Garmin Nuvi 250 - 3.5 in. Car GPS Receiver

As a die hard user of traditional maps (and more recently, Google Maps on my iPhone) I have reluctantly held back from the temptation to buy an automotive based GPS system.

However, with a 7000 mile cross-country (and back) RV vacation planned for this summer, it became increasingly clear that trying to ensure we had maps for every small town and big city we would apt to find ourselves in was going to be impossible.

So, with that realization, I started to look around and compare models recently. I almost purchased a used model at a local pawn shop, but after realizing that it was a fairly proprietary model specific to one retailer, and reading a few reviews on the unit here at Epinions (discovering that support was spotty) I took a pass.

Finding the Garmin Nuvi 250 on sale at a local major Canadian retailer for $100 off was the clincher, so I purchased it.

Initial impression: The box is small and well packed. I initially commented on how small the box was, but in this era of major over-packaging of many products, this was a refreshing change after considering things.

Inside the box was a cigarette-lighter charger, an instruction manual, various mounts, and the GPS unit itself. Within moments of unboxing the unit I had it turned on and mounted to my windshield using the included suction cup mount. Setup was literally less then one minute.

There was very little charge in the unit on unboxing so it quickly became necessary to unpack the included charger and plug the unit in. I was pleased to discover that the charger was effectively a standard "mini USB" converter making it useful for not only charging the Garmin GPS itself, but any other device that charges with this standardized USB interface.

In use: On the first startup I was prompted to provide some very basic information which was easily input via the very intuitive onscreen menus.

Despite being warned that the initial satellite acquisition could take some time, within only a few minutes the unit had locked onto the GPS constellation and was displaying our current position.

With us ready to depart on a 75 mile trip I immediately input our destination information and we were on the road moments later.

Shortly after we set out, however, I started to question the units choice of directions. Our destination was most easily (and commonly) reached by traveling major highways (401 and 400), but the Garmin unit repeatedly tried (during the first 20 minutes of the trip) to get me to exit the highway and take much more rural roads northbound.

I delved into the menus and expected to see the commonly used "road preferences" that seem common on many other GPS units but was somewhat disappointed to see only a seemingly basic ability to choose routes - "Quickest", or "Fastest". There was several choices on "Avoidances" (Avoid toll roads, U-Turns, dirt roads, etc) but seemingly no way to tell the unit to stick to major arteries and avoid routing onto less used secondary roads.

I selected "Fastest" on the options menu as it should have clearly resulted in the unit keeping us on major highways, but for some time afterwards it still insisted we exit the highway.

After ignoring all the units demands to exit the highway it eventually gave up (after we had passed the major northbound secondary highways it was seeking) and routed us the expected way. I was concerned none the less.

On the way home the unit seemingly did the exact opposite, routing us home solely on the major highways and at no point demanding we take secondary roads. Quite to the contrary it routed us perfectly from the parking lot of or origin right to the driveway of our destination. My initial apprehension was somewhat relieved.

I took the unit with me to work today (I drive for a living) and after traveling for approximately 100 miles through a variety of cities (with approximately 15 destinations throughout the day) I once again received mixed information. At several points the unit seemed to want to defer me from the clearly obvious major arteries onto much more rural roads that would have taken much longer, or unnecessarily made me pass through other cities and towns, adding delays. If I was not familiar with the "normal" routes one would take in a local area it would be entirely expected that people would follow the GPS's directions, potentially leading to a longer or more frustrating travel experience.

Unfortunately I see no way in the Nuvi 250's menu options to strictly dictate the unit stay on main roads unless no other options exist to reach a destination, so it's clear to me that some amount of personal-attention to navigation is still going to be necessary for my needs - blindly following the GPS (unless lost) could prove troublesome at worst, or annoying at best.

Menu system: Garmin has created a very intuitive menu system that almost anyone should find easy to use - with a 100% touch screen interface (minus the power switch) operating the unit is a breeze, although a few of the setup menu options could confuse the uninitiated. Clearly reference to the instruction manual (or the units built in help screens) would prove helpful in this situation, however.

The unit responds well to touch and most buttons are sized so that they can be activated while underway, despite the units recommendation (for safety reasons) that you not do so. The only exceptions to the "size" issue would be the zoom in/out buttons on the map display which are rather small, but given the size of the 250's screen, within reason.

Display features/quality: The screen is extremely crisp and bright, although I found that the unit sometimes adjusted the screen brightness settings by itself instead of remaining at the levels it was set at - I think that this may be a result of power being applied and removed to the charge port, although I will have to explore the reasoning behind this further.

At 100% brightness the screen stands out even in direct sunlight and remained fairly easy to read, however, when the unit seemingly reduced the brightness (by itself) to much lower levels (in the 30% range) the screen did get fairly dim, expectedly.

