Garmin Nuvi 250 Detailed Review

Introduction:

This follow up little brother to the brilliantly popular nuvi350 gps system, is expected to bring tons of first time buyers and long time veterans back into the whole GPS market craze.

Introduced recently in 2007 the garmin nuvi 250 will be the most popular unit in the two-hundred series garmin gps’s as the choice for people that need North American only data preinstalled (upgrade to nuvi270 if need European, downgrade to nuvi200 if need only 48 continental states)

It is introduced in a massive shadow left by that last 2years running award winning and best selling system, the nuvi 350, so I was very interested to get my hands on one and see what exactly had changed and if it did indeed offer ‘great value’ with the slightly reduced price tag.

Design and Casing:

In great Garmin Nuvi fashion, the 250 and other 2xx series models are very simplistic while elegant and sleek in design. Up on top you find a streamlined to the outer shell sliding button, which will control the on/off functions and also if slid the other way and held will lock the unit to avoid any accidental contact with the super sensitive touch screen.

Everything looks great from the box up to the time you get it installed and they have really kept the concentration on sleek, minimalistic and streamlined appearance which is a big reason in my opinion for the success of the series. The power cord is adapted as well, with a 90degree bend that helps to keep the cord from being a disturbance and keeping the space very clean and tidy.

Garmin Nuvi 250 Mount – Upgraded Mounting

After having a few GPS systems stolen from my vehicle lately I have come to truly appreciate a good mount for the windshield and dash, that not only is easy for me to take down and bring inside to avoid pesky thieves on the prowl, but that is also sturdy and rigid enough in design to stay put and not let my little gizmo fall down when I hit a big bump or pothole.

That being said they have changed up the included mounting for the garmin nuvi 250/270/200 and it is much better then the olds ones, although I do still prefer the garmin portable friction mount that I bought over this new factory shipped nuvi 250 mount.

If you want to keep your windshield free of distractions, or if you live in a state where it’s illegal to have wind shield mounted gps devices, I would highly recommend you look at the portable friction mount offered up here – not only is it of a better quality and more friendly in design, but also I love the fact that if you mount it down low you never have to deal with any sort of sun glare (even though the garmin 250 is resistant to glare, its not 100%)

Menus & Finding your Destination Route

The menu layout and filing is very logical and easy to figure out, with some first time users saying they had the Nuvi figured out within 24 hours of just playing around with the touch screen going through all the different menus and submenus and features that it offers. The basic greeting menu for your trip will be the Where To? screen (figure 4) which will bring up icons to select the submenus of finding your appropriate destination, or an all around map view.When I said above that the submenus were logical – I mean that even a very unfamiliar person with tecnology could follow the simple progression of actions to find what they are looking for; (Figure 5) below shows the secondary menu under the Where To? button of the navigation screen that gives you quite a few different ways to find the ultimate destination you may want to travel to from your current location.

Picture 1: Basic Route Selection screen, touch Where To for various options on finding a particular destination or view map to plan a route on your own	Picture 2: Enter the exact address by name, use recently traveled to destinations, add and choose from favorite points of search a database by categories of POI	Picture 3: Simple on screen keyboard makes typing easy unless you have very massive fingertips

Typing in tiny portions of the address and letting the system auto-complete and auto-match will save you time and concentration on the road, the points of interest database will make it easy to find any sort of niche or themed desitnation (Points of interest – Restaurants – Chinese Restaurants within 5 miles – for example)

Once you find where you need to get to through the several available options, a simple tap on the destination and the route will automatically, and with great accuracy and speed, calculate each and every turn to result in the most logical, simple and fast course of action for your adventure. In a tiny minority of cases it may caluculate it incorrectly, but will auto-correct as you near the flawed interpretation. This slight chance is ussually due to construction or road work and changes, very seldom and as you can imagine paper maps and human memory would make errors under such circumstances as well

Picture 4: Bringing up the POI menu is a great way to find all local destinations categorized into themes and subsections	Picture 5: Select from 15+ Point of interest subcategories to narrow down what you are looking for in the current region or an area you are traveling to	Picture 6: Get detailed distance information of all the closest matches to your search and tap on the screen to calculate the route and get turn by turn directional support

Garmin 250 Features:

The Garmin 250 system is introduced in the ‘entry/value’ level series from this company, and as such it has a limited advanced feature set while concentrating more on the sole navigation and mapping systems which is the primary focus of such devices. It misses maps of great detail for Canada and Alaska (see garmin nuvi 270 for these places as well as europe) but adds the other states and Puerto Rico over the Nuvi200 model.

