I purchased this device a few weeks ago in anticipation of a trip to the UK. I've driven there before, navigating with the excellent AA road atlases, but being an American driving a right hand drive car with a manual transmission, sometimes in bad weather, I would often get task-saturated. I thought a GPS or "Sat Nav" as they call them, would make the job a little easier.
The only features that I really needed in a GPS unit were the U.S and European maps and text-to-speech, ("turn left on High street"), beyond that, additional whistles and bells didn't matter to me.
Initially I looked at both Garmin and TomTom and decided to go with Garmin since it was less expensive to find a unit that had North American and European maps. I paid about $270 for my 275T, it was the least expensive unit that had European maps pre-installed. Buying the European map separately would cost you approximately $150 and the UK-only map runs about $99.
The 275T operation is fairly straight forward. It has all of the normal features that one would expect to find on a modern GPS unit to include a fairly robust POI (Point Of Interest) database loaded with gas stations, restaurants, airports etc... The touch screen works well and although the size is smaller, (3.5" vs 4.3" on some larger units), it was more than adequate to display all of the necessary information. The voice directions are very helpful, especially when driving in heavy traffic. Traffic updates in the US arrive via an FM transmitter in the charger cord, (in Europe you have to plug in an antenna wire which comes with the unit). You can also easily preload lots of destinations to your "favorites" on the device by using the Google map or Panoramio photo websites.
In the UK the 275T proved to be invaluable; you feel much freer to stray from the beaten path and do a bit of exploring knowing that your GPS will always get you to your appointed destination. The time to destination estimates were accurate and the routes were efficient. When initially turned on, the unit located satellites quickly and never lost the connection except when in parking garages, or tunnels. Sometimes when surrounded by lots of tall buildings, like in downtown London, the unit would appear to get confused about the direction in which it was pointing. Moving the car just a few dozen feet or so normally corrected this. The included Europe maps were very accurate with the exception of a new stretch of highway between Falkirk and Edinburgh which was not included on the map database. Road names, one-way streets, and parking areas were all up to date. I found the inclusion of "safety camera" locations, (read: "speed trap cameras"), to be very helpful; it even flashed a red warning when you exceed the speed limit in an area with a camera.
The only feature that I sometimes wish was included was a compass heading. If you just turn on the unit, but don't program in a destination, your directional heading, (North, East etc...), is displayed in the lower right hand corner. However when it's giving you directions, your estimated time to arrival takes up that area of the screen. Overall however, I thought the unit was great and I would recommend the 275T if your travels take you between North America and Europe on occasion. Renting a GPS with your car in the UK will typically add about $15 per day; use your 275T for a couple weeks and it's practically paid for itself. Garmin nüvi 275/275T 3.5-Inch Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator with Traffic
First the good: The Nuvi 275T is a capable navigator that gives precise spoken instructions and seems to find good routes to specified locations. The display is nice and even readable in adverse lighting situations. The battery life could be a bit longer that one could use it on a bike or for hiking. It runs less than 4 hours, and the batteries cannot be exchanged (this also means it will die an ipod-style death in a couple of years). A great feature is that it can directly be fed with locations through Google maps, so one does not have to use the silly Garmin software anymore for this task. I summary, this is a pretty useful device.
Now the bad: It says on the box that the maps are guaranteed for 60 days after purchase to make sure one has the newest data in there at the time of purchase. Logging on to Garmin however yields a mechanism that only allows to update either the US or the Europe maps, but not both. If you want both you have to pay for the other one...I would call this procedure misleading. Also: 'Lifetime updates' (of course, typically Garmin, only for the lifetime of the device, i.e. for about two years) cost $149, which, considering the current price of the device of <$220, can only be considered a joke. In summary, on the map side, this is a typical Garmin Nickeling and Diming scheme! I really hope for the moment when the iPod Touch will have a GPS receiver, and one can download Google maps on it for free. It needs to be kept in mind that map data are generally made available for free by the US and other governments, i.e. downloading the stuff onto a proprietary device should be cheaper.
I am amazed! We got this device to use on our vacation driving though France and it made the trip. No stress about getting lost, or running out of gas. If we saw a cute country road, we took it, when we wanted to find our way back, the 275 would tell us in easy to follow instructions on how to get back on track. We went on roads without names, signs, or map instructions fearlessly. When we needed gas in rural nowhere, it took us right to it. Highway interchanges in the city, no problem, it tells you in advance if you are going to be splitting left or right. It also will take you right to your hotel, so don't worry about directions, or if you need, it will find you a nearby hotel like the gas station.
I have only used it for the 2 weeks in France, but it far surpassed our expectations. Indeed I just gave up trying to follow where we were on the map and just relaxed. It even gives a rather accurate ETA, which it updates continuously.
Now we did try using it to navigate on foot in Spain with somewhat spotty results. It seems to work much better when you are in a car. It trys to navigate like you are in a car and has difficulty at street corners trying to tell which direction you are going...but it did find us nearby Chinese food in Madrid when we got a craving.
Really this gadget saved us so much stress, time, and fuel. The included car charger worked great in Europe, so don't bother with the travel pack. - Garmin Nuvi - Gps - 275t - Europe Map'
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