By  robf

If your looking for the best portable gps that is easy to use, picks up the satellite signals quickly, has text to speech, is small, and is not pricey, you have found it in the garmin 255. The only drawbacks are the voices are not good quality, but are comprehendable, and that it doesn’t have bluetooth.

Permalink

By Douglas M. Peters

I chose this over the wide screen version and glad I did. It fits nicely in your pocket and you don’t really need the extra inch or so of width anyhow - it’s not like you’re watching movies on thing. Very accurate directions except when in an area with tight side streets and you may need to pause for a second or two at an intersection to let it catch up with where you are. You can download extra “cars” from Garmin website for amusement on the 3-D display and the ability to direct send coordinates from Google or Mapquest via USB to the Garmin’s Favorite list is perfect. A $5 GPS cable is all you need - and it’ll charge the device too to boot.

Get the full review here

By George Varghese

This is the fourth GPS that I have tried. Initially I had the VZ Navigator system from verizon. It’s a phone GPS and works very well. However, I had to discard that after I moved from Verizon.

Then I got the top rated Nuvi Garmin 350. Garmin nüvi 350 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator with Text-to-Speech When I started using it, I realized that its navigation features where inferior to VZ navigator. I was surprised that a dedicated GPS had less features than a phone GPS. Few things that annoyed me with nuvi 350.
1) It wouldn’t show the distance or direction of next turn. I had to press the turn list, everytime I needed to check the distance to next turn. Also, since the direction of turn is not shown in advance, you could endup on the wrong lane before the turn.
2) The arrival time shown on the display would not take into account the time zone. If you travel a lot between time zones, you are always forced to calculate the actual arrival time using the time shown on the display.
3) It wouldn’t remember the last entered city. You have to re-enter the city, everytime you enter an address.

Get the full review here