved some of the interface elements to the sides, to give more vertical room on screen).
The nuvi has a "detour" button, but it's not configurable, and you can't seem to undo it. I like TomTom's implementation a lot better.
The redraw speed on the unit is pretty good (it's faster than my friends' older Garmin units).
Sound Quality Sound quality is tolerable. At maximum volume, the sound distorts, like the speaker is rattling, but around 70-80% volume it's fine. I use the British voice and it's clear and easy to understand. A nice feature is that, out of the box, it supports many different languages, both for the interface and for the voices. Most of the major European and Asian languages are represented, for example.
Map quality From my experience, the maps are all accurate. Of course, where I travel, there's not many new roads being built. Your own experience may vary depending on where in the country you're located.
GPS quality/reception The GPS has always placed positioned me on the correct street (I've tried some GPS units that place me the next block over). Sometimes the accuracy isn't that great though; for example, it may tell me to turn in 100ft when I'm already at the street (this only occurs in the city though).
GPS speed If there's only a short time since I last used the GPS, it will lock onto satellites almost immediately. If it's been a week or two, then it sometimes takes 30 seconds to a minute to lock on. This seems to be fairly typical.
Comparison to TomTom My sister has a Tomtom One (3rd edition), and here's my thoughts from comparing them on a trip: 1. Garmin has a nicer (to look at) interface that's less cluttered 2. Tomtom can be configured to present more information on the navigation screen. 3. Routing directions are pretty similar between the two. 4. Tomtom has a nice feature where you can have it pick a different route if you don't like the one it calculated. Garmin doesn't offer this. 5. Tomtom uses some strange terminology (it calls highways "motorways"). 6. The Garmin mount is a lot easier to get the unit in and out of.
Summary I think for a basic, no-frills GPS this is fits the bill perfectly. It has a nice interface and the directions are accurate. Like most GPS units, it does have a few quirks in how the directions are given, but once you figure those out, you shouldn't ever make a wrong turn. It probably has the nicest interface out of all the inexpensive GPS units.
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