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Garmin nuvi 265WT Customer Reviews
Here are recent reviews posted at Amazon.com from customers who have purchased Garmin nuvi 265WT:
| By | F. Shirazee “DesiBurmeese” - See all my reviews |
I have used TomTom and Navigon previouly, I think this nuvi is hands down the best GPS system out of these three. The routes, ease of navigation is the best. The traffic info is usually pritty acurate, more accurate than the Navigon system. Hands free device works adequatly, I have to bring it closer to me for people to hear me clearly, the speaker sound is great but the microphone due to car noise is less effective.
| By | A. Seitelman - See all my reviews |
I purchased this unit for my girlfriend for her birthday. Being the techy geek that I am, I soon got the 765t for myself. If you’re having trouble deciding between the two, get the 265wt. The lane assist and the blue tooth are not strong enough selling points for the 765t. Blue tooth is tinny and the lane assist isn’t as helpful as you would imagine.
As for the free traffic with advertisements, Garmin did a fantastic job with keeping them as minimally intrusive as possible. Truly a great GPS device.
| By | T. Leong (Greater Baltimore-Washington Area) - See all my reviews |
After using an older Nuvi 350 for a couple years, the faster response and shorter startup times for the 265WT are appreciated. Even though this is considered to be part of the lower-end line of the Nuvi’s, it comes with features that far surpass a basic model (traffic, picture viewing, bluetooth phone link). The traffic is a nice feature, especially with the linked re-routing capability from my daily commute between Baltimore, MD and Alexandria, VA (around the D.C. traffic!), but I’ve noticed that it isn’t updated quite as fast as I can get to a problem spot. Also, I’ll oftentimes take a detour to avoid one accident only to hit another jam which only updates on the GPS AS I hit the traffic (sigh). I can’t fault Garmin, as it’s a matter of news hitting the people who process the FM traffic report.
Another thing to point out is that the traffic rerouting seems automatic ONLY when you first turn on the GPS, or when your current path is just very very bad. Obviously the threshold for very bad can vary depending on the impatience of the driver, but I would like it for alternate routes to be calculated behind the scenes (for faster detour updates) or for it to recalculate paths dynamically as traffic jam information is updated to the unit.
As far as the rest of the unit is concerned, it has been working well. I believe I’ve had one crash in the couple months I’ve been using it, but it seemed to reboot itself automatically and continued right where it left off, without me having to retype in destination. The updated interface is overall nice, but I miss the integrated compass direction I recall the 350 having. The 3D terrain thing is more of a gimmick in my opinion, as it reduces contrast of the map and makes it harder for me to see the displayed information. One thing I found odd was that when the direction list mode is used by touching the top part of the standard screen, you have to use the back button rather than the big central “Show Map” button to go (back) to the standard map + next direction hybrid view. “Show map” pulls up a 3D terrain zoomed out large map of the overall route dialed in, subject to the same cluttered display with poor contrast mentioned earlier. It would also be nice for immediately-following directions to be listed right after the next direction under the standard map + direction hybrid view, eg. Take exit ramp on right, and immediately get over 3 lanes to the left once you merge onto the next highway (so that you can take a left turn at the stop light a 100 yds after the merge.!)
Since the traffic antenna is integrated with the car power unit, it must be plugged in to get the traffic capability. This means that I’ll rarely use the unit’s built-in battery, and also that the battery will most likely have a shorter lifespan since it’ll constantly be in charging mode (assuming it behaves like laptop batteries).
Disappointingly, the mounting system is very basic (you have to flex the plastic clips to pull it off) and not nearly as nice as the spring-loaded release mechanism featured in the higher end Nuvi’s (our older 350, and the very similar appearing 750). This, coupled with the fact that the power/FM transmitter is plugged directly into the backside and not centered (so it is somewhat unbalanced) makes one-handed detachment of the GPS almost impossible. I miss how the power plugged into the cradle of our older 350 which made it really simple to take the GPS with us when we left the car.
I have not used the bluetooth functionality and have read that the GPS is limited to acting only as a dial-pad and speaker/mic. Importantly, access to the phonebook doesn’t seem to be available through the unit according to others, but again I can’t fault Garmin, since I imagine it’d be a nightmare to support higher functionality with every bluetooth-enabled phone, as they all seem to have a different OS/interface.
Two of my friends bought the nuvi 750 for about what I paid for the 265WT, but I would not trade. If they had a 265WT’s features with the 750’s mounting cradle, it’d be perfect.
| By | Larusco (St. Louis, Mo) - See all my reviews |
I have had the 265wt for a couple of weeks now. I try not to buy gadgets or toys unless I can get a lot of use out of them, this one I use every day. I don’t have much experience with other GPS’s other than a friend’s TomTom but I can offer some insight from just a regular guy.
The TomTom was fun but when I did my research there were a few features that seemed better on this Garmin, most notably “free traffic” which I will discus in a minute.
Navigation
On the first day I took it out we went to my niece’s house. I had been there before but was not entirely familiar with the area. On the way there it took me exactly as I had gone before when I used MapQuest. On the way home it told me to drive northeast about 1.1 miles to catch a different highway when I was actually trying to go southeast. Needless to say I ignored the advice. After about five minutes it was clear that I should have listened and my wife and son made some unwarranted comments about how I always think I know better. Forty-five minutes later, rather than twenty-five, we pulled into the driveway and the abuse came to an end. If you get a GPS, keep an open mind about where it tells you to go.
It seems like the Tom-Tom was a little more intuitive about addresses when I was keying them in but the Garmin was easy enough. It helps to know the city you are going to.
The screen on the map has tons of information including speed limit signs and I love the speed limit signs.
Free Traffic
I had to go to my uncle’s funeral in some podunk Missouri town. The navigation on the way there was perfect and it took me right to the Funeral Home. On the way home there was one of those rainstorms where you know you should pull off but visibility was so low the next guy would probably just run into the back of you. So it is white knuckle time and about 20 minutes into it the traffic icon changes and shows a one minute delay. About a minute later a little blip shows up on the road ahead of me. As I got closer to the symbol the road went down to one lane and as I cleared the crest of the hill there was a Police car on the shoulder and a car that had slid off the road. It was nice to get the heads up given the road conditions and surprising because I was almost an hour and a half away from St. Louis.
In daily conditions I can’t say there is anything too surprising. So far it is just heavy traffic in all the usual places and the unit always shows a delay of some type when I go back and forth to work. I will say it is nice to get an ETA based on the traffic delays.
TTS/Sound
Text-to-Speech is good; the words can be a little strange when you use some of the different dialects. Sound for directions is plenty good. I only have it at sixty percent because after that it interferes with my music. If you need to hear the directions you are going to have to turn the music down a little anyway.
Bluetooth
I didn’t really have high expectations for Bluetooth. I already own a Jabra that sits on my visor. The Bluetooth on the Garmin is actually better than the Jabra but sound is still a little too weak for a phone. This feature was about a good as I would have expected.
Overall this was well worth the $250 I paid for it. The traffic was the dealmaker for me and the ads are not an issue at all. They only take up a incredibly small portion of the screen and just go away on their own.
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Topics: Garmin nuvi 265wt |
