» Garmin Nuvi 200W and 250W Widescreen Car GPS Navigators

As with televisions, consumers are looking for wide screen displays for their navigation devices. Garmin has delivered wide screen with the Nuvi 200W and Nuvi 250W. Both have a bright, sunlight readable 4.3-inch color touchscreen display with WQVGA (480×272 pixels) resolution. Other useful features are a built-in picture viewer, calculator, currency converter, unit converter and world clock.

The Garmin Nuvi 200W and Nuvi 250W have identical specifications apart from the maps which are preloaded into internal memory for use straight out of the box. The nuvi 200W includes preloaded detailed mapping of the contiguous United States (lower 48), Hawaii and Puerto Rico. The nuvi 250W has preloaded detailed mapping of the entire United States (including Alaska and Hawaii), Canada and Puerto Rico. Garmin also offer nuvi 200-series products with regional specific coverage for Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and Brazil. The regional coverage for Europe includes UK/Ireland, Nordics, Belgium/Netherlands/Luxembourg, France, Italy/Greece, Spain/Portugal, and Germany/Switzerland/Austria/Czech Republic.

TFT Touchscreen Display

Both 2D and 3D perspective views are available for viewing maps. GPS operations make exclusive use of the touchscreen with an on/off switch and rotary volume control knob being the only other controls. Now that Apple’s boss, Steve Jobs, recently announced the iPhone with its finger touch operated touchscreen expect to see more rapid adoption of this very flexible technology in other consumer electronics products.

If you want to plan your route while out of the car, the Nuvi 200W/250W has an internal lithium-ion battery with a respectable 5 hour life. It comes with a 12-volt power adapter for in-car recharging.

Users can search for addresses and points of interest (POI) and can also upload their own POIs. A useful selectable feature is a proximity alert which notifies the driver of upcoming custom POIs. Up to 500 waypoints with name and graphic symbol can be entered. Software features include a trip computer, resettable odometer, timers, average and maximum speed outputs.

SiRF Star III GPS Receiver Chipset

All Garmin Nuvi 200W/250W receivers have their GPS functionality provided by a SiRF Star III chipset, a winner of PC Magazine’s Award for Technical Excellence. The SiRF Star III family was a breakthrough innovation GPS chip architecture offering impressive performance improvements to the GPS receiver manufacturing industry.

The SiRF Star III chipset is a WAAS enabled (improves accuracy) GPS receiver. The SiRF Star III has position accuracy down to 2.0m, velocity accuracy of less than 0.01 m/s and hot and warm autonomous times to first fix (TTFF) of less than 1s and less than 35s respectively.

Operation and GPS Maps

Getting started with the Nuvi 200W/250W is easy as it comes with City Navigator NT street maps pre-loaded The European version includes a preloaded safety camera database containing the location of safety cameras for parts of Europe. The detailed maps contain information on highways, interstates, business and residential roads with attributes such as turn restrictions, speed categories and other navigation features. There is an SD expansion slot for adding other maps. The map database features some six million points of interest including hotels, restaurants, gas stations, attractions, entertainment, shopping, emergency services, post offices, camp grounds, movie theaters and ATMs.

One way to navigate is to select a POI by touching its icon on the display screen. To make life even simpler Garmin has provide their free (which can be downloaded from their website) for you to import customized POI. It provides the ability to upload POIs created by others from your PC to your Garmin unit.

Having selected a destination from the touch screen interface, one is directed when to turn, and in what direction. Missing a turn is not a major problem as both units will automatically re-calculate a new route to the selected destination.

The Garmin Nuvi 200W/250W come with Garmin Lock which is an anti -theft feature that disables the unit from performing any functions until enter a specific 4-digit PIN or take the unit to a predetermined location.

Garmin Nuvi 200W/250W Package

Included in the Garmin Nuvi 200W/250W box are:

• Garmin Nuvi 200W or 250W
• (250W) Preloaded City Navigator NT North America and Europe (full coverage) OR
• (200W) Preloaded City Navigator NT data for the continental U.S., Hawaii and Puerto Rico (no Alaska or Canada detail) or one European region or country (click versions tab to view all)
• Suction cup mount
• Dashboard disk
• Quick Start Manual

User Reviews and Price Comparisons

Both the Garmin nuvi 200W and 250W have been very popular and in the Best Seller lists on Amazon. Read the reviews and check out the prices for;

Garmin nüvi 200W 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator
Garmin nüvi 250W 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator

Check out the competitive prices at Butterfly Photo for

Garmin Nuvi 200W GPS Vehicle Navigator 0100065610

TheNerds.net have good prices on the

Garmin nuvi 200W Automobile GPS - 4.3" Active Matrix TFT Color LCD
GPS, NUVI 250W, NORTH AMERICA
Nuvi 250W Bilingual

Resources for Garmin nuvi 200 and 250

Garmin have an introductory video to the Garmin nuvi 200W features.

Find the answers to your questions with Garmin’s extensive FAQ database for their GPS products.

Compare the Garmin nuvi models with Garmin’s comparison database which provides side by side comparisons with highlighted differences.

Specification Garmin Nuvi 200W and Garmin Nuvi 250W