Garmin Nuvi 275T or not?

We took our Garmin to GB in 2011 & to Spain in 2010. The extra cost for a GPS was quoted at 18E per day! That is a lot of extra money for even a 1 week trip. My friend arrived at the car rental agency in London and was told that they were all out of GPSs (although he had pre-booked one). Also, I pre-load addresses to key locations while still at home. When you are travelling, hit your favourites and up comes the info - very handy. Enjoy your trip!

I have been using Garmin sat nav technology for about 12 years, maybe more. I've always been happy with them, but technology does move on and the 275 was one of the first generations of the nuvi lines so it is some years old. If you do get it make sure you upgrade the maps and points of interests. The basic roads won't have changed but there will have been changes. Many of the POIs will have changed. The voice has been improved. If that is all ok with you and the price is right consider it. Get familiar with the operation before you travel, and get your waypoints and favourites in before you travel.

I had purchased TomToms exclusively for at least the last five years (both US only for home and US/Europe for travel). I was happy with them until the last one. The last device I bought didn't work out of the package. After sending it back they sent me the wrong device (not new, no Europe, no traffic, no lifetime updates). I sent it back again and they sent me the wrong device again (not new, no traffic, no lifetime updates). If I originally bought the one they sent me it would have cost less than half (not to mention $20 for gas price app that is now worthless, plus postage to return it twice). I'll never buy another TomTom. If you choose a TomTom and it doesn't work, immediately return it for a refund. So I bought a Garmin Nuvi 275 for our next trip to Spain in April. I liked the fact that it's small and light (only 5 oz. in my carry on). The smaller screen gives you longer battery life for biking or walking (although I really don't use it for either). It has worked fine at home, we'll see how it performs on the road. The updates promised (not lifetime) worked as advertised.

Christine, I've taken an older Garmin Nüvi to Europe for the last several years, and it's been enormously helpful on a couple of occasions. I also pack it along when I'm touring around cities, as it's useful when walking as well. However, it's important to note that GPS units are not infallible and they do make mistakes. I'd suggest packing along a good Map as well, and double-checking the information from the GPS with that as well as local signs or landmarks. With GPS units, the local names must be entered precisely or you could find yourself at a completely different destination. Don't trust them implicitly! One of the "weak points" of some small GPS units is battery life. That won't be a problem when travelling by car as you can connect to the vehicle. However, if you're using it in "pedestrian mode", I'd suggest using it only when necessary and leaving it switched off at other times. Happy travels!

My son rented from Avis in France last year. He added a TomTom for €5/ day and was happy with it. Check the cost of adding it to your rental. We've used our Garmin in Europe and liked it. Another option is iPad or smartphone maps navigation. The cost of prepaid data sims is dropping in Europe, Italy included but not France. We may take the Garmin, but I plan to mainly use the iPad and iPhone in England this summer.

Heh - this is timely. Just last night I blew the dust off my Garmin nuvi 275T in anticipation of my upcoming trip to Slovenia & Croatia in May. I'd echo most of the comments above. It's an older unit, but perfectly adequate for my needs. I like the size/format - for a European trip, I would not want a larger GPS. This is actually my second nuvi 275T - my first was picked from my pocket while getting on the trolly in Lisbon on a trip a few years back. Worst of all, it was pinched on the first day of our trip, so I only got to use it for a few hours I learned several lessons from that, including: 1) that pocket that closes with velcro is a stupid place to carry a GPS! 2) Bring maps along with the assumption that you will not have the benefit of a GPS! Anyway, I liked it so much I bought another when I came home. I'm in the process of updating the maps & POI database. The update process is not free of friction, but I'm sure I'll get it done shortly. BTW, at least for me, the price of the lifetime updates (4/year) was a only a few buck more than a single update, so I sprung for that. I use mine occasionally while driving on vacations in the US. It's great to have in Europe. Not the newest technology but still extremely useful and nice to have.

I always prefer to take my own GPS and buy maps if needed. That is because I'm familiar with it, I can, in the calm of my house, plug the addresses on the favorite list and check if the location indicated in the map matches the ones on Google Street View or website, and don't have to get a grasp of a new GPS unit when arriving from a long flight.

