Garmin nuvi 295W

By L. Fu (Massachusetts)

This review is from: Garmin nüvi 295W 3.5-Inch Widescreen Wi-Fi Portable GPS Navigator.
This is the first portable GPS that I have ever owned. After years of suggestions that I buy one, I brought this one when I noticed that it was on sale. I haven’t used all the features yet, especially those involving WiFi, but it fulfills its main purpose as a GPS well.

One glaring thing of note was that when navigating to a destination, it is better to enter an address or intersection rather than the coordinates (ie. saving a geographical location). This is because the nuvi 295W will calculate a route that will take you closest to the spot even if it will never reach that spot via the calculated route. For example, I saved a spot at my company’s parking spot and the GPS calculated a route whose destination would be over a fence and across railroad tracks. I guess this issue may apply to other GPS as well.

A 2nd issue I’ve encountered but may be specific to this particular model was that the headphone volume output seemed low. When connected via audio cable to my car’s audio system, I had to turn the car’s audio volume 3 times higher the normal settings in order to hear the GPS properly. This was after I set the GPS’s volume to 100%.