I have had this unit for about 8 months. It has given me no problems what so ever. The bad thing about it for me is how basic it is. If you want bluetooth compatibility, traffic updates, movie times, etc on your GPS, then this is not the device for you. But if all you want is to get around and find places, then this unit will work well.

The price seems a little high right now for what it does ($180). For that price I would expect bluetooth compatibility. This unit does not say the road names, it just says turn left or turn right in 200 feet(not a big deal). When you look places up, it has their phone number and address (usually) which is nice because if its late at night, you can call first to see if they are still open.

This GPS has an SD card reader on the side, which can be used to view pictures in slideshow mode when you don't need the unit for navigation.

The screen is very bright during the day, so you can easily see the screen. And a nice feature is that when it gets dark, the screen automatically changes colors to 'night' mode, which helps when driving at night (the screen dims and the bright white background colors change to dark blues and blacks).

The trip features are nice. It keeps track of your average speed, how long you spent moving, how long you spent stopped, total travel time, how many miles you've gone, etc.

It takes about a minute to a minute and a half to find your location from a cold start, but if you leave it powered all the time (with a car in which the cig lighter stays on when you turn the car off) it never loses the location (not sure if that is bad for it).

The battery life is very good (about 4-5 hours).

There are many add-ons that a technologically advanced person can add to it. Such as custom points of interest (you can download them or even make your own, and you can set alerts so that it warns you when you are close to a certain place or when you are speeding in a school zone). You can add different vehicle icons to use as the car on the screen.

Overall, it is a decent, but very basic navigation device. Not many bells or whistles, but it gets you from point A to point B well.

I've had this Garmin nuvi 205w now for about a week. Brought on Black Friday at Pep Boys. I make deliveries so I need to know where and how to get there. So far, I only have one problem with it. If the street and city do not match in its database, then there's "NO Matches Found". Even if you know for a fact that, the city and address are there. Address are found by there designated towns main Post Office. For example, here out in Long Island NY I tried to look for address 4 Third Street in Garden City Park. I got "NO Matches Found", I searched again using New Hyde Park as the city name and then my Garmin found a match. My Garmin could not find Garden City Park, only Garden City. Garden City Park main post office is in New Hyde Park. If there was a search by zip code, this would fix this problem easily, but there is none. Nevertheless, for the most part it works VERY WELL. I give it 4 Stars out of 5. The voice commands are clear and there's pleanty of room for custom settings. Also for some reason you have to buy a data cable in order to register the unit. I picked one up cheep on e-bay. It's also used to upload upgrades to your unit thru your computer.

I think the Garmin 205w is a great entry level GPS unit. It doesn't have advanced features like bluetooth, or text-to-speech (which announces street names) so instead of saying turn left on main st, it says turn left in .2 miles. I don't really care either way. The only thing I care about in a GPS is clear, understandable, accurate directions, and the garmin does a great job on that.

There are a few negitive things, but they are minor.

1. The estimated time usually optimistic. With traffic, you will almost never make the projected time, but its not that far off.

2. Directions are not always the best. There are some routes where it tells me to turn, when obviously there is a better route. The difference is often minor, so its not a horrible problem

3. The posted speed limits are sometimes wrong. This is also a minor issue, just don't 100% trust whatever the GPS tells you the speed limit is.

Although not perfect, I doubt you will find a better unit for under 200.00. Unless you need maps of Canada/Europe or advanced features, this is probably the best GPS out there. I don't know how I got by without it.

I am quite Satisfied with this GPS. It is pretty good with accuracy. But it sometimes hangs up or gives wrong directions in Cities.

I've never used a GPS unit before, but with a two-week driving trip to the UK coming up, I thought it would be a useful tool. I was wrong; it was an INDISPENSIBLE tool. Seriously, if I could give this thing 10 stars I would.

It saved my life on numerous occasions and lowered the stress level of driving in an unfamiliar country (on the left side of the road, with roundabouts instead of intersections, driving late at night and on rural roads!) to a minimum. We also purchased the UK map add-on, popped it in and we were ready to go. We changed it over to the British voice for fun and was a god-send.

Especially helpful was the ability to download locations and addresses directly from Google Maps into the Favorites folder. We did this each night as we planned the next day's journey. It allowed us to be spontaneous.

We ran into an issue with our rental car where the aux output failed and even though the Garmin was plugged in, it was not getting any charge. This, of course, was not the Garmin's fault but it left us kinda stuck until we could get the car fixed. But we simply turned the Garmin off when it would tell us there was a long stretch of driving (five or more miles) with no road changes and then turned it back on just before the change (using the trip meter) We also turned down the brightness. Each time it required the signal quickly with no effort and we were able to get over 8 hours out of the four hour battery charge. But once it was plugged in and getting a charge as it should, there were no issues. But it was good to know that in an emergency, with a little tweaking, you can get several more hours of use.

One time we ran into some emergency construction work in Cardiff and we were unable to turn where it was directing us. However, it recalculated quickly and we arrived at our destination only a few minutes later.
I especially liked how easily it found gas stations as we were in rural areas for the most part. We never lost a signal, although on occasion in a dense and close city like Edinburgh it took some time to acquire the signal when first switch on, probably because of the very tall buildings. But once acquired, it never went away.

The voice was easy to hear, we had no problems even in loud driving conditions (radio on, noisy road, rain). The screen was plenty bright, even in daytime. The touch screen was very easy to use and very easy to change. Having the volume right on the first screen was great because we didn't have to go hunting for it when we did want to turn it down.

It was easy to dismount, pop in my bag and take with us. Apparently, these little gems are stolen a lot in the UK, when we entered Stratford, there was actually a sign that said Welcome to Stratford, be sure to take your SatNav out of your car if you don't want to lose it!

Upon my return to the states, it's functioned perfectly with the US Maps.
I don't write that many Amazon reviews, but this product was so good and such a life saver that I really wanted to tell others. This particular model suited my needs perfectly and while I know there are fancier editions available, for my purposes, I didn't need Bluetooth, to pick up email, an MP3 player or anything else like that.

All I just needed something to get me from A to B in one piece with a minimum of stress. This did the trick and then some. Considering that without the Garmin we would STILL be wasting our vacation time arguing over maps and missed turns and trying to figure out the unfamiliar UK road system this little guy was worth twice the price I paid for it.
I love it and I'm going to buy a couple as Christmas presents.