Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3516 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Garmin
• Model: 010-00783-23
• Released on: 2009-06-10
• Dimensions: 2.95" h x 3.66" w x .63" l, .25 pounds
• Display size: 3.5

Features

• Do you often travel to unfamiliar places? If the answer isyes, then the Garmin nüvi 1240 is made for you! Whether you're on foot orin the car, the Garmin nüvi 1240 will take you to yourdestination safely - without any glitches
• This navigator includes anumber of mapping modes, so it doesn't matter whether you're walking, driving, on a bike or on public transport
•   The 1240 boasts an ecoRoute feature, which allows driversto reduce their fuel consumption and clearly see just how many miles they'vecovered, how much fuel is left and how much carbon dioxide is released into theatmosphere per month, or per year
• The Text-to-Speect mode announces streetnames and main directions - great if you're travelling alone - while the nüvi1240's speed indicator warns you when you're going too fast and whenyou're coming up to a speed camera with sound and picture alerts
•   The nuvi 1240 is also perfect for journeysout of the car with CityXplorer major-city pedestrian mapping andpublic-transport routing (sold and available for download on mygarmin

Manufacturer's Description

The nüvi 1240 is an ultra-thin, pocket design, affordable and simple-to-use sat-nav with mapping for Western Europe, including the UK and Ireland. It also comes with Garmin’s unique speed camera warning system to help you drive safely. An optional CityXplorer™ download it will even direct you via public transport (information varies between cities) or give you instructions for walking to your destination so you can use your sat-nav in and out of the car.

Simple navigation

The nüvi 1240 has a clear, intuitive menu so you can just turn it on and go. You simply need to touch the screen to look up addresses and get turn-by-turn directions. It announces street names before you turn so you always know where you are going, for example, “Turn right at Dell Road”.

Great on the go – driving, walking or on public transport

The fact that nüvi 1240 is only 15mm thick means you can take it anywhere. Use to its full potential by downloading cityXplorer™ via www.Garmin.co.uk/cityXplorer to navigate like a local. The enhanced pedestrian mode gives you directions for walking including footpaths and shortcuts through parks – places you wouldn’t be accessing while in your car. It also tells you where to catch trains, buses and tubes (dependent on the city), and how long it will take to reach your destination. cityXplorer even has public transport timetables to ensure you arrive at the station on time and help avoid long waits (dependent on the city).

To make the most of your Garmin sat-nav when exploring a new city, whether on a day trip, a holiday or for business, you can also add an optional AA City Guide. It tells you everything you need to know about your chosen city from attractions and places to eat, hotels and shops.

Speed cameras

Garmin has a unique, pan-European speed camera warning system, giving real-time, reliable, and accurate alerts. nüvi 1240 has the location of fixed, average speed, mobile and temporary cameras already built in. New or moved cameras are constantly tracked and the database is updated daily.

Go Green and save fuel

The ecoRoute™ fuel-saver feature enables you to choose a fuel-efficient route which could save you fuel and money. Simply choose the “less fuel” option and nüvi 1240 will calculate the route which will use the least fuel. You can also see the estimated cost of your journey as you plan it and get scored for your driving performance with the Driving Challenge – good for identifying areas for improvement.

Where am I? safety feature

The Where am I? safety feature can be very helpful if you break down or need a certain service urgently. Just tap the car icon on your map screen for your exact coordinates, contact details for vehicle recovery services and directions to hospitals, police and petrol stations.

Anti-Theft feature

You can choose to activate The Garmin Lock™ anti-theft protection system to disable your Garmin sat-nav from performing any functions until a specific 4-digit PIN is typed in or the unit is taken to a predetermined location. Simply enter a 4-digit PIN and select a Security Location. Write down your PIN and keep it in a safe place. Each time you turn on the GPS, enter your PIN to unlock the GPS. If you forget your PIN, you can go to your Security Location. Note: If you forget your PIN, and your Security Location, Garmin cannot unlock your GPS over the phone; you must send your GPS to Garmin to get it unlocked.

Extras for your Garmin

There are lots of extras you can add to your Garmin sat-nav. These include travel guides such as AA Days Out, The Good Pub Guide, historical audio tours and more. You can also have some fun by adding celebrity voices. If you’re a music fan you may want to download the locations festivals in the UK, or if you want to go on a shopping trip the locations of shopping centres. See www.garmin.co.uk/garminextras for more information.

Box Contains

Customer Reviews

Good for basic usage but advance planning of routes is awkward
I have had the Nuvi 1240 for two weeks now. It was sent from Germany but, with standard postage, arrived within three days of the Amazon order.

