Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4697 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Garmin
• Model: 010-00576-13
• Released on: 2008-09-29
• Display size: 3.5

Manufacturer's Description
Simple, safe, portable and affordable with optional traffic re-routing, the nüvi 265 is your personal travel assistant for life on the go. This simple, safety-minded navigator leads the way with turn-by-turn directions, lifetime traffic avoidance and a unique, advanced safety camera warning system to get you there on time and keep you safe on the road. Packed with up to millions of points of interest (POIs) and maps for Europe, the 265 is compact, versatile and easy to use.

Simplicity and safety

Nüvi 265 comes preloaded with City Navigator NT map data for Europe. Simply touch the colour screen, key in your destination and nüvi takes you there with turn-by-turn spoken directions, 2-D or 3-D mapping and smooth map updates. Digital elevation maps show shaded contours for an understanding of the surrounding terrain. In addition, nüvi 265 accepts custom points of interest such as traffic blackspots and post offices and lets you set proximity alerts to warn you of upcoming POIs. With HotFix satellite prediction, Garmin calculates your position faster to get you there quicker.

'Where Am I?' gives you details about your location in a flash. Simply tap the car icon for your exact latitude and longitude coordinates, nearest address, contact details for your vehicle rescue service and directions to the closest hospital, police or petrol station.

Nüvi 265's advanced Cyclops safety camera database helps you travel with the confidence you are driving safely, responsibly and legally. As you approach one of hundreds of fixed, mobile and temporary safety cameras, variable limit or red light speed cameras across Europe, it gives an audible alert, overspeed warning and speed limit information.

Nüvi 265 also comes with Garmin Lock, an inventive anti-theft protection system that uses GPS to lock to a secure location of your choice.

Traffic avoidance

The nüvi 265 model adds lifetime traffic alerts to provide dependable delay information and keep you aware of jams, accidents and roadworks on your route. These alerts are informed by real-time data from reliable sources including the Highways Agency, police traffic control centres and more than 8000 traffic flow cameras and sensors on motorways and trunk roads across England, Wales and Scotland. This service is broadcast over a national network of FM radio stations to ensure an excellent reception.

Traffic-enabled Garmins come with free lifetime traffic alerts in the UK. Garmin’s distinctive live traffic services use real cameras located every two miles along every major route to deliver 5.75 million congestion alerts every year. The traffic signal is transmitted through the automotive power lead and requires zero set up; simply plug and play.

Your traffic is always a toggle away. Just flick between your navigation screen and congestion delay information, reassured you will be guided safely to your destination. nüvi 265's versatile navigation works with the traffic alerts to report on the tailbacks and suggest a better route around the delay.

Enhanced navigation

Nüvi 265 comes with photo navigation to revolutionise your sightseeing. Plan trips to landmarks and attractions simply and easily before you set off. Choose and save location-tagged photographs from millions of Google Panoramio pictures in a wish-list of places to visit. Then, at your leisure, select a photo destination on your Garmin for turn-by-turn directions straight to the scene.

Other built-in travel tools include a JPEG picture viewer, world travel clock with time zones, a currency and measurement converter, calculator and more.

Customise

Personalise your nüvi 265 with your choice of background photograph. To customise your screen further, select a new vehicle icon from the Garmin Garage. With a wide range of wheels including off-road vehicles, motorbikes and classic cars, you can now tailor your Garmin to suit your style.

Compact, bright navigation

The nüvi 265 has a sleek, slim design to fit comfortably in your pocket or purse. Its rechargeable lithium-ion battery makes it convenient for navigation by car or foot with up to 4 hours' usage between charges.

View map detail, driving directions, photos and more in bright, brilliant colour. The sunlight-readable 3.5-inch display is easy to view - from any direction.

Box Contents

Customer Reviews

A great Nuvi, but not perfect
This is my third sat nav, and definitely the best I have owned. The Garmin Nuvi 2xx series offer quite a lot in a very small form factor - this device is no bigger than a ciggie packet and considerably slimmer - VERY pocketable. The 265t offers a lot of bang for your buck. You have a clear, readable display (with a few exceptions - read on), very fast satellite fix, reasonably fast screen update, text-to-speech, free traffic, blue-tooth connectivity with your phone. So, on paper, this device from Garmin offers terrific value for money - in theory. The problem, I have found, is that some of these 'extras' are not implemented flawlessly.

