 I'm impressed! |
| Review Date: November 24, 2009 |
| Reviewer: S. Harrison, Clements, CA United States |
The Garmin nuvi 285WT is a winner.
The case for the Garmin 285WT is sleek shiny black plastic. The case seems very sturdy - in fact all the pieces appear to be made of quality plastic. It comes with the power adapter for the car, and a USB cable to hook up to your computer. (Some of the less expensive Garmins do not come with the USB cable, which is a problem because you need a USB cable to register the unit.)
Pros:
The unit was extremely easy to set up. Upon first use, it guides you through set-up, which is simple. The icons on the screen are simple and intuitive. I started using it without even reading the directions.
After the initial settings are entered, it sets about finding the local satellites. I told it to skip that step, since I was just hooking it up to a wall charger (sold separately) to charge the batteries. Not only did it go ahead and find the satellites, it found them while sitting on my kitchen table. I don't know how it did that, but it did. There are green bars in the corner of the display showing you how many satellites have been acquired. There it was, displaying all four green bars after just a few minutes. That was impressive.
In the car, it locks onto the satellites extremely fast. It is much faster to find the signals than my friend's TomTom 910. To be fair, the TomTom is an older unit, but it was a much more expensive unit than the Garmin 285WT to begin with.
I am using the default voice. It is extremely clear and easy to understand. It has only messed up on one street name, as it assumed that N Street was the same as North Street. I am not in an area where there are street names in Spanish or other languages, so I have not had the chance to find out how well it deals with those. The voice is much more understandable than the voice in the TomTom 910 (I hope my friend doesn't read this...). (The TomTom also consistently mangled Spanish street names when we took a road trip to San Jose.)
If one drives past a turn that it has selected, the device instantly says "Recalculating," and immediately updates the directions. I missed a turn at night in a very dark area, (I would have had a hard time finding the alternative route) and it didn't miss a beat.
The display is extremely legible both in bright sunlight and at night. I had to turn the brightness down to the minimum because it was a bit too bright at night for my taste.
The plastic suction cup holds extremely well. Be sure to take the transparent protective film off of it before using. I have it mounted on a Gilsson UBM Portable Car Non-Skid Friction Beanbag Dashboard Mount for Garmin, TomTom, Magellan and more that has worked out quite well.
The 285WT comes with a feature that I really like called "Where Am I?" It's an emergency location feature - you can tap the screen to get your latitude and longitude. So if you get a flat tire out in the middle of the Mohave Desert, the tow truck from Trona will be able to find you. Assuming, of course, that tow trucks from Trona also have GPS devices.
Cons:
It gave me bad directions one time. It was a good thing I knew the area. Since I just got this unit, I don't know how often this sort of thing will happen. I am willing to forgive in this instance, because it seems to perform so well overall. (I don't know how forgiving I'd be if I had driven miles out of my way...)
Neutral:
This model is Bluetooth. I don't have a Bluetooth phone (I know, I know, I am using archaic technology...) so I couldn't test that feature.
The device also comes the MSN Direct (9 months free) which I found to be of very limited usefulness because I live in a rural area. I mean, c'mon, around here the 4H Club pancake breakfast at the volunteer fire department is a Big Deal, and MSN Direct is hardly going to tell me about things like that. I also don't have traffic concerns of the type that one would have in Los Angeles or San Francisco, for example. I also don't know why one needs a Doppler weather display on one's GPS, unless one is driving through Oklahoma in a thunderstorm during tornado season. It might be great for that, who knows?
If you live in an urban area, don't get too excited about MSN Direct, because Microsoft has already announced that they are killing it in 2012. It was originally developed for a device called a Smart Watch, which obviously hit the market with a big belly flop, or we'd all have one. More information can be found on MSN Direct and the planned demise thereof in an October 28, 2009 article at the PC World website.
All in all, I am extremely happy with this device, and recommend it without reservation. In fact, I am buying one for my son for Christmas.
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A Basic Easy-to-Use GPS Which Offers Excellent Value for Money
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| Review Date: December 6, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Lawrence H. Bulk, New Jersey USA |
I recently (November 28, 2009) received this excellent Garmin nüvi 285W/285WT 4.3-Inch Widescreen Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator with Traffic courtesy of Amazon Vine and, after using it as much as possible to familiarize myself with it, I can report that, overall, I am very pleased with this unit.
