| Brand: | Garmin | ||
| Average Rating |
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Packed with features at a price that fits any budget, n?vi 265T takes you there with preloaded maps and turn-by-turn directions that call out streets by name. It adds lifetime traffic and hands-free calling to the popular n?vi 255, simplifying life on the go. Like the rest of the n?vi 205-series, this portable navigator is priced right and ultra-easy to use.n?vi 265T’s intuitive interface greets you with two simple questions: Where to? and View Map. Touch the color screen to easily look up addresses and services and get voice-prompted, turn-by-turn directions that speak street names to your destination. It comes preloaded with detailed city Navigator NT street maps, over 6 million Points of Interest (POIs), 2-D or 3-D maps and smooth map updates as you navigate. Its digital elevation maps show you shaded contours at higher zoom levels, giving you a big picture of the surrounding terrain. In addition, n?vi 265T accepts custom Points of Interest (POIs), such as school zones and safety cameras and lets you set proximity alerts to warn you of upcoming POIs. With HotFix satellite prediction, n?vi calculates your position faster to get you there quicker.For hands-free calling, n?vi 265T integrates Bluetooth wireless technology with a built-in microphone and speaker. Just pair it with your compatible Bluetooth phone and talk hands-free through the 265T while staying focused on the road. Simply dial numbers with n?vi’s touchscreen keypad to make a call. To answer calls, just tap the screen and speak into its built-in microphone. Enjoy convenient one-touch dialing for contacts and points of interest. more info
Popularity: unranked [?]
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
very impressed
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
the traffic feature is awesome. bluetooth works pretty well. very impressed with the product overall.
Great product, great Amazon support
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
This was the first product purchase that I have had a issue with. When I received the unit, I noticed the screen was a bit discolored. Amazon was so easy to deal with! They sent me an advance replacement, arranged for return shipping… no problems! Now that I have the new unit, I love it. My only complaint, if any, is that the internal speaker leaves much to be desired as far as voice command sound quality goes… but, it is minor and only an issue when the volume is cranked up. The FM traffic works flawlessly and is generally accurate. Most of my driving is between Boston and Manchester NH, I seem to have no problem picking up a signal. I am also impressed with the Eco Route software in this unit. It is quite accurate on my MPG, fuel used, etc. Just have to remember to always have the GPS unit on when moving so it can track vehicle usage.
Great product….if you aren’t a novice
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
I love the performance and features of this product. Getting the maps updated, however, would be frustrating at best for someone who is not technical. TomTom map update is too large to fit on the device (clever huh!) and so you have to manually delete stuff to get it to fit. It’s not obvious at all and is time consuming. However, once you get things up and running the device is fabulous!
Great navigator
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Very good item. We drove 2600 miles and it was accurate the whole trip. We like the portability of it. It can be used in the Jeep or Corolla. I would recomend this item to anyone wanting a small potable navigator.
Excellent portable GPS; 5th star for the Amazon price
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
The Garmin Nuvi 265T (with discounts offered when we bought it) is a great value, and offers all the essentials for a basic, truly portable, GPS. The bonus of prepaid lifetime access to basic traffic alerts is a welcome extra. The “small” screen size is more than compensated for by its ease of portability and mounting for use. The Bluetooth capability is also very good, apparently, though we have no use for it.
The Garmin online support, .pdf manuals, and wide-ranging downloadable maps is outstanding, and serves both Mac and Windows owners well and essentially equally. Updates at this time appear to be readily available for both platforms and include updated firmware for the model owned.
We were pleasantly surprised to get an included update of N. American maps if downloaded within 30 days– more than fair. Paid updates are also reasonable in price, in contrast to Toyota’s charge of $250, the last I checked, for an new DVD, updated every 3, years for Toyota factory installed GPSs.
Finally, thank you, Garmin, for sponsoring a world class bicycle racing team.
I live in semi-rural Nebraska, so it can be hit and miss, but I love the little thing.
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I live in semi-rural Nebraska, so it can be hit and miss, but I love the little thing. I live about 90 miles west of Lincoln and that is bordering on “the middle of nowhere”. The only time I ever had a problem was when I went about 70 miles north of where I live, and there is absolutely nothing up there. I got off on a gravel road and it kept telling me that every road I was on was Nebraska Highway 22. And I admit it, I was lost. But other than that, nice little unit for the price. I don’t have any use for the traffic feature (in a town of 40,000) but I love the gas mileage feature, the where am I feature, and it has gotten me everywhere else that I have needed to go, even out here in “the middle of nowhere”.
