Garmin nüvi 295W 3.5-Inch Widescreen Wi-Fi Portable GPS Navigator Review
I own 2 other Garmins . One I bought back in 2006 and one in Janurary. Garmin GPSs are reliable quick and accurate.
This new model has a faster processor and working through the inputting of names / choosing point-of-interests is incredibly faster than the one I just bought recently. The signal receiver is even stronger.
Some reasons why I decided to pick this one up.
1) wifi for email/web
2) mp3 so I can hook up to my car stereo . A gps all-in-one
3) Digital camera (would come handy.
4) slimmer pocket design much like the Garmin Nuvi Phone they had in the past.
5) I trust Garmin
Outside impressions:
1) very slim and excellent quality built like all Garmins GPS
2) Back side has a nice rubber coating for easy grip
3) replaceable battery
4) feels and look like a smart phone.
5) very sharp and clear screen
About the GPS function.
Pros
1) Searches faster and respond faster to my clicks and inputs than my other garmins. I mean really fast! Virtually no waiting to search point-of-interests A+
2) Stronger antenna. I live in a 1 floor house and can pick up some signal. My other garmins can’t. I don’t know about 2 story building or concrete walls. But you’re suppose to use GPS outdoor right?
3) Detects weather you’re walking or driving. Of course if it reads you’re going 2 mph then it says walking.
4) detects how you are holding it and switches automatically to Vertial or Horizontal.
-I wish they have a position lock because I am not going to keep holding the gps in my hands vertically. Once I know where to go I might take it out of the pocket and if I don’t hold it vertically right away my handling of it might make the GPS think that I am holding it Horizontal and it’ll switch to that viewing. Then you have to sort of hold it up and shake it a little to let it turn back to vertical. It’s not such a big deal but they should have a view lock.
5) Shows speed limits on streets you are driving on.
6) easily change from 3d view to birdeye on the map without having to change it in the settings.
7) has google quick search for food/bank/shopping/transit/parking/entertainment/recreation/attractions and more in case you can’t find anything you’re looking for in the built in millions of point-of-interests. But wifi required for google search.
built in point-of-interests display phone numbers which is nice.
Cons:
1) GPS speaker is muffled like if the person is talking to you through a glass window meaning not so clear compared to my Garmin Street pilot i3 and Garmin 255w.
2) Speaker volume is weaker and lower than my other garmins so for those that are going to use this for the car you can hardly hear it if you’re driving on the freeway. But will do fine for those walking with this Unit.
It does wifi for Email function/Web broswer/Weather updates
1) Email is easy to setup. Just enter your email/and password and it’ll know how to set it up. Check email instantly without accessing a computer (but you need wifi). You can snap a photo and send it through email instantly (I’ll talk about the camera in a bit). I tried sending an jpeg photo attachment and check it through the GPS and 2 out of 4 photos can be displayed. The other 2 says can not. I am not sure why. The photo files are small too. Probably wait for a firmware update. In case you are wondering, it works like Outlook express. No need to go straight to the website. Downloads email for you. You won’t have to see page Advertisements!
2) Web broswer is a nice addition/bonus but it’s really slow and sluggish. Takes about 45 seconds to load yahoo page. Screen is small so you will have to do a lot of zooming in and dragging to look around. You will not be able to make out the words if it’s full screen. You can double tap an area and it’ll zoom there. Dragging is not smoothYou can only load 1 page. So no mulitple pages. It has favorites so you can bookmark websites. You can email a website/see history/ and a back page button (no forward). Screen freezes sometimes when loading because it’s slow. No flash = no youtube.
-websites load randomly slow sometimes.
you can leave out “www.” of an address but you need to put in .com .edu..etc.
-my favorite website for video game review is [...] but it takes like 5 minutes to load, but that’s because there’s so much on the website. so I dont expect to use much web browsing on this device as much as I liked to.
Some websites either don’t load correctly or too slow so you may have to refresh or reload.
Device gets slightly warmed when using wifi so expect it to drain some battery life fairly quickly.
MP3 FUNCTION:
1) speaker is too low. Sounds flat.
2) has a 2.5mm Headphone jack. Which is strange. So you need a 2.5mm to 3.5mm in order to use your music headset.
-I tried it with a converter and sound still sounds flat and no bass really.
-the only 2.5mm headphone that works is NOKIA HS-40 which I tried You will be able to hear both side clearly. Some other 2.5mm headsets have 1 side working. But sound still sounds flat and really no bass.
3) easy to use . select from album/artist/all/genre/playlist. and shows cover album.
4) you will need to supply your own micro SD card and upload any mp3 to it.
Camera function:
1) simple straight-up no custom features like black and white/exposure/no flash/no zoom. Just snap and save.
2) picture quality is ok. around 300 -800kb enough to send through email within device. Photos are kind of saturated meaning the colors have more intense color.
3) to access saved photos you have to go through camera then gallery.
4) It can geotag meaning that once you select this and snap a photo. It will add a placemark like a thumbtack on the photo. So when you select the photo in the gallery and click the thumbtack icon it’ll go straight to the location where you took it.
5) once you send a geotag photo through email it’ll also display the photo attachment and tells you in the message that it was sent near..*address*
6) you can turn on or off geotagging feature in case you don’t want others to know your location.
7) don’t expect to print out nice 6×4 photos. These photos are ok.
Photos can be used as wallpapers. but it’s more like a screen saver . So if you are in standby you will see your wallpaper but once you go into the system it’s not going to be there.