This is my second Garmin GPS; the first one was the GARMIN 010-00656-00 Nuvi 250W Widescreen Travel Assistant which I have been using since December 2007. Should anyone reading this review be interested, I refer that person to my review of the older unit.
This particular one, recently introduced, is really an incremental update of the 250W in that it too is a "basic" unit, though it does have more features - many of which may be useful to most people but also a few which hold no particular interest, at least to me. Naturally, having additional features makes operation more complex but, fortunately, some of these can be ignored and/or disabled should the owner so desire.
I must mention that I definitely prefer simpler units to more complicated ones, especially when I am driving at 65MPH on a crowded highway! I do not think that GPS units (or ANYTHING meant for use in a moving car) should have all sorts of unneeded "bells and whistles" which can make operation difficult, if not downright dangerous. I think a cell phone should be a cell phone, a camera should be a camera, a radio should be a radio -- and a GPS should be a GPS. Period. Obviously many, many people will disagree with my preferences but, if you are one of the few who do agree with me (and even if you don't), then I hope that this review will be of use to you. At least you know my perspective.
I have noticed that, when adding new features to newer models, Garmin attempts to keep the interface similar to past ones. Unfortunately, though well intentioned, this sometimes makes the interfaces somewhat awkward in use as anyone who uses this new instrument will quickly discover. I mention below the necessity of deleting data in several separate locations (screens); this is one disadvantage of trying to keep the older interfaces.
Now for my review: I shall first discuss some of the new features that the 285WT has that the 250W did not which I do not like and/or do not use.
For example, there is a new feature called ecoRoute. If you activate the "Vehicle Profile" within this feature, the unit will calculate your fuel costs and approximate gas mileage. Frankly, this is of little, if any, use, in my opinion, as the data will only be a general approximation. But when you wish to delete this data for each trip as well as general trip data, you must do so separately within each screen in which the data is stored (as many as three separate screens). To delete such data in the 250W, you need delete the data - maximum speed and mileage data - from the same screen and this is relatively simple. Not so with the 285WT. Of course you need not activate a "Vehicle Profile" and I recommend that, in the interest of simplicity, that you ignore this feature. After all, of what real use is it?
This unit also features Bluetooth. If you are one of the many people who enjoy this feature for use with your cell phone, this will be of value to you. But, as I do not use a Bluetooth cell phone, I have disabled it.
I also have no interest at all in the Microsoft Network; I see no need to have stock market reports on my GPS. Nor do I need their traffic reports, for which you must pay $50.00 per year after the trial period (I cannot accurately determine how long the trial period is: the instruction manual states "3 months" but Amazon, and at least one other review, states "9 months.") But, whatever the trial period is, I have no interest in activating MSN Direct and I'm sure you have read in other reviews that it is to be discontinued in 2012. And it is certainly easy enough to get such information as it offers from a local radio news station.
In order to use the MSN Direct, you must use the power cable which Garmin supplies with the unit. This contains the MSN receiver. If you use an older power cable, such as this one Garmin nüvi Vehicle Power Cable the GPS itself will function normally but there will be no MSN. That's fine with me - I have three of these older cables. I keep one in each of our two cars and one in the house. (I keep the actual GPS units in the house too when they are not in use.) I will not be using the supplied power cable with MSN receiver with my 285WT. (I recommend that everyone buy at least one spare cable, of whatever type, "just in case.")
The case on my older 250W is a flat gray color. The new 285WT has a glossy black finished case. While the glossy black is somewhat more attractive (but really - who cares?), it shows all of your fingerprints. The flat gray case does not do this. Thus I much prefer the older case.
You'll certainly want to have a case for your Garmin; I recommend this one: Garmin 4.3-Inch Carrying Case [Amazon Frustration-Free Packaging]. You'll also want a Garmin Portable Friction Mount [Amazon Frustration-Free Packaging]; this is a FAR better mount than the supplied windshield-mounted suction-cup mount and, in any case, in certain states the suction cup mount is banned by law.
I had hoped that Garmin would have improved the "Detour" function but they have not. When driving and desiring a detour, you must touch the Menu option at the bottom of the screen and then click on the Detour function in the next screen. This is the same as on the 250W. I wish that Garmin would place the Detour function button on the main screen. That's where it belongs, in my opinion.
Okay, those are the "bad" parts. If you're still with me, I shall now discuss the "good" parts, the improvements (and they are many and considerable) over the 250W.
