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 Good inexpensive unit. Works well on Motorcycles Sep 06, 2010
Good product. But, be careful when you plug in power cords. If you have a loose pin in the plug of the power cord it will push the contact in the Nuvi down inside and the game is over. You can't open it and fix it. Trust me I tried. Cost $49.95 plus shipping to send to Garmin for repair. Might as well by another used or refurbed. on Amazon.
Great device Jun 18, 2010
This is my first GPS unit and I love it. Wish I would have gotten one earlier.
 Interesting May 07, 2010
This is a very good product and easy to use. I have had this nuvi for a few years now but the only problem is that it sometimes malfunctions. While it is usually accurate sometimes it is not and sometimes recalculates your route unneccessarily. I would recomment buying a newer model.
 When it's good, it's really good, but when it's bad, it's very, very bad May 07, 2010
The Garmin Nuvi 200 GPS offers the basic GPS features and includes restaurants, hotels, gas stations, airports, government offices, etc. in the maps. There is an option to show these locations as you are driving. You can also save your favorite destinations or the place that you're at right now. There are not advanced features such as traffic reports. The displayed map shows the route and a voice announces where to turn. At the bottom right corner is a display of how far it is until the next turn. You can press that next turn display and it will show the following turn. Keep pressing and it will go through all of the turns for the entire trip. However, the information display for these future turns is somewhat inadequate. For example it may say to turn right on Hwy 1, but it won't tell you what town or state that is.
As a basic GPS unit, the Nuvi 200 works well about 99% of the time. It's the other 1% that you have to watch out for. One of the first times I was using the unit, I was in a hotel room and looking for businesses. It asked me if I wanted to continue searching for satellites. I said no. Then when I left the hotel I could not get the unit to acquire satellites no matter how many times I turned it off and on. It was acting like it was working but it was in some kind of worthless simulation mode. We got totally lost in a big city and I was really unhappy. It has done other things like when I was driving home on a major state highway, it told me to turn down some little county road in the middle of nowhere, 250 miles from home. And once I was in a neighborhood and wanted to get out of the neighborhood to return home. So the Nuvi 200 sent me down a dead end street. That dead end street didn't go to my house.
By the way, there are reports that you should not save your home address and label it as your home. Reportedly some people who have had their cars broken into also had their GPS stolen. And then the crooks have used the GPS to go to their house and break in.
 good for the first year... Feb 25, 2010
I purchased this as a basic GPS need. I don't need a lot of bells and whistles. I am in the Oregon National Guard infantry and a hiker and a geocacher. I own a couple of GPS and have used civilian and military models alike. I am also very good at using map and compass.
This GPS was okay in the first year. It got me near where I wanted to go. Then a few months ago it started to download some updates when I turned my truck on. I also plugged it into the computer for updates as well. It is current on everything save the maps.
A few months ago it started to take a few minutes before finding the satellites. Since it was winter I assumed that it was cloud or tree cover. I've discovered this is not the case. It occurs every time I turn on the vehicle now and it has taken up to twenty minutes for it to find the satellites. Most of the time it takes ten minutes.
Annoyances.
I understand the desire to make money selling $70 maps every now and then. But then again we use a lot of Department of Defense satellites, there are no real-time traffic updates on this model, and I just don't see why there is this need to do so. Google Maps on my iPhone 3GS works better than this GPS does now. It is faster, tells me which direction I am facing, and has regularly updated maps with satellite view. So with all of this I don't see why Garmin wants to charge me for map updates.
The start up screen. I want to get in my truck and go. I'd like the screen to go immediately to the map screen, not the menu screen. Its a minor thing but it does get old after a while.
They keypad is not QWERTY and because of this I am much slower in typing than I normally am. There isn't an option that I can find to change this anywhere.
The GPS has put me in neighborhoods that were not there. Note... not a map issue... but the wrong neighborhood. I was moving to a POI and had the route and then it blinked onto a different map area. I just kept driving, ignoring the error, and then after I 'missed my turn' into a street that wasn't there, it blinked and went back to the section of the map that I really was in.
The accuracy of the GPS varies. I understand that there is this thing called drift in a GPS, but I also understand that something is off when I am driving at 30MPH on a street and it tells me to turn right 100' feet after I've passed the turn yet showing me that I'm arriving at the turn on the map.
Could use a different turn-by-turn view where it lists the first three or four turns coming up on the right hand side of the screen. When navigating a freeway system in an urban area with lots of merge lanes I don't want to hear the voice telling me to turn left but want to see the bigger picture of the two four-way intersections I'm coming to and where I've got to be. Context is important in maps.
I wish there were more folders than just favorite. Someone gets into a truck with me, I turn on the GPS and go to favorites and they see various locations listed that bring up questions, such as 'cancer clinic' or 'therapy'. Also, I do geocache and have added some to the favorites and it's filled up the folder. Would rather have a favorites category to be able to turn on and off.
The interface is just too clunky, not streamlined, and needs some innovative thinking.
I've tried going to the Garmin website to submit this review but the website always gives me an error or doesn't load.
I used to be a huge Garmin guy, carried a model in Iraq that worked better than our military models. I bought a Magellan and hated it and went back to Garmin. When it came time to get a car model I never considered another brand. However I am so disappointed and dissatisfied with this model that I would seriously look into another brand. A shame too since there a lot of people locally that work for Garmin.
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