Thursday April 16, 2009
Here, there and everywhere
By TAN KIT HOONG
NUVI FOR ME: The 255W has a nice widescreen display. Garmin’s experience with GPS units shines through in the user-friendly Nuvi 255W, although junction view and lane assist still need work.
A few years ago, even though GPS hardware was already common, it was almost unheard of in this country simply because of the lack of local maps for these devices.
Fast forward to today, and you’ll notice that GPS street navigation devices have mushroomed.
The reason is not because Garmin or even MapKing have been making maps for their devices but because an active local community of GPS mappers have contributed to the making these maps, both official and unofficial versions.
Unfortunately, like all growing communities there have been disagreements and now the community has split into two.
I’m not here to get into who’s wrong and who’s right, but I will give a big thank you to both communities for making GPS accessible to everyone.
Without contributions from both parties, GPS navigation in Malaysia would not exist. Why am I going on about this in a review, you might ask?
Well the reason is because the official local version of the 255W has Garmin-sanctioned maps which are actually the tweaked version of MalSing maps, one of the communities which provides free maps to everyone.
The hardware
The 255W is physically identical to most of its other (numerous) widescreen siblings in the Nuvi range — the resolution (480 x 272 pixels) and 4.3in screen size are actually the same as a lot of Nuvi models.
The features differ of course, and in this case, the 255W doesn’t come with a Bluetooth handsfree feature like the 265W but has a “speak street names” function which the low-end 205W doesn’t have.
Of course, what’s also interesting is that the 255W has a junction and lane info view which is currently available only in this unit as the 205W apparently does not support this feature. More on this later.
Rounding off the features is a picture viewer, calculator, unit converter (which also converts currency) and a world clock — all mildly useful especially when you’re travelling.
In the box, the 255W comes with a car charger and a vehicle suction cup mount as standard — along with the preloaded Malaysia-Singapore maps, you have everything you need to get up and running immediately.
While it doesn’t come with a cable to sync with your desktop PC, the connector is a standard mini-USB one.
I highly recommend getting a cheap, easily available mini-USB cable if you want to connect it to the PC to charge or to update the software and/or maps.
In case you’re wondering, you can easily download Garmin Web Updater which is freely from
tinyurl.com/2jbb9t if you want to update the unit software and maps in the future.
That’s about it for the hardware really as it’s basic but it has everything you need for road navigation.
Navigation
HANDY: This shot shows what Junction View looks like on the 255W. So, how does the 255W perform? Very well, actually, although with a few small (but potentially fixable) issues.
First off, like all modern GPS units (with the exception of certain Nokia phones with GPS) the 255W has very quick satellite acquisition and location fix times.
Typically you’ll get a lock on your position in just over a minute if the 255W doesn’t have up-to-date satellite information , or just a few seconds if it is.
Plus, the interface for Garmin GPS units is among the best for navigation as it’s easy to understand and very logical in its execution.
Therefore, when you turn on the device you are presented with just two icons, labelled, “Where to?” and “View map.” Tapping on “Where to?” will bring you to another list of icons, where you can enter in the address, or search through all points of interest on the map or go through the custom Favourites list.
Tapping on View Map, of course, brings you to the 3D map navigation view and tapping the 3D map will bring you to the flat 2D map for easier browsing.
Once you find your destination, just tap on it and tap “Go!” and that’s about it — the 255W will get you there with a minimum of fuss.
There are a number of voices to choose from in this unit, including American English (but strangely not British English), Bahasa Indonesia, Bahasa Malaysia, Thai, Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien and even Hakka! Quite an extensive list of Asian languages, I must say.
Some issues
There weren’t many issues with the 255W and problems that I did find with it can be fixed in software in some future map/software update.
I’ll deal first with one issue that is unlikely to be fixed — the “speak street names” feature is ideally supposed to read out street names to you, so for example, you’ll get “Turn right on Elm Street” instead of just “Turn right in 300m” or something like that.
However, this feature is really meant only for European and American street names and the device tends to mangle names like Masjid Jamek and Jalan Tun Sambanthan so badly that I opted to use the more pleasant version which does not speak street names in the system settings.
I also tried turning on both Bahasa Malaysia text and voice navigation and found a few issues there too.
For example, the text seems to be too literal in its translation sometimes — Audio Volume is rather funnily translated into Isipadu in Bahasa Malaysia, which as we all know, is just wrong.
LOST IN TRANSLATION: Bahasa Malaysia on the 255W can be a liitle strange sometimes. Another example is when the 255W is unplugged from power — a menu will pop up in the English version giving you the option to Turn Off the power or Stay On but the Bahasa Malaysia translation laughably translates Turn Off as Belok Keluar which is a literal but incorrect translation.
The Bahasa Malaysia voice navigation fares a little better though it still has some quirks.
In English, the voice navigation usually says, “In three hundred metres, turn left” but the person who recorded the individual words in the Bahasa Malaysia version recorded it wrong and the sentence comes out as, Dalam tiga seratus meter, belok kiri.
It’s quite irritating to hear the distance information constantly read as Tiga seratus meter and Dua seratus meter.
Now on to the 255W’s junction view and lane assist feature.
As I found out in the Papago! GPS I tested a while back, junction view is really a big help when driving because it has a rendering or image of the actual junction you need to turn off at, which really helps the driver visually identify the correct turn.
Unlike with the Papago! GPS the junction view and lane assist feature (which gives you a visual list of turns) on the 255W is not as extensive.
I drove around quite a bit and only rarely got a junction view display.
However I am assured by the local distributor that while junction view for Malaysian roads is still patchy right now, a map update in July will increase junction views to about 350 pictures.
Conclusion
While it sounds like I’ve been ripping into the Garmin 255W, the reality is that it’s actually a really nice device and the navigation and hardware worked flawlessly in the time I used it.
The interface is really simple to use and understand, and the current Malaysia-Singapore maps are pretty up to date.
As I said before, the issues I had are not really big issues — most of them only affect the Bahasa Malaysia version and can be easily fixed in the next firmware update.
So yes, the Garmin Nuvi 255W does get a thumbs up — it may be a little pricier, but the simple interface and ease of updating maps and software is worth the admission price.
Pros: Excellent interface; up-to-date maps; junction view.
Cons: Bahasa Malaysia translation needs work; junction view still patchy for Malaysia.
Nuvi 255W
(Garmin Ltd)
GPS navigation unit
CPU: 333MHz processor
Memory: 1GB flash memory
Storage: SD
Display: 4.3in LCD (480 x 272 pixels)
Battery: Lithium-ion
Weight: 173g
Dimensions: 12.2 x 7.4 x 2.0 cm
Price: RM1,150
Website: www.garmin.com
Review unit courtesy of Aeco Technologies (M) Sdn Bhd, (603) 9285-8062
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