My 275T has saved me from getting lost several times and rescued me other times when I came upon unexpected detours and uncharted roads. A GPS is not perfect but it sure beats the alternative. The biggest problem I have encountered was not the fault of the GPS but the simple fact that local governments do add or reroute roads and streets, and it can take up to two years before the changes show up on either paper or GPS maps. But stick with the GPS and it will get things straighted out a mile or two down the road. The Nuvi can come in handy helping you find your way back to your hotel if you get lost while walking, but be sure to set it for pedestrian mode first. And be doubly sure to switch it back for driving before you set out in the car! Its a scary feeling to be going down the road and have the unit go haywire because it is still in pedestrian mode. Also, you can purchase a charger with American, European and British adaptors for about $39. It can come in handy if you plan to use the unit outside the car.

Christine, We took our Garmin last year to Italy, and it worked great. It saved us eleven euros per day on the rental fee, and we had the car for over two weeks. Even if it saves you one time, from blowing through a fixed radar site or from entering a ZTL, it will have paid for itself. Cheers.

These responses have been wonderful. Thank all of you very much. This is a great helpline! We too decided that, for the cost of renting a gps with the car rental, we might as well purchase one and become familiar with it ahead of time. Never having had a gps I feel somewhat limited tech- wise, but will muddle through it. Once we get it from Amazon, do we have to get the s directly from Garmin or is there a less expensive way? Since this version has both North America and Europe, we would have to both.

sorry for the typo ... mean to say ... get the s directly from Garmin or is there a less expensive way

get the s directly from Garmin or is there a less expensive way

I give up ... have tried to type "updates" three times now to no avail

Don't get upset, Christine. The automatic electronic editor which maintains this Helpline is prog-rammed to remove words that it thinks might be used to bring down the Helpline. There are precautions that have to be taken. Your word just happened to be one on the list. When you mis-spell words they get through. That's why you will sometimes see regulars with poor spelling - intentionally. Sorry it got your goat... we've all been there.

Thanks much, Nigel. I guess it's just been a long week :(

Christine, I looked up the Garmin site where we downloaded the Italy maps for our Garmin before our trip. A couple things are different. They have split the Italy and France download into two parts now, at $ 70.00 each. In 2011, I got the software for both for under $50.00. The European download is now $99.00, but pretty much covers everything. The site list the few countries that have only partial mapping. The software now has traffic jam warnings, with re-routing suggestions, more ATM locations, and will now verbally warn you of Limited Traffic Zones areas. It still comes with fixed radar site warnings, also. I checked your model, and you can download the info directly through your computer, or have them mail you the Micro SD card(s), that plug into the unit. This is the Garmin Europe software link here: https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?pID=6299 Cheers. P.S. Funny how the word (up dates) will not go through.

As long as I've actually read the manual (have to print it out online) I'll share one tip. If you use the 275 for walking/biking, you can go to menu and lower the brightness on the screen to get longer battery life. Also, Another technique I've used in the past, when the GPS comes up with a route that doesn't seem realistic (for example, says 4 hours to arrive when I know it should take 1 1/2 hours). Check assumptions first, are you in car, bike, walk mode? Is it searching for fastest route or avoiding tolls? Check your address spelling carefully on both the road and city. Often, the spelling you entered wasn't exactly right so it's taking you to a different place. If none of those seems to fix the problem, choose city center, point of interest near destination, and find either the TI or parking near the center. When I arrive, I usually hit the TI first anyway and can ask for help finding the specific address that didn't work on my device.

Crash, When I bought my 275 online (I think Amazon) it was about $127 and included initial s for both US and Europe. I've run Europe and didn't seem to have an issue with it being divided into pieces. One reason I was not a fan of Garmin was the cost of updates.

Christine, For some reason I can say updates - I have had problems with other words in the past and thought it was me at first.

We just bought a new Garmin 275T from Amazon in the USA for a trip to Belgium and France this summer. After reading this thread I am still unclear whether the Garmin will plug into a European rental car of if I need to buy an adapter plug to fit a European car. Can anyone advise?
Thanks!

All lighter holes in the world are the same.

