Home > Consumer Reviews > Garmin nüvi 260W 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator

I am now onto my third Nuvi. The first didn't work out of the box. The second worked for two days and then broke down. This one stopped working when I upgraded the map (as suggested by Garmin). Garmin's online support is entirely unhelpful - they didn't read my email and simply directed me to a 1800 number where the waiting time to talk to someone is 30-45 minutes.

I recommend anyone who is considering a purchase call 800-800-1020 and see how long the wait for product support is. Then read about all the problems with unlocking maps and product registration.

When the product works, it is wonderful, but poor execution kills it. Spend your money elsewhere.

The voice prompts are great, instructions are given well in advance of turns, easy to operate. A great help in strange territory. Also, it will not yell at you if you make a wrong turn. The wide screen is nice. I also purchased the weighted dash mount, makes it easy to move to another vehicle.

Just took this out of the box & discovered no usb cable is included and there's no ac power cable. Amazon says customers who buy this frequently buy it with a car charger, like you would think it must not come with one. Don't bother getting the additional car charger -- it comes with one. Look for an ac power adapter instead. Also, you will need to get a usb cable, a special one is required for the Garmin to communicate with your 'pooter. I found both a usb cable and acpower adapter on ebay, but it would have been nice if there were some way to know that I should have ordered them from amazon at the same time as the 260W.

Also, I probably would have looked further for a GPS had I realized the 260W has been discontinued by Garmin. Live & learn.

I bought this product just before going on vacation. I get lost easily and am very uncomfortable driving to a new location in heavy traffic. With this GPS, I was confident and found everything I was looking for with no trouble. I used the voice feature, rather than looking at the maps, and it was great. There is usually plenty of warning before your next turn or different freeway, etc. Plus, if you vary the route any, it just recalculates and gets you right back on track. I highly recommend this product.

Received my Garmin Nuvi 260W just days before a trip. Setup and use is very intutive....even the wife had no problems using it (she hates electronics)...I really like the "text to speech" feature, that is why I chose the 260W. Having the unit speak the name of the road you are turning on to is very handy in urban areas. Another feature I like is what I call "auto up-scale" - even if you have set the map scale fairly small to see a large portion of the route, as you approach a turn the unit automatically scales the map larger to give you more detail of the turn...really nice on interstate ramps and intersections. Unit came preloaded with NT 2009 maps (really the current 2008 version, but its the name they use). I did hook the unit to my computer and using Garmins update software, it flashed the firmware up to the most current - all pretty painless.

I did not want all the bells and whistles of more advanced (read: more expensive) units. The 260W does basic navigation very well at a very reasonable cost...I like it and highly recommend it to others !