Contact fucntion:
1) you have to manually input , first name last name, phone number and addresses, email, personals like birthday anniversary, webpage, screen name, notes company name title dept. So no downloading your contacts straight from your emails account. However if you receive an email from someone you can click their email address and it’ll add to contact which is pretty handy.
Weather Function
1) Nice graphical interface and easy to read.
2) a week of forecast
3) requires wifi for updates.
4) can display weather for Where I am now (with gps on), a different city , a favorite (from a geotagged photo you created)
Calendar
1) shows screen in month display with all the dates or the entire week
2) I like it.
Tools:
1) where I am ? Gives you your location info, nearest address, nearest intersection. Ready accessible “hospital” police station, fuel
2) calculator looks good and simple . No scientific formula stuff.
3) Clock – Shows you the time in your location, 3 other locations (you choose)
Alarm- There are 29 ringtones ..that’s a lot. You can add a lot of alarms and save it. I added like 15 for fun. The minutes can only go in 0,5,10,15,20 so you can’t select 3:17am for instant.
world map-just show you a map. Don’t know why you can’t select or drag around.
has a nice stop watch
4) converter: Currency (I think it updates itself with wifi, but you can custom edit)
– has area, distance, speed, temperature, volume, weight
5) help manual A built in how to use the gps features. Very detailed
6) Notes-comes handy
7) check-list. You can create your own or it has preloaded ones like “bill payments” list where you check check boxes for Credit card, home mortgage… You can add more to the list. A couple of other lists they created for you : groceries, travel, vehicle maintenance.
Settings: This is where you go to turn on GPS mode on or off and your wifi on or off. I wish they were accessible in the main screen so I dont have to keep tapping around.
Standby time is very decent. they say it can standby up to 250 hours. About 10 days before it has to be recharged. By-the-way you need to buy a USB gps ac power adapter. It doesnt come with one. It only has a car charger. You can get it from ebay for about for someone who sells it under this model.. Or
* buy a 3rd party usb charger for under Garmin 255w Which I have and works . They are both the same thing. Ebay sellers just title it 295w because the latest just came out.
Wifi on drains really fast. Expect a good 2.5 hour wifi on. battery is rated 1200mAh
They say up to 4 hours battery use on GPS but I haven’t been on a long trip with this so I can’t rate the battery life. I would just plug in the car charger because I don’t have to worry about battery plus it’s charging.
If you use this device on a walking trip don’t constantly hold it up and have it on. You’re not going to walk a block in 2 minutes. So turn on from standby mode and take a look, Then press the power button once and it’ll go into standby mode ..The gps receiver will instantly be turned off to save power. Turn it on when you get to the end of the block or if you’re lost. you can last a entire day with it .
I know this is a long review of the product.
Here are some improvements I like to see:
1) a bigger battery.
2) fix some jpeg issues. I can’t open some in email attachments (not a big deal ) but fix it please.
3) faster system turn on (takes exactly 1 minute) So you need to have it on standby.
4) louder speaker
5) instant wifi on off in the main menu or a switch on the side to turn it on off
If this GPS function alone was the same speed as my Garmin 255w then I’ll return it. But I am keeping it because it’s faster and has a really nice slim design.
Garmin nüvi 295W 3.5-Inch Widescreen Wi-Fi Portable GPS Navigator Feature
- Ships in Certified Frustration-Free Packaging
- Spoken street names (e.g. “Turn right on Elm street in 500 ft.”)
- Dual-orientation automatically switches between portrait and landscape view
- 3 MP camera with auto-focus
- Wi-Fi hotspot connectivity
- MP3 player with 2.5mm headphone jack/audio line-out
- 1-step navigation from contacts, e-mail, and local search results
Garmin nüvi 295W 3.5-Inch Widescreen Wi-Fi Portable GPS Navigator Overview
Garmin’s nuvi 295W offers a new take on an old favorite with Wi-Fi connectivity, a 3 MP camera with auto-focus, dual orientation capability and much more.
Get Connected
Wi-Fi connectivity on the nuvi 295W provides a full desktop experience with an HTML browser so you can surf the web whenever and wherever you choose. Check and send e-mail, including Hotmail, G-mail, AOL mail, POP3 and IMAP, and view email attachments of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF and JPG files. You can also search an abundance of customer-rated points of interest (POIs), such as restaurants, hotels and more, using Google Local Search.
Get Going
With a single tap on the dual-oriented screen, you can avoid writing down addresses and go straight to your destination. nuvi 295W offers a 1-touch navigation from your e-mail, address book and local search results. Additionally, the unique 3MP camera geotags pictures so you can create routes to them. You can also send the picture to a friend to route to or upload to the web to auto-locate on a map.
Get Turn-By-Turn Directions
With an intuitive interface that greets you with simple icons and a scrollable menu, nuvi 295W is the perfect travel companion for getting around town. With a quick tap on an icon or flick of the menu, you can easily look up addresses and services and get voice-prompted, turn-by-turn directions that speak street names to your destination. It comes preloaded with detailed City Navigtor NT street maps for the US and Canada with nearly 6 million points of interest (POIs) such as stores, restaurants, hotels, entertainment venues, gas stations, ATMs and more, and speed limits for the most major roads. cityXplorer maps are also available for your nuvi 295W. cityXplorer maps provide the latest detailed roads and points of interest for metroploitan areas.
Go Beyond Navigation
nuvi 295W isn’t just for navigation. A quick tap provides access to the lengthy f
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