There is minimal documentation and no software CD in the package so expect to find yourself on the Garmin web site very soon in order to get the PDF documentation and to download the system upgrading software and maps management software.

I had some problems with the unit turning itself off when re-routing (possibly when avoiding U-turns) but this appears to have been resolved by the latest online software upgrade (v2.70) which was painless to install. A mini-USB cable is required for the software upgrade (not supplied).

The Garmin maps updater software reported that the Navteq maps were already the latest available for this model (CN Europe NT 2010.10).

Start-up is around 25 seconds. Satellite lock seemed to vary considerably but, in ideal conditions, seemed to be around 30-40 seconds from 'on'.

Battery life is reported to be around four hours but for me it was less than three hours with lots of routing and the screen brightness at 50%.

The basic navigation from current location is very intuitive. Press the "Where to?" icon and choose a destination from Home, favourites, POI, point on map, recent locations, junction, city or coordinates.

Alternatively, press the "View map" icon and you are in a 3D-style navigation view. From here, a screen press will bring up a bird's-eye map view and you may then select a point on the map and press "Go". The map scrolling is done quite nicely with speed sensitivity so that a quick flick of the finger causes the map to scroll further.

Select routing for speed, time, less fuel or off-road. Optional avoidances include U-turns, motorways, tolls, ferries, car-share lanes, unpaved roads and traffic if you are using the traffic data receiver add-on. There is a simple-to-use 'Detour' option that seems to assume that the detour is immediately in front of you.

During turn-by-turn navigation, I found the voice prompts to be very timely for making each manoeuvre and of good quality. The feedback also speaks the names of the roads (using text-to-speech) -- nice!

The display can include the current speed restriction and I found this to be helpful and the boundaries very accurate (in England and Wales anyway).

A "Where Am I?" feature is helpful if looking for petrol, emergency services, nearest junction or just the position coordinates.

The POIs that are built in are very comprehensive and were a pleasant surprise bonus.

For me, the weakness is when you want to plan a route ahead of time. If you are familiar with TomTom then you may find the presetting of a route on the Nuvi 1240 very awkward; it is necessary to go into "GPS Simulator" mode, which disables satellite reception, and then to set your location by selecting a "Where to?" point, and only then can you select a destination. This is clunky when compared to the "Advance planning" and routing by map points features on TomTom and can require a lot of scrolling and zooming of the map if you want to enter multiple waypoints in order to force a preferred route. Futhermore, you cannot save the route that you carefully constructed so you must not start another route. If only there was a way of forcing the route to change by dragging points onto other roads in the way that Google Maps allows... it can't be that hard to implement. Add a "Save route" feature too.

Overall, I am slightly disgruntled with the Nuvi 1240. For the price it is nice to get maps for Western Europe but, in making a simple-to-use interface, I think there has been too much compromise on what I consider to be basic route-planning features. Having said that, for what it does do, it is done well.

P.S Be sure to get the software upgrade and map updates ASAP!

Garmin Nuvi 1240
We were looking for a replacement for our old but trusty Garmin i3 sat nav. Senior Management loves the Garmin logic and detests my Tom Tom 720 as being too temperamental (some software upgrades from TomTom have been "bug" ridden), complex and bulky. This nuvi 1200 series is thinner than the previous models and is very simple to operate. Map seems OK, but can be confused - e.g. did not recognise the lane of my brothers farm, which has been in existence for a century!

Advantages:
Bright, clear screen - easy to read
Small, slim & light - slips into pocket
Voice directions are loud and clear
Free 30 day subscription of speed cameras.
Can be used in "pedestrian" mode for walking around a town.

Disadvantage:
Not sure whether it's possible to tell this Garmin not to route along a certain road; i.e. if the M1 is blocked, is there a facility to pre-plan a reroute?

This is a "basic" sat nav (no bluetooth or FM transmitter or mp3 player or traffic alerts) which has the advantage of a European map and it is recommended for those who like simple things in life! It's a nice bit of kit.

Didn't disappoint
This is my first Sat-Nav. I did some research and was looking for a model that told me the name of roads I was to turn on to. I didn't want to spend too much and wanted something that would work well. The Ecoroute facility (which tells you the most fuel efficient route from A-B)sold it to me.
This model did what I expected and got me sucessfully through a 230 mile journey at the weekend without problem. I am very pleased with the Garmin 1240 and would recommend it to friends looking for a Sat-Nav that does the job you would expect it to.
Just to be aware... When you start the Sat-Nav for the first time after updating all the software it can take a few minutes to locate the satellites, after the second/third time it takes a few seconds.