Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #153 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Garmin
• Model: 010-00717-21
• Released on: 2008-05-16
• Dimensions: 2.20 pounds
• Memory: 1024MB 72-Pin EDO SIMM Memory
• Display size: 3.5

Manufacturer's Description

For peace of mind on the go, nüvi 255 leads the way with voice-prompted turn-by-turn directions that speak street names and optional MSN® Direct to get you there on time and keep you informed. It's packed with millions of destinations and maps for North America or Europe. Like the rest of the compact nüvi 2x5-series, this portable navigator is priced right and ultra-easy to use.

Navigate With Ease

Nüvi 255 comes ready to go right out of the box with preloaded City Navigator® NT street maps, including a hefty points of interest (POIs) database with hotels, restaurants, fuel, ATMs and more. It even announces the name of exits and streets so you never have to take your eyes off the road. Simply touch the color screen to enter a destination, and nüvi takes you there with turn-by-turn voice directions, 2-D or 3-D maps and and smooth map redraw rates 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, nüvi 255 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, nüvi calculates your position faster to get you there quicker.

Take It With You

Like the rest of the nüvi 2x5-series, nüvi 255 sports a sleek, slim design and fits comfortably in your pocket or purse. Its rechargeable lithium-ion battery makes it convenient for navigation by car or foot. With its "Where Am I?" emergency locator, you always know your location. Simply tap the screen to get your exact latitude and longitude coordinates, the nearest address and intersection, and the closest hospitals, police stations and fuel stations.

Go Beyond Navigation

Navigation is just the beginning. nüvi 255 includes many travel tools including JPEG picture viewer, world travel clock with time zones, currency converter, measurement converter, calculator and more. With photo navigation, you can download Google™ Panoramio™ pictures via our Garmin Connect™ Photos website and navigate to them. The 255 is compatible with optional enhanced MSN® Direct content (subscription and receiver required) and our free Garmin Garage where you can download animated vehicles that show your location on the map. It also comes with Garmin Lock™, an anti-theft feature. Enhance your travel experience with optional plug-in microSD cards such as Garmin Travel Guides for detailed data on attractions.

Box Contents

Customer Reviews

Great in UK, but just OK in Spain
I bought a Garmin Nuvi 255 after hours, days and weeks of reading reviews and comparing features! I wanted it for our first trip to Spain, where we would be hiring a car. There seemed to be many places it did not recognise and, at times, it was very frustrating when it kept leading us round the same route, telling us to go down a one way street the wrong way, when we were trying to get it to direct us to a car park. Another time, it lead us off the beaten track, down a dusty lane way out in the sticks, telling us to turn down another lane that didn't exist and may have never existed(!) and we eventually had to stop and turn around and go back on ourselves. That said, it was also very helpful on many occassions and did take a lot of stress out of the driving. It is also helpful for telling you when a speed camera is about and what speed you are supposed to be driving at. Sometimes it can be a bit confusing as to what actual turning you should take, when there are two near each other, and it is not clear until you have driven past it! Overall, I would recommend the 255, for the money, it is very good, but I would get a better, newer model if money wasn't an issue.

Worthwhile despite some irritations
This is my first Satnav, bought primarily for a Continental road trip earlier this year to get us to specific locations in unfamiliar towns - eg, pre-booked hotels en route in France and Spain, and then our accommodation at our final destination on the Costa Blanca. The Garmin met my expectations in this respect, so I'm happy to recommend it for this kind of use. It does have some irritating foibles, though ... but first the good bits:

PROS:

* The mapping seems to be comprehensive and accurate. Our villa in the middle of a maze of obscure roads and cul-de-sacs on a far-flung hillside was located as easily as the hotel we'd booked for an overnight stop in the middle of the Barcelona sprawl.

* The audio cues are timely and meaningful. The visual cues - once I'd learnt to read them properly - work well too.

* The graphical display updates at an acceptable rate, and there's fast route recalculation if a turn is missed or a deliberate detour made.

* The unit is small enough (just) to be carried in a pocket (there are options for navigation on foot or by bike) but its screen is still big enough for in-car use.

* The car window mount is impressively engineered. It clings solidly to the window and holds the unit rigidly in place even with vigorous tapping on the unit's screen.

* The 'Points of Interest' feature is genuinely handy. Arriving late on in the day and tired at a town in south-west France, it quickly found us an Italian restaurant (the only kind our weary group could collectively agree to eat at!) a 5-minute drive from the hotel.

CONS:

* The average speeds the unit uses for non-motorway roads are too high. It persistently under-estimates journey times involving urban travel by between 20 and 25%. This can mean it will attempt to route you via urban areas when common sense dictates otherwise, and if you need to be somewhere by a specific time, you can't rely on the unit's calculated ETA. [See the later comment I added about this.]

* If you have no house number for your destination (as many hotels don't), you can only specify the street instead. Picking out a location on-screen is possible as an alternative, but the precision is limited.

* The maps are described as '2008' edition, but they actually date from August 2007! Naughty.... At least one new motorway section in Spain we travelled on wasn't in the mapping.

* There's no USB cable in the box (nor a case for that matter), and this is just irritating. Guidance about hooking up to a PC in the product documentation and at the Garmin website is poor but was eventually achieved.

For me, the 255's positives outweight its negatives in practice, and having developed work-rounds for the negatives, I'm happy to continue using this product.

Great bit of kit, but no street names!
My first sat nav and I spent hours trying to decide which to get and eventually decided on the 255. Reviews have not been good regards the traffic system regardless of manufacturer so I didn't go for that but I was keen to get street names called. The UK version of this unit does NOT give street names on it's turn by turn directions although the US version does. A call to Garmin confirmed this although they did say I could return the unit. The only problem is to get what I want from a Garmin means spending upwards of £220 and thats just to much. The rest of the unit is just brilliant, it locks on fast, will reroute in a second or two and has thousands of points of interest, which you can add to. You can mark your own locations on the map and I am delighted overall. My conclusion is it's a great unit, it's fast and very easy to use, but if you want street names called go elsewhere as you will be a tad miffed as I was. BTW I will keep the unit as I believe it is better than comparable TomTom with superior mapping just feel let down after all the anticipation.