I spent April in Spain with my 275T. Here's my review. First, the most recent question. Yes, it will plug into any rental car lighter you get in Europe. Over all C minus. I liked that it was lightweight. It worked fine for most freeway driving - except the time it randomly started us heading north, when we wanted to go south, for no good reason. Transistioning to city driving was generally good, it seemed to take the correct exits to get us close to where we were going. City driving, sometimes okay, sometimes miserable. This was the area the device suffered most (and the area I want a GPS most) - getting me to an address. Multiple times it took us somewhere other than where we wanted to be - and said we were arriving at our destination. Once it took us to two different places, across town from each other, while supposedly navigating to the same address. More than once it wanted to take us the wrong way down a one-way street (yes it was in car mode) and wouldn't change it's mind or choose an alternate route. Battery life, seemed fine. I used it three times in pedestrian mode and battery life wasn't an issue. Two times it worked well, showed me walking 4.7 km per hour while the map tracked with me. Third time, it was on and supposedly tracking satellites but not moving or showing me moving - wierd. That's the thing with this unit it seems to have random brain dumps. Traffic, don't know. We didn't experience a single traffic backup in Spain. The mount fell apart early in our trip. The suction cup came unscrewed and a small piece fell under the seat. Fortunately we were able to find all the parts and reassemble it. With care, we didn't have another problem during the trip. Generally, I wouldn't recommend it. I think you can do better than the 275 T in the same price range.

Re a couple of points Brad mentioned: The GPS in my wife's car had been preset at the factory to be like a compass, with N always at the top and the pointer showing our direction. That can be very disorienting when you are trying to drive. It took a lot of searching and several steps to set the direction so the arrow always pointed in the direction we were going. My Nuvi, on the other hand, was set right when it came from the factory. You might want to take battery life into consideration if considering buying a used unit. Battery life in mine, which I bought new, was fine for the first couple of years, but after several years, it will not hold a charge unless plugged in, so it is no longer of much use in pedestrian mode. And, it must be plugged in for a while before it starts working in the car. I plan to replace it later this year with a newer model. This time I will skip the costly maps-uppdaate option and plan on getting another unit every few years. (The correct spelling of uppdaate kept disappearing in the previous sentence.) PS: Updating the maps does work better if you load the data through your computer instead of directly to the GPS.

Having just driven extensively in Slovenia and Croatia (and a bit of Montenegro) over the past few weeks with this same GPS unit, I'll add my 2 cents. I think it's a great unit, nearly perfect for my needs. It really helped us a lot, and made driving around The Land of Scarce Vowels generally a relaxing, hassle-free pleasure. I'd add that it was often entertaining to hear it spit out street names (better than I'd do, I'm sure, but still often humorous). Now, I don't think anyone should ever blindly follow everything that a GPS tells you to do (I've heard of people driving into lakes and oceans by doing that). A GPS is a wonderful aid to navigation. It is not an "autopilot" that you can always reply on unquestioningly. It has its limitations: It has its own logic that is uses to determine what it thinks is the best way to get you somewhere. You may have a different logic. I often found that it wanted to send me off on some side road (once in a while, some unpaved track) that would eventually lead me to a major highway which probably would, in fact, get me to my destination a few minutes faster than the route I was taking. When it told me to turn onto some gravel road over a hill, I'd chuckle and say "no dear, why don't you do some recalculating?" which it would do as I drove past "unpaved road to Crngxa Grjaklj" or somesuch. Likewise, it didn't know about the road construction around Rovinj that required a detour half-way around the new town. Not a problem, I had a map. Which brings me to suggestion Numero Uno: Use your GPS along with a good map, not as a substitute for one. (more...)

I found a great way to work this: my Nuvi, suction-cupped to the windshield, with the power cord (on a spring-loaded retractor) down to the outlet, with a good (paper) Michelin map folded and held behind/held in place by the cord. I could easily glance between the GPS display and the map - recommended. I found the Nuvi extremely helpful for one thing I hadn't expected: getting through roundabouts. Roundabouts are not difficult, but for us Americans who typically only encounter them while driving in Europe (ie, not that often), it can be a challenge to manage the two critical roundabout tasks: merging properly without crashing, and figuring out which "exit" to take out of the roundabout. The Nuvi takes care of the "which hole do I aim for?" question so you can concentrate on not swapping paint with other vehicles - it shows you a graphic depiction of the roundabout as you approach, so a quick glance tells you "OK, I need to exit at 11:00" and it announces verbally "in 250 meters, take the 2nd exit from the roundabout". This is a really effective way to eliminate all roundabout stress. Remember that GPS technology does have its limits. It can't see the satellites when you are in a very dense urban area surrounded by tiny, narrow streets and tall-ish buildings close in. For example, I tried to navigate by foot using the GPS in the old town of Rovinj (tiny streets) and it was useless. Had similar issues in a couple of other small, old towns when on foot, but had the same problems with the GPS features of my iPhone. And its info is only as good as whats in your latest update. It's not magic. It's an incredibly useful technology, but you still need to use it with some common sense. As long as you do, I think it'll serve you well. I think this is a great small GPS for travel, I'm very happy with mine and plan to use it for years to come. YMMV.