First and foremost - this new unit locks onto the satellites FAR faster than does the older one. This is VERY noticeable and very welcome. Three days ago, we visited some friends who live about 35 miles away; traveling to their house is my Garmin "test-bed" to see how well it functions (the trip is convoluted). Both units take us there flawlessly but, when restarting the 250W when we wish to "Go Home," for some reason the 250W will not pick up the satellites until we have driven almost one mile from their house. This is strange (because it "knew" where we were when I turned it off) and annoying. (Of course we know how to get home; we do not really need the Garmin - but this is a "test.") This happens consistently, each and every time we visit these friends.
Not so with the 285WT - as soon as I turned it on at their house, it instantly locked onto the satellites. We were very pleased with this performance.
I have also noticed that the 285WT consistently locks onto satellites in my house, even with all the blinds drawn. Obviously there is no "line-of-sight" here so this performance improvement is quite amazing and is much improved over the 250W which rarely, if ever, locks onto the satellites in my house (and is much slower in locking to them even outdoors, although this is not a major disadvantage in MOST cases).
So far, no matter where we have gone, or for how long the unit was turned off, or where we were when we turned it back on (we were not always at the same location as we were when we turned it off), it almost instantly locked on to the satellites. Frankly, this is remarkable.
I should also mention that the boot-up time on the 285WT is much quicker than on the 250W.
The next improvement I note is the virtual keyboard. You have your choice of a QWERTY keyboard or the one ABCDE featured on the older Garmins. The QWERTY is a vast improvement. It also features numbers as well as letters thereby making it unnecessary to go to another screen to enter numbers. In addition, to get to the symbols (@#$%^), you need only go to one other screen (as opposed to two on the 250W); this is indicated at the bottom of the Garmin's keyboard screen.
In addition to the backspace control found on the 250W (which deletes each letter/number as you backspace), there are cursor controls as well on the 285WT which allow you to move the cursor to whichever point you desire and then use the backspace control to delete only the one undesired letter and replace it with the correct one - just like on a computer.
All in all, this is a major and welcome improvement and makes typing in addresses, etc., much more convenient.
The screen information has been somewhat improved on the 285T and is slightly easier to read and comprehend quickly. But, while the new unit shows the next turn (and there is a pictogram showing the turn), the green "line" at the top no longer shows the road on which you are traveling as it does on the 250W. It shows the next turn you must make - even when that turn is many miles away. This is a step backwards, in my opinion. You can see the road you're on if you wish - but you must touch the magenta line (which shows the correct route to your destination). I feel that the green line should show the actual road on which you are driving until about four or five miles from your next turn (you would be able to preview the next turn, if you wished, by merely touching the green line which will then show you all the steps subsequent to get to your destination); the pictogram could constantly show the next turn (as it does now).
The 285WT shows the speed limit on the road you are using if such data is available to Garmin. Unfortunately, it is not always accurate - so you better read the road signs and not depend solely on this feature. (There is a local road which, for years, has had a section of about a half-mile in which the limit is 35MPH. When I first got the 285WT and drove on this section, it showed the limit to be 40MPH. When I registered my unit over the internet, I was "forced" to update the firmware and I took advantage of their free one-time map upgrade. After doing so, I noticed that now the speed limit listed on that section was 45MPH, the same as the rest of the road! This is not good! The upgrade made the error worse! I have seen many people pulled over on that section of the road, the number depending, I suppose, upon just how strapped for cash the township is. In any event, I do not think anyone should rely on the speed limit shown on your Garmin even though most of the time it DOES seem to be accurate.)
There is a particularly welcome new feature on the 285WT within the Tools section; you click on the Tools icon at the bottom of the screen (which, for reasons best known to Garmin, is now to the right of the Volume setting instead of to the left of it, as previously). You click on that Tools icon and, directly in the center of the following screen, is a "Where Am I?" icon. Click on that and you will see the actual coordinates of your location (including elevation), the nearest address, and the nearest intersection. In addition, and most important, there are buttons for the nearest Hospitals, Police Stations, and Fuel.
If, while driving, you touch the Vehicle icon on your screen, the same location information is shown. (It's best to have your "co-pilot" do this however as it is with most of the options the Garmin has.)
All in all, this is very easy to use and very welcome even if the nearest address shown is not always "spot-on" accurate (it's close though).
There is also, within the Tools screen, a My Data section which features a particularly easy means of setting or changing your Home location. This is quite useful when traveling, for instance, or, when using the Pedestrian setting, for changing your Home to the location of your car in a crowded shopping center. Do that and you'll never have trouble finding your car again! (You can do that with the 250W as well but it is quicker and easier with the 285WT.)
