Price: $213.04
Garmin nüvi 275/275T 3.5-Inch Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator with Traffic
Features
- Bright, 3.5-inch diagonal color QVGA TFT touchscreen with 320 x 240 pixels and white backlight
- Sleek, ultra-thin design fits easily in pocket
- Preloaded with City Navigator North America NT and Europe NT
- Bluetooth wireless technology for hands-free calling
- NOTE: Model number on the box is 275T because the traffic receiver is included. however, the model number on the device itself is 275 as the "T" in 275T refers to the additional component
User Reviews
Driving directions in downtown Chicago were near-unusable due to the constant confusion about our location. The skies were wide open and clear. Walking directions in Paris were utterly unusable due to the device's inability to track the direction of our motion. Directions in Europe were dubious: once the device brought us to a river and instructed to take a ferry. That particular spot had nothing but ducks, while the bridge was a mile away. The device also has got spooked by some imaginary traffic delays and dragged us onto problematic back roads, even more crowded. Very disappointing. -- Poor positioning, dubious routing, bad direction-tracking
We bought this unit to use on our two week Europe trip to Germany, Austria and Switzerland. We rented (and returned )a car in Stuttgart Germany. We had no previous GPS experience before this trip. Our car (a Mercedes) came with a built in GPS but we quickly abandoned it for the Garmin. The Garmin saved us multiple times in the small confusing villages and in the big cities. If you knew the address for your destination it worked great - if you didn't it was a bit of a pain. I would like to see the software allow you to pick a city as the destination and not a specific address. It could default to an information center or some other central location. As it is you can't just pick a city - it forces you to find a street address. If you don't know the streets (and who does?) you are doomed to endless random searches of the ones it shows you. But on the positive side - once you had a place to go it worked great. No problem with booting up, found satellites quickly, and it pronounced the foreign names reasonably well.
Do NOT go to Europe without one.
-- Could use some software tweaking
How can you complain about a GPS that got you through 6 countries, 14 cities and 2400 miles in two weeks
from Spain to Switzerland? Here's how:
1. When it doesn't know where you are and keeps giving you instructions that get you onto pedestrian paths,
bicycle paths and a permit only road (Tasch to Zermatt) after you've taken the train back from Zermatt;
2. When it doesn't know your orientation coming out of hotels, parking garages and even toll booths;
3. When it directs you off a main road to Carcassonne onto a secondary road with a brige closed;
4. When it's so slow that you have to pull off the road for recalculation instructions and slow down
on circles to make sure you get the right exit;
5. When it gives you street names for circle exits and city streets in a Europe with no street signs;
6. When the speed limit indicator can not keep up with changes due to tunnels and localities anywhere.
The Garmin Nuvi 275T will discourage anyone but the most persistent user. When it lost our position in Barcelona,
Venice (Mestre), Tasch, and elsewhere, it had to be rebooted by "X"ing out the destination shutting the unit off and pulling the car plug. Then you could reset to the same destination.
We used the circle diagrahm to determine the circle exit and payed attention to circle signs for our destination.
We learned to cope and used common sense.
All that being said it got us through 10 circles late at night to get to our hotel in Munich and was indispensable
for this kind of driving trip in Europe. -- Poor performer but needed it
The review by Derrick, "Masters of Rural France," convinced me to buy the 275T for a trip to France. I am very glad I did.
When we landed in Nice, I rented a car from Hertz. Before launching I fished the 275T out of my suitcase, suction cupped it to the windshield, plugged it into the cigarette lighter, and turned it on. I expected it to "wake up" thinking it was still in the US, and we were prepared to wait for however long while it searched for a satellite and re-oriented itself -- but there was no wait. None. The device knew immediately that it was positioned in the Hertz parking lot at the Nice airport. The first difficult and complicated thing it did was to guide us out of the airport, where there is construction, and onto the tollway.
There are any number of "roundabouts" or traffic circles in France, and the 275T is especially helpful in picking out your exit path. The 275T will tell you on your way into the traffic circle to take, for example, the 3rd exit. The road signs tend to be tiny, often arranged in stacks or arrays of multiple signs, and not necessarily comprehensible, even if you speak French. With the gps you can simply ignore the signs and follow the verbal instructions from the gps. On a rainy day or in heavy traffic it is especially helpful.
I would, nevertheless, try to preview your day's route on a map before setting out. This is because device seems to favor the quickest or most direct route -- and this might take you over a mountain pass via a narrow secondary road. This can be pretty interesting, but only if you know in advance you are letting yourself in for a little adventure. If you want to keep to the major roads, it is easy to do this, but you have to identify the route you would prefer to follow. In other words, don't just blindly accept in advance the judgement of the 275T's internal logic.
A remarkable, reliable navigator at a reasonable price.
-- It knew immediately that it was in France...
Compare to my old Nuvi 350 (~4 years old), one thing I like the 350 better is the power cable connection method, which is integrated with the mount kit. Whenever the 350 is mounted, the power is connected. Unfortunately, the 275t has its power cable connection separately from the mount kit. -- Compare to Nuvi 350
Last Update: 6 hours ago
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