We had a Garmin that was about 3-4 years old. So it would have cost $99 to purchase Europe maps. So instead we purchased the Nuvi 275T for about $140 with Europe maps. The traffic feature worked great. Shortly after leaving Frankfurt, it showed a traffic delay of about 45 minutes, so we clicked "avoid" and garmin directed us off the Autobahn at the next exit, and we had a wonderful drive throught the countryside avoiding a massive traffic jam. We often use the Garmin for "traffic ahead" advice in the Bay Area, even though we don't need direction.
Ditto previous posters about Garmin getting confused when in new construction. Fortunately Europe has lots of roundabouts, so my husband and I developed a plan that he would keep driving around the roundabout, until I could digest the signs against the map and chose the correct exit out of the roundabout.

FYI, I've been looking at these this weekend. Our GPS died, and we need one for Italy in October. I narrowed it down to the Garmin 275T and Garmin 1370T, both with European maps. On Amazon, the 275T was $249, the 1370T was $154. I checked the specs, and the 1370T weighs just 4.8 oz and has a 4.3" display, while the 275T weighs 1 pound and has a smaller, 3.5" display. I'm all for packing light, so I went back to order the 1370T and the price had jumped to $199! I ordered it anyway (along with a hard-shell case for a bargain $2.59). I hadn't noticed prices jumping like this on Amazon ...

My husband and I just returned from a trip to Europe and while we were there our Garmin 770 froze and quit on us. We had to purchase a new one . . .now on arriving home and contacting Garmin we got the 770 working again and I have a Europe Garmin sitting in the drawer. I'd love to sell it to you. :)

don't leave home without this if you drive. I took wife and me thru driveway-sized roads thru Germany to get around detours. Was flawless, and I finally learned to trust it. Last Fall from Toulouse thru Andorra to BArcelona and all thru Provence and Riviera. made it easier than travelling here almost (except we can understand the streets here better!).
trust it trust me.

Can't believe that I neglected to post a follow-up email, but here it is. Prior to our France/Italy trip last June we did purchase a Garmin Nuvi 1300 LM and subsequently purchased the European maps to load onto the GPS. Without a doubt, this was the best investment of our trip! It never failed us, and we won't leave home without it. Happy traveling!!!

This is both a reply and a question: (reply) During our last trip to France/Belgium/Netherlands (summer 2010) we took our Garmin nuvi 275T and it worked flawlessly, including routing us around a traffic accident and to our destination on the A10 in The Netherlands. Navigating from Amsterdam to an obscure hotel in the Latin Quarter of Paris was turn-by-turn exact, no issues whatsoever. So was driving from Paris to Brugge to the exact address. (question) Is it worth it to update two year old maps?
We are leaving for The Netherlands at the end of March and planning to bring the 275T. We don't have lifetime maps, our last Europe map update was 2011. We are only traveling within The Netherlands for the duration of this trip. What is the benefit of spending the additional +/- $100? Thanks!

There will be changged p-o-i tables and some traffic junctions will certainly have turned into roundabouts if my bet is right. Some speed limits will have changed. If you are OK with that, and keep looking carefully at signs; if you are like me you will let the go. Just keep your eyes open and you will be fine.

I paid extra for lifetime upgrades of US and Europe maps when I bought my 275T five years ago, but I probably would not do it again. I had to add a microchip to download an upgrade last year, but I am facing the same problem again this spring. Even new maps are a year or two behind, such as a new road I take regularly at home that did not show up on map updates for two years. The screen shows your car in space, but it is still accurate for location and connecting roads. Anyway, I have read too many posts about old GPS units dying in the middle of a trip, so I don't see the need to get the last mile out of mine. I will use it this summer with the 2012 maps and replace it next year, and probably keep that one for five years. But unless the price for updates drops and downloads get simpler, I will do withoout the updates in the future.