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Garmin Nuvi 255WT Satellite Navigation System - Full EU Mapping, Widescreen, Built-in Traffic | 
 enlarge | Brand: Garmin
Category: CE
Buy New: £136.98
New (10) from £136.98
Rating:  19 reviews
Media: Electronics
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 6.5 x 6.5 x 3.4
MPN: 010-00718-12
Model: 010-00718-12
UPC: 753759078898
EAN: 0753759078898
ASIN: B00151USJG
Release Date: May 16, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: Latest Version Brand New UK stock. Dispatched same day.
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Product Description
The Nuevi 255WT from Garmin is your personal travel assistant for life on the go. The Nuevi 255WT leads the way with a large 4.3? wide screen and a full set of maps for 33 different European countries, getting you to your destination on time and safely. The Nuevi 255WT comes preloaded with a host of points of interest, allowing you to travel in the best of conditions and stop off during your journey for a spot of sightseeing. You?ll be able to plan trips to landmarks and attractions easily before you set off, and, at your leisure, look up the contact details for your vehicle rescue service and directions to the closest hospital, police or petrol station. Its longlife battery lasts nearly 4 hours before you have to recharge it through your cigar lighter port, meaning you'll never be left in the lurch if you get lost. The Nuvi 255 WT?s other built-in travel tools include a JPEG picture viewer, a world travel clock with time zones, a currency and measurement converter, a calculator and more. Enhance your travel experience with the Nuevi 255WT from Garmin!
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| Customer Reviews:
Clear bight screen, very easy to use, very reliable Sat Nav. October 25, 2008
Adam Greatrix
247 out of 248 found this review helpful
SatNavs have come on in leaps and bounds in the past few years. The 255WT is no exception.
I have experience with a wide range of makes and models of SatNavs, and units from Garmin always come out top when compared to similar priced products from other manufacturers. They're solid, reliable, and easy to use.
After purchasing this unit, I immediately discovered I was eligible for the 2009 map updates which I downloaded from Garmin's website and installed easily. This took a long time as it was nearly 3GB in size, but was worth it.
I have also installed three firmware updates with absolutely no problems. Other people have had problems (usually due to not following the instructions), but installing a new firmware on any electronic device is always risky, and usually optional. Just take your time, follow the instructions, and most importantly give it time to finish rebooting afterwards, and all will be well. If you do break it, then give Garmin a call on their free number and they'll email you a program to fix it.
Instead of the Speed Camera data from Garmin, I chose to continue using the PocketGPSWorld speedcamera database as it seems to be considered to be the best and most up to date. For all I know Garmin may very well source there data from the same place - I never tried it. The speed camera locations, along with a nice selection of other custom data sets I use, are very easy to load into the unit using the standard Point of Interest (POI) Loader from Garmin's website.
The unit is very fast compared to other GPS units. If it has been used for a reasonable amount of time within the last few days then it can get a satellite fix in literally a couple of seconds using AGPS/Hotfix technology. The sensitivity of the unit is excellent, and even works indoors and in multi-story car parks. It works fine through the special coated glass you get on some cars (such as Peugeots) too - other units can have a problem with this. It calculates routes quicker than any other unit I've used.
The FM Traffic receiver is a really cool new feature. You can see the location of all the traffic congestion on major A roads and motorways, and the unit will automatically route around any congestion or traffic jams if a faster route is available. The downside of this system is coverage. North of Newcastle, as best as I can tell, there are only two transmitters - one in Glasgow and one in Edinburgh. As the signal is transmitted on local FM radio stations the range is the same. In other words, currently, north of Newcastle, coverage is very limited, but I'd imagine it will increase as time goes on. Of course, coverage is not related to the unit itself, so I won't mark the review down for this. The FM Traffic receiver is built into the power cable, and comes with a short wire that plugs into it, and two suckers. This is its antenna. The receiver seems to work fine without it though so I'd consider it optional.
The other new feature for me is the Photo Navigation. Some newer digital cameras record the location where the image was taken. Also there are various websites (e.g. Panoramio) that store the location of images. You can download up to 50 per day of these pictures from Garmin's website, for locations anywhere in the world, then view them on the unit and navigate to them just like any other address.