Been decent, but not reliable
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
I bought the Garmin 265t as a replacement for my TomTom One, which was stolen. The Tomtom was pretty basic, but very reliable. I’ve found, in general, that while the Garmin has more advanced features, it does not perform as well the Tomtom on some basic things.
Pros:
1. The Speed Limit indicator is great and very accurate (It got it wrong once, but I was in a construction zone)
2. Estimated time of arrival: I’ve found to be fairly accurate, especially because it considers traffic delays. I’ve called people once I was on the road to tell them what Garmin said my ETA would be, and it was dead-on every time.
3. Some neat information for car trips, like how much money you’ve spent on gas and your peak speed. (Although this tempts you to speed in order to break your record.)
4. Pressing on your car icon gives you emergency information– like nearest gas station. I’ve used this a couple times when I’ve let the tank get a little too low.
5. It automatically turns on when you start the car and offers to power down in 30 seconds when you turn off the car. (For Tomtom, you had to manually turn it on and off.)
Cons:
1. It’s not very loud, and at its loudest setting, the quality is poor. Sometimes it’s hard to hear on the highway. (Tomtom would increase the volume proportionally to your speed– good for compensating for highway noise.)
2. Sometimes it notifies you of a turn a little too late. I’ve had to slam on the brakes to make a turn in time.
3. I’ve had it fail to find a satellite for the entire duration of a 10 mile trip. Not fun.
4. Also, sometimes it isn’t very accurate about my location. It frequently thinks I’m driving on a service road when I’m already on the highway.
5. Although it has more POIs than Tomtom, some are outdated, leading you on wild goose chases. It sent me to 2 non-existent Subway sandwich stores, and I ended up finding one that it didn’t know about.
6. Text to speech is a bit robotic and strangely slurs some words.(I miss the ole prerecorded Irish voice on Tomtom.)
7. Sometimes Garmin knows a street by its “secret” name and not the name on the exit sign, so you have to look on the screen anyway to verify that it’s the correct exit.
8. Doesn’t have a fun name like Tomtom. (Sometimes, we called the old one Tommy, and the kids pretended he was one of the family. Gargar doesn’t have the same ring to it.)
Is it worth it? Traffic update, for me, has been helpful. But text to speech isn’t really necessary and doesn’t help out that much more. I hope whatever satellite issues it’s had will be resolved by upgrading the firmware. If so, I’d say its a wash between the cheap Tomtom and this more expensive Garmin. Otherwise, you might be better off going with something cheaper but more dependable.
EDIT:
I upgraded the firmware, and, at first, it seemed to fix the problem, but it turned out to be only temporary. We just finished a long trip, and many times the Garmin would lose the satellite signal, sometimes for 10 minutes at a time. There weren’t any storms or cloudy skies either. Then it started to do some really weird stuff– not only did it have no clue where we were, but the voice went beserk on us. It sounded like a dalek. (So now we’ve nicknamed it “Dally”) Tomtom never did this– once it locked onto to a satellite, it never lost it.
Also as other users have pointed out, its ETA doesn’t take into account traffic lights. Plenty of times it will suggest that you take a route down streets with many traffic lights instead of the highway.
Excellent Value
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
Intuitive controls and a nice feature set make this an excellent vlue for the money. Before you buy a more expensive GPS, you should ask yourself if you’re really going to need those bells and whistles and whether they’re worth hundreds of dollars. This handles all the basics at a great price point.
Traveling
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
Purchased this Garmin 265T (preloaded with US and Canada)for our trip to Canada in September(Onterio and Quebec). Very very pleased and it was helpful. One problem: the unit wants to route through the shortest way, which means through towns and Cities rather than by the slightly longer by-pass. You have to learn to ignore it. Also, I wish it were easier to set up mult-point routes. Also at times it would not find an address we put in even though we had it correct; such as a KOA campground. Instead the unit would direct us to a close address, such as 1017 Maple road, but not the inputed address of 1445 maple road (which was four blocks short). Not a big problem, but it was annoying. Overall though I am very happy with the unit and bought another, the Garmin 275T, which comes preloaded with Europe as well as the US and Canada for a trip to Spain in November.
