yousafms's Full Review: Garmin nuvi 205 Car GPS Receiver
I purchased this GPS unit for my mom on mother's day. Last Sunday we finally opened it up and I helped her sort through the bits and peices of the GPS unit.
Out of box experience to be honest was a bit disappointing. Let me explain why. I personally own a TomTom GO 920T. It was my first GPS that I ever bought. When I bought my mother the Nuvi 205w, there were certain things I just expected to be a part of the package (since I received it in my TomTom's package). When I opened up the Nuvi 205w, I noticed the poor documentation. It included standard documentation on safety hazards, compliance with local laws, and a very small user guide consisting of a few pages.
Included in the box was the GPS unit itself, these few poorly written documents & a cigarette lighter adapter and that was it. Because I took what came in my own GPS package for granted, I was a bit surprised when I didn't see a USB cable or a CD for software.
I started to rummage through the documentation to see the "What's included in the box" section because the first thought I had was that maybe I received an open-box product that somebody returned to FutureShop (where I bought the unit from). Then I looked at the bottom of the box itself, and sure enough there was no mention of a USB cable or a CD. To be honest, I found that to be very odd. How are GPS users supposed to be up to date with maps and extras if there's no USB cable/software provided? Fortunately I had a USB cable lying around from an older Motorola cell phone & it was a perfect fit! As for the software, it was easily accessible via Garmin's website.
Keeping in mind that I'm a TomTom user myself, I found the Garmin touch-screen user interface fairly intuitive. Nothing too complicated, if you just take the time to study the menus.
I wasn't too particularly fond of the software Garmin used to update the GPS : "WebUpdater". It's a little....primitive, for lack of a better word. Not a very user friendly interface in this GPS users opinion. I noticed that there were numerous updates available when we hooked it up to her PC, which is to be expected since it was her first time connecting it. But here's where I was a little disappointed. After we applied the updates, which according to the software was successful, we disconnected the GPS unit & restarted it. All the changes took effect and we noticed some of the menus seemed more improved. But then....we hooked it back up to her PC and ran the updater a second time, and the exact same updates (which we just installed on the GPS unit itself) were showing up again as being needed to be installed. It failed to recognize that we already downloaded these updates, and it allowed us to reinstall the updates overwriting what we had already done. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't make a difference since the end result is the same but it's just a waste of time and a little worrying that the software doesn't recognize what it's already installed and what it hasn't.
The voice options in my opinion were quite limited. It only offered one English voice out of the box. Since I was focused on just updating the GPS unit and trying it out with my mother, I didn't really spend much time on the Garmin website to see if you can download additional voices. With my TomTom GO 920T, I had several English voices right out of the box (I didn't have to download anything additionally). The English voice on the Garmin Nuvi 205w sounded very...computer generated (if that makes any sense). The text to speech is clear, but not very pleasant to hear. BTW...after we did the updates, there were numerous language updates we were able to install (Arabic, French, Russian, etc.). I was quite impressed with that part I must say.
Finally did the updates, and I decided to charge the GPS unit with my own personal Motorola USB cable which was funny because if I didn't have my own USB cable, I wouldn't be able to power the GPS on to begin with, unless I took the GPS unit to the car and powered it via the cigarette lighter adapter. You can imagine how frustrating that experience was. I kept shaking my head thinking "What kind of a GPS manufacturer doesn't include a USB cable?!" I just couldn't get over it.
Then we decided to test drive our new GPS unit for a spin. I picked any random address in my city, and had my mother enter it in herself. She's a senior now and I wanted to see how easy it was for her. She was able to manipulate the touch screen with ease. The directions were approximately 98% accurate. When we arrived at the location we inputted, the GPS indicated it was just a pinch further, when in fact we arrived at the location. But to be honest, I have experienced this with my own TomTom GO 920T, so I can only assume that all GPS users experience this at some point.
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