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Monday 10th September 2007
First Look: Garmin nüvi 250W 11:16AM, Monday 10th September 2007
Satellite navigation has had a bad press in the tabloids of late, with horror stories about GPS units leading people onto narrow cliff paths and dangerous level crossings. Satnav may make the odd mistake, but it's still far safer for your GPS to tell you where to go than trying to read a map while driving. Garmin's nüvi 250W is a GPS unit with full Western European maps for just £211.

Planning a trip is simple. You can enter the name of a city, town or village and a street name, or type in a full UK postcode. There are also a number of points of interest (POIs), such as restaurants, petrol stations, airports and hospitals. The nüvi 250W will either display all of the relevant places in the surrounding area, or let you search for a POI in a certain place.

The nüvi 250W follows the current GPS trend for widescreen displays. There's plenty of room for the 3D map display on the screen,

 
 
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as well as clear instructions for the next turn and supplementary information such as estimated arrival time. There's less information on the main display than on TomTom's GPS units, as your current speed and number of miles left in the journey aren't displayed. However, tapping the left-hand icon brings up the trip display, which has detailed information about your direction, current speed, average speed, miles travelled and miles to go. You can also bring up an information screen for the next turn, which shows a detailed map of the turning to help you plan ahead. The 3D map display is clear, but doesn't update particularly smoothly.

The nüvi 250W comes with a speed camera database, with periodic updates available from Garmin's website. It also has a roadblock feature. If you run into a closed road or horrendous traffic, you just need to click the Detour button and it will find a way around. The Road Block feature isn't as versatile as the TomTom software's, though, which lets you specify how far ahead the problem lies. Even so, this is an easy to use and good value GPS system.
Chris Finnamore

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