The Nuvi 250 features turn by turn, text and voice guidance directional systems but misses out on the text to speech functionality which means it won’t attempt to pronounce street names like some of the more expensive series. Maps are viewable in 4 perspectives to match your favorite viewing conditions; 2d, 3d, day and night colors exist to help you more easily view the unit and stay on path, with simple zoom in and zoom out buttons on the screen tapable to give you the favored depth perception of the directions.

The garmin nuvi 250 GPS unit still has an extensive POI selection with all major and popular categories for the road as well as vary specific and narrowed down themes of interest such as a certain type of restaurant.

Noteable additional features on the garmin nuvi250 include the Calculator, currency and measuremeny convertor/calculators, world and time zone clocks, Picture and slideshow viewer, anti-theft software, etc… to name but a few.

Perfomance Testing:

At the initial turning on of the device, it took about 90 seconds to fix and lock onto the GPS satelite in semi-cloudy conditions in the middle of the street, afterwards subsequent startings happened near immediately.

Picture 7: Simplistic color and 3d views make following the instructions and navigation assitance simple and user friendly	Picture 8: Satelite locks on fast and route calculation is very swift as well, missing a turn the recalculation engine doesn’t miss a dime and gets you back on the newest optimal route in seconds	Picture 9: The detail and accuracy of the shipped Garmin Maps on the Nuvi 250 is truly second to none in the marketplace right now

I put the nuvi 250 to test giving it a very buried address to calculate a route to, and one that I knew very well so I could compare its logic with my reasoning. The route it choose was near identical to the one I would have drove, although near the end it choose a different street to turn into which resulted in an extra turn (30 seconds difference) to be very critical of its judgement.

Giving it a second route, I purposely took a wrong turn and went off course – I was surprised at just how quickly it recalculated a new route, and how precise this little piece of technology really is to pick up on such a minor shift so quickly (other units would take quite a while before recognizing the difference and understanding the need for a route change)

Battery life was satisfactory although I did have the brightness and volume cranked to the highest settings which probably drained it quite faster then the average consumer. Other noteable performance issues were the speaker which is quite loud and clear although I did have to turn the volume up at points throughout my tour to make sure that outside noise wouldn’t cause me to miss a directional shift.

Video Of Garmin’s Nuvi 250:

The following video is a great presentation of the nuvi250 unit, although I will apologize that it’s in French as I haven’t had time to make my own video of this caliber yet – Might not understanding some of the writing but you will get a good glimpse of the unit in action (6 minutes run time – streets of France)

Visitor Reviews:

Nuvi 250 Review

Patrick leaves his personal review talking mostly about how user friendly it was to setup and use as a complete novice to gps systems

Review of Garmin 250

Caroline shares her feelings and opionion on how the value series is more then enough to match the basic consumers needs without requiring a large chunk of your money to leave your bank account

Garmin Nuvi 250 Review

Micheal talks about how he bought two garmin nuvi 250’s for family vehicles on recent trips, and complains about how it doesn’t ocme with a manual in the box but how it makes up for it with its intuitive and friendly control and menu system.

Garmin Nuvi 250 Reviews

James Reviews the garmin nuvi 250 and describes how he has fallen in love with the POI database and why its a great unit for the price range asked

Review of Garmin’s Nuvi 250

Visitor Kumar emails his Nuvi 250 Review talking about it being the best individual unit for his basic needs at the price range, and recommends it strongly to all family and vactioning vehicles

Conclusion:

While the Garmin Nuvi 250 was recently introduced with a price that made it no such a great deal compared against the big brother nuvi350, it has since dropped in price to a more suitable level and now appeals to people that don’t necessarily need all the extra features beyond the core navigation assistance to save some good amount of dollars. If you are willing to spend a bit extra, the Nuvi 350 is still probably the more popular decision with its added incentives and a very fair price tag…

All in all the Garmin 250 was a solid performer and I expect it to bring lots of newcomers into the world of personalized and portable GPS travel assistants, its getting great scores and nuvi 250 reviews around the internet agree that its a great all around unit in terms of function, accuracy and pricing!

Best Price to Buy:

The listed MSRP price is quite high for such a unit, although if you do some shopping around you can find much better sales, discounts and deals on this system. eBay doesn’t have any great offers in my experience, and large offline retailers fail to meet the lowest prices I was able to dig up online.

I personally feel after comparing many stores that amazon offers the best price to buy garmin’s nuvi 250 online of offline, although perhaps if you dig a tiny bit deeper you may still save a few dollars from their cheapest listed prices. Check the link below to see amazon’s current best deals and sales, and if you are seriously thinking about buying this unit or another gps system, take a look at the customer reviews and information available on there site for a more precise decision making process on what the best unit and sale is to match your needs.