I have the screen brightness set to 50% (you'll find the settings within the Display option under Color Mode), both for Daytime and for Nighttime. Of course, after the adjustments, I set the Garmin's Color Mode back to Auto; this changes the screen as the sun goes down. My wife and I have found that 50% in both options works for us; your preferences may differ.
I noticed that I had to set the Volume to 90% on my 285WT to achieve a comfortable sound level which is easy for us to hear; the corresponding setting on my 250W is 70%. However I am sure that this is a sample to sample variance and you will have to experiment to find your own desired volume level.
You have read about Text-to-Speech in which the GPS says the street names rather than just "turn right" or "turn left" as on the 250W.
Well, at least on this unit. this feature is a bit of a mixed bag. First, not all of the available "voice" choices feature text-to-speech (TTS). Only some of them do - and the voices which do so may not please you. For example, American English does not feature TTS; American English-Samantha (TTS) does and this is what we're now using. On our 250W, we use British English, which we prefer. British English is also an option on the 285WT but "she" doesn't feature TTS. For that, if you want a female British voice, you must use British English-Serena (TTS) - and "she's" awful, in both my and my wife's opinion. She speaks too fast and none too clearly, in our opinion, especially in her pronunciation of road names, and she sounds more "Irish" than "British" (not that that matters much). But, for us, "she" is unpleasant sounding and, therefore, essentially unusable. The male voices, in our limited - thus far - experiences, are more difficult for us to understand in a moving vehicle so, for the moment, we are staying with our American English-Samantha (TTS) "companion." (We haven't tried any of the other languages offered as we speak only English.)
A slight disadvantage to TTS is that, if the road name is a long one, you could conceivably pass the turn before "she" could get it all out! (I think that this would be a rare occurrence however.) I still rely on reading the street names on the top green line.
Personally, I think it would be better for Garmin to offer various voices and languages and offer the option, for ALL of them, to have TTS on or off, as the user chooses. Perhaps some day they will be able to implement that.
Of course all the features in the world are of absolutely no use if the GPS doesn't take you where you want to go! In this respect, I believe that this Garmin nüvi 285WT is as good as any on the road, regardless of price. Is it perfect? Certainly not! As I stated in my review of the 250W, sometimes you still have to ask! But it is as accurate a unit as you're going to find. Thus far, in our limited usage, we have not noticed any differences in the routes chosen by our 285WT from those chosen by our 250W. But I have a Garmin nüMaps Lifetime North America Map Updates for our 250W and I do keep it updated so it has the same maps as the 285WT. (I recommend this "lifetime" option for most people though, as I have it for my 250W, I shall not be buying it for my 285WT, at least at this time.)
I think I have covered most of the incremental changes that Garmin has made from its 2007 model, the 250W, to its 2009 model, the 285WT. I should think, though I do not know, that the same changes will have been made to other new models within the 200 series. I think that, for the most part, the operational changes are improvements.
I should like to sum up this review by repeating that I am very pleased with the new 285WT and its performance. I have mentioned a number of things I do not like - but do not let that dissuade anyone from buying this GPS. The advantages GREATLY outweigh any disadvantages and the changes from the 250W to the 285WT are, for the most part, significant and good. And after all, NO product is "perfect" - and no product ever will be!
And though it doesn't "run rings" around the 2-year-old 250W (except in its much improved satellite reception), for the most part, it has been greatly improved over its predecessor, especially in its general ease of use (when certain "features" are disabled), and these improvements will be especially noticeable to anyone with Garmin experience. Within its class, this GPS represents excellent value for money. (It's a constant source of amazement to me that Garmin can offer such an excellent product at such a low price. And, by the way, if you are as interested in GPS pricing as I am, you will find that the ABSOLUTE best place to buy one of these things is right here - from Amazon!)
I want to thank everyone who has read my review and I hope that it has been of some help.
I highly recommend this Garmin nüvi 285WT to anyone interested in a "basic" Global Positioning System device. |
Great GPS
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| Review Date: November 27, 2009 |
| Reviewer: J. Jones, |
| I saw the low star ratings because of the MSN Direct shutdown in 2012. I don't see down rating several stars on a GPS because of such a accessory service which you can get other ways if you really need it. I see this as a great GPS and that is all it needs to be. |
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