I do have two gripes. Directly comparing it to my older Garmin C320 which is now three years old, the sound is nowhere near as good. It seems tinnier, but it's still clear. My second grips is the window suction mount. With my older unit, all I had to do was push the unit back into the mount and it would clip into place and be connected to the power lead. One the new unit, you have to manually plug the tiny USB lead (this is actually the power and FM Traffic receiver) into the back of the unit before clipping the unit onto the mount. This means it takes a fiddly 15 seconds at best, and a frustratingly long time if it's dark. With my old unit it took a second, if that, as the mount had the connector built in.
If you just want a SatNav with UK maps (i.e. not all of Europe too) then consider the 205WT as it's exactly the same unit other than the maps, and slightly cheaper.
Overall, this SatNav is very good, fast, reliable, well built, bright clear screen, ok sound, and is aware of real-time traffic congestion on major roads - so long as you can pick up the FM traffic signal (south of Newcastle has good coverage). I'd have given it 5 stars had the suction mount had a built-in power/FM traffic connector.
Some other things it does:
* Automatically activates night-time viewing mode when the sun sets.
* Boots up in around 10 seconds.
* Can use SD cards for additional storage (photos, that's about it).
* Depending on last use, has a satellite lock in 2 seconds.
* Car, Bicycle, and Pedestrian modes.
* Miles or kilometres.
* QWERTY or alphabetical keyboard.
* Choice of fastest time, shortest distance, or off road.
* Optionally avoid U-Turns, Motorways, Toll Roads, Traffic congestion, Ferries, Car Share Lanes, Unpaved Roads.
* 12 hour, 24 hour, or UTC time.
* Loads of languages.
* Selectable map detail level.
* Various vehicle icons (more on Garmin website).
* 3D, Track Up, or North Up, map modes.
* Optional Lock Mode (need PIN if not at specified location).
* Optional Safe Mode (prevents use when vehicle is moving).
* FM TrafficMaster reception (real-time details of traffic congestion).
* Proximity alerts (e.g. Speed Cameras).
* Display Long/Lat, nearest address, junction, hospital, police, fuel.
* Built in help system.
* Picture viewer.
* Photo navigation.
* World Clock.
* World Map with Sunrise/sunset graph.
* Calculator.
* Unit converter (area, currency, distance, speed, temperature, volume, weight).
* Navigate to an address (postcode and house number, address, street, road, etc).
* Navigate to Home location.
* Navigate to a pre-loaded Point of Interest (food, fuel, airport, bus station, car rental, lodging, grocery, pharmacy/chemist, shopping centre, speciality retail, bank/cash machine, parking, bar/nightclub, cinema, live theatre, air field, amusement/theme park, arena/track, bowling, golf, ice skating, park/garden, ski centre/resort, sport/fitness centre, hall/auditorium, landmarks, museum/historical, other, winery, hospitals, city hall, community centre, court, library, place of worship, police, post office, school, vehicle dealer/parts, roadside services, tourist info).
* Navigate to any additional custom point of interest available from numerous websites.
It should be noted that a USB lead is not supplied, but it uses one of the very common types of USB lead. However, I did notice that one of my USB leads did not work with it (it charged it, but it wouldn't connect to the computer) - most will work fine though. You will only need a USB lead if you want to update the firmware, update the maps, update the speed camera database, or upload your own points of interest.
Finally, the box contains the unit itself, windscreen suction mount, sticky dashboard mount, cigarette lighter power lead with built in FM Traffic receiver, antenna for FM Traffic receiver, suckers for FM Traffic Receiver antenna, quick start guide.
Excellent value for money, and very simple to use. July 27, 2008
Johnny (West Yorkshire, UK)
199 out of 201 found this review helpful
I bought the Garmin Nuvi 255T about two weeks ago now, and have used it to do quite a lot of long travelling in England. I chose it over a TomTom because for the same functions, it was almost a 100 cheaper, and it looked better too...
