Review of the Garmin nuvi 205W GPS

After my ordeal with the TomTom XL 330, I wanted to find a good upgrade to my Garmin c320.  I wanted coordinates and Where Am I? features in particular.

I hope Garmin reads this, I could help them sell millions more.

PROS:

1. Best routes.  (See my cons)  This may be one of the main reasons Garmin dominates in the US — good routing.  Of course, I wish it had more a brain and could think about traffic lights and general traffic in certain areas at certain times (not actual traffic reporting), but I guess needing brains is good.

2. Where Am I?  (See my cons) This will list your nearest street address.  In this screen it also shows altitude and your coordinates.

3. Easier broad map access.  On my c320, you had to dig in the menus to find a broad map view, so you could touch areas on the map and go to it.  On the 205w, you can just touch the map while driving and it will take you to the broad map.  You can then touch an area that you want to make a Via Point and change your route that way.

4. Speed Limit sign.  You can set it up to show the current speed limit on the screen.  It has been super accurate to the instant of a speed limit change in real driving.  If the sign is missing on the screen, you also then know that it doesn’t really know how to calculate arrival time from the road.  You may want to use that information to take or avoid that road on your next trip.

5. Very compact.  My c320 was much bigger, so this is super small.

CONS:

1. Touchscreen.  This may change as I use it, but the touchscreen is no where near as sensitive as my c320.  It requires some hard touching.  It also shows fingerprints much worse than my old GPS unit.

2. Ball mount.  This gives a better range of motion than the mount on my c320, but it feels like I need to push really hard on my GPS unit to get it to snap in.  This may change in age, too.

3. Keyboard speed.  When I’m typing in a city, street, etc., the keyboard is a full QWERY keyboard, which is an improvement over my c320, but there are two things I don’t like: 1) there is a delay from when you type to when it shows, so if you type fast, you can’t see what you’re typing, if you make a mistake, you don’t see if very fast; 2) the spacebar is tiny and way off to the right, while dumb menus are in the bottom middle — very annoying!!

4. Charging cord.  On my c320, the charging cord would plug into the mount and there wasn’t a charge jack in the GPS unit itself.  This was nice because you could leave the power cord in the mount all the time and take the GPS with you – you never had to plug in, just clip the GPS in and out.  Now, the power cord won’t stay put and it falls out the door, etc because it must be plugged into the back of the GPS.  I suppose with the mount the way it is, it’s not possible to have a jack in the mount and GPS, but I think they should work on that.

5. Current road.  The TomTom XL 330 did show what road you are currently on and what the next road to turn onto was.  Garmin only shows the next road name.

6. Routing pet peeve.  Sometimes I won’t want to take its routing because I know of a better way.  Let’s say I turn off of the normal route — it will recalculate and have a shorter time than before I turned.  What’s up with that?  Why didn’t it take me that way to begin with?

6. Routing choices.  I don’t like the fact that I can choose either Fastest Time or Shortest Route.  I would imagine that much of the time, the best route would be in between those to extremes.

7. Missing POIs.  There are just so many cases where I’ll be looking for something and it’s not in the Garmin — even for stores and restaurants open for years.  I know you’ll have this will all GPS units, but for the #1 seller in the US, can’t they figure out a way to get the users involved?  How about incentives for users to fix problems online and give them discounts on map updates?  If you have the best maps and POIs by far, why would anyone buy any other company?

8. Tinny speaker.  I’m not impressed with the speaker, it is much worse sounding than the deep c320, but you can hear it.  It’s just not pleasant.

9. Voice choices.  It would be nice to choose your voice, but I don’t see that option, unless you choose another language.

10. Nearest intersection.  This is within the “Where Am I” place in the menu.   It could be very useful in an emergency to have the nearest intersection in addition to the nearest address.  However, I’ve found that they should have labeled it, “random intersection within a few miles.”  It will generally show me a major intersection, and sometimes ignore dozens of closer small intersections that would be much more beneficial to the police, fire, ambulance, etc.

11.  Volume.  I hate how they have the volume setup.  On the c320 there was a  wheel on the side of the unit — that’s best.  On the TomTom, there was a place on the main driving screen that you touched and then moved the volume slider.  On this 205W, you must hit Menu, Volume, move it, then back, then View Map.  This is just awful.  I want a Mute button on the driving screen and a separate volume button there, too.  This is widescreen after all.  I hope this doesn’t cause accidents, because I think it will.

12. Need customization!  Let me choose 3 shortcut button for the driving map view.  That way I can put Where Am I, Volume, and POI on the main screen.  Please!!  I also want to change my route color to red instead of light purple.

13. POI choices.  This is something I’ve never found a GPS that does this how I want it.  If I’m looking for gas or food, it is usually on a long trip.  If I want to go to fast fast, let’s say (that wouldn’t happen!), I would choose Restaurant, Fast Food.  It will show me all the restaurants by how far they are from me now.  That’s not what I want, so I choose Near…My Current Route.  That’s closer to what I want, but it still shows how far it is from where I am now.  I want it to show me that, but also how far I’d have to deviate from my route.

Overall, this is an excellent unit and I would buy it again because I believe the Pros outweigh the Cons and no competitor and yet beat it.

Please leave me comments on how other competitors stack up on these weaknesses, as I’ve only used Garmin, TomTom, and Microsoft Streets & Trips via laptop.