As a basic in-car sat nav, the 265T performs very well. Coming from the Nuvi 250 I was struck by how much faster the 265T obtains a satellite fix and by the faster screen refresh. The interface is easy to follow and quite elegant, although I don't like the fact that the touch screen seems to require a firmer touch than the screen on the Nuvi 250. Basic navigation seems to work rather well: the supplied 2009 Maps seem pretty good, although irritatingly I have noticed that they just happen to be inaccurate for the road on which I live, whereas the 2008 maps weren't. The display itself is very readable and viewable from most angles and in quite strong sunlight too. One thing though - Garmin have made some of the writing that pops up from time to time rather small - my glasses give me A1 vision, yet I still found myself having to place the 265T closer to me than I used to place the 250 in order to read everything on the display clearly. For example, the speed camera warnings now display with smaller fonts than on the 250.

What about the 'extras' ? This model comes with free traffic alerts. The included traffic receiver (GTM25) is built into the car cigarette charger cable - so in order to get the traffic alerts you MUST use the in-car charger. The traffic alerts for the UK are based on Traffic Master, a service many UK drivers feel is less than amazing. In theory, when the 265T picks up serious traffic delays on your route it automatically directs you around the delays or gives you the option to divert (based on your settings). I haven't yet experienced this, although I have found traffic reception to be OK in Surrey and Sussex, and delays have been appearing from time to time on my unit. One of the issues here is that only some roads seem to be included in the traffic delay reporting and you're never quite sure whether the system is therefore not reporting any delays because the roads are clear, or just because the system doesn't include the roads you aim to travel on. Still, it's free, and it does work, some of the time at least.

Hands-free bluetooth phone connectivity: Works OK with my Palm Treo 680 - no complaints, although callers report that you sound quite faint when they are talking to you this way. And I do worry about having to keep pressing buttons on the 265T to make/receive a call while driving - this is still dangerous compared to pulling over to make a call.

Text-to-speech: The TTS engine does a reasonable job at pronouncing street names in the UK - one thing you do notice though, is that the TTS voices seem to be recorded at a lower bit rate than the non TTS voices (and are quieter), with the latter sounding better quality. Still, it's a nice feature to have on a model at this price point.

Road speed limit display - Garmin seem to have kept a bit quiet about this feature, which is there, but doesn't seem to be implemented for many UK roads. Thus, rather pointlessly, when you drive on a motorway the 265T puts up a big '70' in a road sign on the display, but surely we all know the national speed limit? I have so far only ever found one other road (an A road) where a '30' displays, otherwise 95% of the time I have found no speed limit is displayed, presumably because the UK database included with the 2009 maps is very sparse.

Improvements over the 250 and other earlier models:- Garmin do seem to have listened to user requests - at the top is a display graphically showing the next action (e.g. straight on at a roundabout). Speed is displayed at bottom left. The "where am I" function has been added to this unit, inherited from higher end units. It's a nice feature but it does produce some odd results. For example, it displays the nearest police station - in theory, but in practice the database for the UK is flawed - used in my home town it seems unaware that we have a police station at all and suggests the nearest one is 7 miles away - simply wrong.

So, it's a hard beast to sum up. For what it is actually designed to do - navigate you in-car from A to B - this is one of the best low to mid-priced Nuvis - an improvement on the (already excellent) 250. If you're coming from a TomTom this is a good Garmin to try out - it represents well Garmin's no-nonsense, good value approach. Some of the extras are nice, but as you can see, they don't all work flawlessly. I guess you get what you pay for, although some things should really have been right from the start - why include police stations and petrol stations on the "Where am I?" screen if the databases included are patchy? Why not use better quality TTS voices? Still, overall this is 4 stars because it does get the job done - I wouldn't be without my 265T.

Hard to fault
Does the job, most of the time calculates the route very quickly. Free update to the 2010 maps (full Europe), traffic alerts and Bluetooth handsfree make this really good value for money. The Garmin update site works flawlessly with my Mac, and the v5 software update makes everything run even more smoothly, with a couple of additional bells and whistles thrown in for good measure.

My only complaint is the lighter socket adapter not fitting firmly into my Ford socket - not sure why but the long plastic can sometimes wiggle free in the face of an errant gearstick and/or knee. Quick shove gets it home again though!

Well pleased
I've had a Garmin 265T for a month or so and use it for multiple visits each day in mostly rural locations.

I have found it very good. I have not had problems with poor volume as some others have and it is user friendly. Signal has always been good and the way it says street names rather than just "turn left" is useful even if it pronounces oddly at times (School Hill" comes out as "Squirrel")The Bluetooth hands free is ok but a bit less user friendly and the printed user instructions that come in the box are hopeless. Then again I worked it all out eventually and doubtless the Garmin website would help but I have never bothered to look at it.