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THIS IS A GREAT GARMIN WITH PLENTY OF FEATURES BUT JUST KNOW THAT NO MATTER WHEN YOU BUY ONE THERE WILL BE A BETTER, CHEAPER, W/ MORE SOFTWARE IN SIX MONTHS.
i have also owned magellan and tom tom units. when i saw the price of this unit to $110 i jumped on it. i previoulsy owned a garmin nuvi 200 and loved it. each of those has some disadvantages. unit performs just as good as my older nuvi with a bigger screen and TTS (Text to speech - says street names). overall very happy with my garmin purchase. the garmin is more user friendly and takes less screen taps to complete a task. the garmin also seems to get better satellite signal and has better route guidance.
We use this often and it works great. I love the voice active feature as it tells you where to go and turn. Nice feature
I received it 1/6/10- far faster than the 1/15 projected arrival date.It wouldn't boot out the box (1/2 hour of charge fixed that). but, it does have a picture viewer, a calculator (fuel ecomony), a currency convertor and other useful tools. I read all of the internet reviews: CNET, Amazon, EBay., gpstracker & decided the 260W was the choice on 12/30/09 from Amazon. Garmin nüvi 260W 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator (Factory Refurbished)PROS: Screen clarity, fast satellite acquisition, QWERTY keyboard, auto dims screen for nighttime, auto sets the clock.CONS: No USB cable or home charger provided. It is night & day when compared to the TomTom Go 700 and at just over $100.00, it isn't too hard on your wallet either. Very basic (no mp3's, traffic updates, etc.).
and even she would be able to follow the prompts, put in addresses & even use the POI database.
but, I connected it to my computer, went to [.].
as well as free voices (squirrelly, the Yeti) and others that can be purchased.
However, available on EBay & Amazon for very few dollars.I started a search for a replacement GPS in January '08 and had narrowed the field to the Nuvi 255W or the 260W to replace my decrepit TomTom Go 700 for many reasons.
Garmin's webpage is not the easiest to navigate, but there are free vehicles (tank, motorcycles, ambulance.).
registered it, updated the software from the 'Dashboard', followed the instructions to update my maps (@ 1.25 hours on highspeed cable connection), added a few vehicles & voices and went to the car.
If plugged in, it starts with the car, grabs satellites in under 20 seconds, set my 'Home' location & loaded several favorites.Very impressed with screen clarity & brightness, unsure how I survived without streets & turns being announced before (TTS), very intuitive interface, easy to input addresses with my fat fingers, POI's are accurate but slow to load & sound quality is clear @ 70% volume when driving.My 84 year old mother would be able to use this newfangled technology right out of the box (however, I would have update software and load the newest maps for her 1st).
Still trying to figure out how to load speed zones & camera speed traps, but very workable.In conclusion, if you are looking to upgrade without all of the bells & whistles, this may be the best value on the market today.
I would give it 95 out of 100- only missing the charger & the computer cable.
I bought this for my mom to use around town. Although refurbished, it looked and was packaged like new. It was easy to set up and use right out of the box. My mom is very happy with it.
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