The unit has a "night mode" that optimizes the screen for night viewing with minimal glare, and it works well based on personal experience - at 8PM EDT the unit automatically flipped into night mode. Although you can disable this feature it really is a great benefit, and come morning it automatically reverts to regular day display mode.

Map information: I found the map information to be surprisingly up to date, with the unit displaying that map information was current to this year. Running the Garmin updater program with the unit attached to my iMac desktop computer displayed that there was no updates available.

Twice in the last two days I've found situations where the map information was outdated - once at our original trips destination, and once locally - both situations where highway interchanges had changed significantly. I hope that updated information is provided to Garmin owners at some point since the local changes have drastically altered the local highway layout local to me and it confuses the routing features to the point where the unit has to "Reroute" numerous times during a short trip.

Extra uploads: The Nuvi line features the ability to upload extras to the unit such as new "Car" icons (signifying your current location on the map screen) as well as custom Points Of Interest. (POI's).

All that is needed to add extra vehicle icons is to visit the Garmin website, download one of several "Packs", unzip the resulting file, and drag/drop the files to the correct directory on the GPS unit when connected to your computer. This could also prove difficult for some people who are not familiar with manually moving files, but there are directions at the Garmin website that help explain how to accomplish such. Once uploaded you simply unplug the unit from your computer, navigate to the GPS's onscreen setup system and follow the menus until you get to the menu that allows you to choose a new icon.

My current icon is a "Tank", a bit of a play on the large size of my pickup truck.

POI uploads requires a dedicated piece of software from Garmin called "POI Loader". It was refreshing to see that Garmin seems to fully support the Macintosh platform, which is the system that we use exclusively in our house, whereas many other hardware manufacturers simply code for Windows only.

The POI loader program was easy to use, although it was light on directions. Unfortunately my experience loading custom POI's has been challenged so far - at one point it seemed to load a complete set of custom POI's (consisting of over 1000 points) into the units "Favorites" section, a result that immediately filled the favorites memory and then presented problems when I tried to save a favorite (my workplace) later. I could find no way to mass-delete the favorites, leaving me no option except to perform a "hard reset" on the unit, loosing all my customizations to date.

Later attempts to upload custom POI's has been successful, but with at least one database set (A Canada and USA wide listing of speed traps) the database seemed to import twice, and once again there seems to be no way to remove a POI database once it is installed without forcefully completely resetting the unit.

A more streamlined "interface" software for your computer that let you manage everything at once (instead of having a variety of different programs for various needs) would seem like a better idea, and better file management would seem essential.

Battery: The manual suggests a three hour battery life, but simple testing today (while driving, with the brightness at 100%) resulted in a mere 1.5 hours of operating time before the low battery warning sounded.

Clearly these runtimes were obtained with the screen at a much lower brightness setting, perhaps explaining why (as I explained earlier) the unit was automatically adjusting the screen brightness downwards.

I would expect 3 hours of runtime with the screen at 30%, but it is a fairly significant tradeoff - screen readability for system runtime.

Audio: Little to say - the directions are very clearly spoken and at the maximum setting the volume is loud enough to be heard over virtually any cabin noise that a passenger or commercial vehicle could ever be expected to produce. Even with earplugs in at one point today I was able to clearly hear the turn announcements and alerts.

I took note to the fact that the unit had a differently accented voice between the "British English" and "American English" settings. An interesting touch.

Quirks:

- The included cigarette lighter plug is designed in such a way that if used with a shallow cigarette lighter plug it tends to pop out when traveling over bumpy roads. On the first vehicle I used it in the plug popped out several times during a 3 hour trip.

- The main navigation screen shows very limited trip information such as speed and other calculations, opting only for an ETA and distance remaining display in the corners of the map display. This allows more screen real-estate for the all important map display (which seems logical) but it would be nice if the unit could be configured to overlay more information (if requested) over the main map display. There is a secondary navigation display that *does* display a large variety of trip related information, but it is on a separate screen, meaning you cannot view the moving map and the detailed trip information at the same time.

For purist navigators this is probably not a bad feature, but for "information junkies" like myself it would be nice to be able to view more information at once.

Expectedly, to keep the main map screen uncluttered for general navigation, I can understand why Garmin has limited this ability. I'm sure that units with larger screens offer these features whereas the more basic Nuvi 250 does not for clear reasons.

Overall: I'm mostly impressed with the unit - the small size, easy mounting, and surefire Garmin support will make it useful for many years to come versus some cheaper knockoffs which may never be updated. I remain concerned about the sometimes curious routing that the unit produces, but I will continue to explore methods to narrow down route choices.