Makes traveling easier
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
I got this Garmin Nuvi for a trip to San Fransisco and Oakland California. Never been there before. It helped us move around faster in a town I didn’t know. It helped us find points of interest, a family member’s address flawlessy driving through very steep and small streets, and it gave us directions to and from Las Vegas Nevada the same as internet map sites. The traffic option wasn’t accurate, and sometimes it had us go in a weird out of the way turns to get to somewhere I could plainly get to in one turn but I never was close to getting lost. I would be way out of the way from our hotel and it would get me back there no problem. I will always take it with me anywhere I travel out of state.
Works like a champ!
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Nice features including Bluetooth, text to speech, free traffic (with non invasive ads), quick screen refresh and satellite lock, pocketable, and saves me time every time I travel. Some of the newer Garmin units are more specifically designed for mass transit however.
Garmin nuvi
Rating:3 out of 5 stars
We recently purchased this item. It is our first GPS, so we do not have a basis for comparison with other products. For a first time user, I am finding that I use the device more than I had anticipated. It was my wife’s gift and something I thought I would not find useful. However, I find uses in our own community on a regular basis. It was very user friendly, even without studying a manual. I did find it made a mistake on a route I was following, suggesting that I continue on a numbered highway when I was on a route where I fortunately knew that was incorrect. It is otherwise adequate for my purposes and a helpful tool .
Why does it take 5 minutes to find satellites?!
Rating:3 out of 5 stars
Don’t believe the “HotFix” technology. It seems unless we use our Garmin 265T within hours of shutting it off it takes 5 minutes for this unit to acquire satellites! I’ve updated to the latest firmware and still no difference.
I seriously use my iPhone now instead of the Garmin just because of the 5 minute lag it takes to find the satellites.
As if it matters, once it actually finds the satellites it works really well and the volume is good to fight the radio/car noises. Though imagine having to sit in your car while it’s running for 5 minutes until you can start your trip. Such a pain!
It has been very useful so far.
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
I have purchased this GPS just before a road trip to Los Angeles from San Francisco. The free traffic updates was the reason I chose this version over a 265W-same price at [...]. The traffic information has been very useful in LA. Several freeways were under construction and we were routed around them with the click of a few “virtual” buttons. The traffic updates work only on limited areas and freeways though, so if you live in a small city there may not be any traffic info for your area. The traffic updates are ad supported. The ads are not on the main screen when you are driving so it did not bother me. Since then my wife used it on a road trip and found it extremely useful as well.
The first night I got it, I had to go to Garmin’s web site and download a huge map update (>2GB). Make sure you have a fast connection if you plan to update your maps. The map and directions have been very accurate. We also used it in pedestrian mode, which worked well. The screen is well organized and intuitive.
Linking to Google Maps made it very easy to enter the favorite locations or the destinations for our road trip. How to do this is not in the manual but can be found on the Garmin web site as well as on Google of course.
The bluetooth link to my phone was not very straight forward to establish. I had to modify both the phone and the 265t instructions slightly to make it work. If I leave the bluetooth of my phone on broadcast mode, 265t connects to it seamlessly everytime I turn it on. I like keeping the phone’s bluetooth broadcast mode off though, so it is an extra step for me to link them. (I could not find a way to make the 265t broadcast instead). The sound quality as a handsfree set is very good. It can access the phone book and call information and displays it on the screen.
It has some cons too. The screen is rather small. This was a trade off I accepted when I bought it so no complaints. Small size actaully means it fits in my pocket when I leave the car. Acquiring satellites the first time after it has been off for a while can take a long time. I have seen it find satellites in any where from 15 sec to 3 minutes. The points-of-interest display after a search is limited to a list and is not overlayed on the map. The list has a limited number of entries (around 30 I think). This gets annoying if you searched for restaurants near you and there happens to be a mall nearby. You get all the food court restaurants and not much more. These can be very annoying if you are used to an expensive built-in GPS in one of your cars.
Overall we are very happy with our purchase. This is a good value for a reasonable price. The 265T works well and has been a great timesaver with traffic updates.
Love it
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I just love my Garmin. It hasn’t gotten me lost yet. I just love that it talks to me so I don’t have to be constantly looking at it. My friends also love borrowing it. It is extremely easy to set up and remove so that I never have to leave it in the car and take a chance on it getting it stolen. I also purchased the case so that I can carry it in my purse. My husband loves it too (even though he would never admit that he sometimes needs help with directions).