My first impressions were very positive. It looks very simple, and is easy to use. I was happy to see that you could change the mapping options, from the perspective view, to a view from above, where the map moves under the car, and another view from above where the car moves on the map (which is aligned north), which is my own setting.
Second to this the voice commands are clear, and the display is excellent, even in extremely bright weather. The night mode inverts the map, so that it doesn't glare, and this turns on automatically.
However, there are a few points I wasn't too happy about. A few times now, it has told me to turn when the road turns that way anyway, so I'm not actually turning off the road. This I found annoying, and I found the time estimations to be off, on a long journey, with no holdups worth mentioning, it was short by about 15%. The searches for amenities, or `points of interest' can be a bit hit and miss, but when you use the map, especially when out of your car in `pedestrian' mode, to find local things it is very helpful, and impressive in the scale of the coverage.
The speed camera detection is brilliant and has worked every time! The traffic detection works as well, (which has an ariel in the rather bulky car power lead), and the mapping is excellent, picking up one way systems with no problem.
I heavily recommend this sat nav.
 Great Product July 24, 2008
Bazza (East Anglia UK)
95 out of 97 found this review helpful
Been using this now for about two weeks, what a great bit of kit.
I looked around at reviews before i bought, Garmin, TomTom etc - What a mine field of reviews.
Hear it is !
Map - great
Sound - does the job of telling you what to do, if you want premium hi fi quality, try looking and seeing if Cambridge Audio do a sat nav ?!?! It's great for a sat nav !!!!!!! Easily audible in a van with stereo at normal volume.
POI's - very handy
Getting satelites - very quick
User interface - no nonesense
Traffic - This is only as good as the Traffic network wherever you are traveling, it's free, if it doesn't work, you've lost nowt! it works great on major roads in East Anglia.
Downloadable gadgets - Fun
Screen - does the job great
Speed Camera stuff - spot on, lets you know, you can either have it in your face with a continuous beep or subtle ping every so often.
Other extras like the screen that logs your journey time, moving time, stopped time etc - priceless. A bonus i didn't realise i was getting.
All in all, i'm using it everyday - Fantastic.
Garmin 255WT review July 28, 2008
Sam Starr (UK)
76 out of 77 found this review helpful
Garmin Nuvi 255WT - European Mapping, Widescreen, Built-in Traffic
Spent quite a bit of time reading reviews, looking at actual units and comparing similar products.
The 255WT does everything I wanted, was a great price and is a doddle to use. For anyone that wants a well designed unit you can use on and off the car, with W Europe maps and FM travel data this is an excellent buy.
I love the screen, the size of the unit and it was very easy to get going with out of the box.
255WT July 25, 2008
TEB (Yorkshire)
75 out of 78 found this review helpful
For nearly three years I have been using a Blaupunkt Lucca Sat Nav, which has done what's asked of it, albeit having a tendency to take the longest routes possible even if you tell it otherwise.
It's now getting dated and the battery does not hold a charge for long, so time for a change. I considered the TomTom but was not keen on the map graphics, looked at the Navman but was put of by the cheap heavy looking design and some poor reviews.
My Dad (a complete technophobe) recommended a Garmin nuvi having bought one last year, so I looked at the options, eventually going for the 255WT as I liked the idea of European Coverage, Traffic and `Revenue' Camera warnings, plus the `were am I function', although on trying it at home it told me the nearest police station was not the actual 4 miles away but 41.5miles away in the next county, not perfect then.
It's well made, compact, has great map graphics and the 3D mode compresses some distance ahead onto the screen which is a great help for forward planning. It starts up and locates a link in a blink of an eye, even in some parts of the house, which after the Lucca which takes 3 minutes just to wake up is fantastic.
Update Jan 09. Had the unit a few months now, in answer to a question asked, still finding traffic working well in most areas without pluging in the aerial, and the system has successfully diverted me round a blocked M1, without me at first realising that I had been directed off a couple of junctions early.
Of other interest I noticed the graphics had on occasion a tendency to zoom in and out on there own accord, a software update downloaded from Garmin appears to have sorted the problem.
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