Agree with all of the positive comments made by other reviewers. This is a very good model for basic navigation. Can't imagine how we got along prior to the advent of GPS. I grew up with Thomas Guide and then Map Quest. GPS make my life a whole lot easier.

I have owned quite a few GPS units all including Phone, Laptop and Dedicated. Flat out before I even get started the Garmin Nuvi 265WT is the best I have ever owned. Let me just make a couple of comments on the most important features.

Touch Screen Interface
Very intuitive and easy to use. Touch screen is responsive but not instantaneous. What I particularly like is the ability to switch to a top down view by touching the screen. Once done you can use your finger to drag the map around at any zoom point. Once done you can hit the back button and resume your 3D view.

Turn by Turn
You have two options here. You can use one of the Text to Speech voices or one of natural voices. The text to speech voices will give you more information such as street names. This is what I use and even though you can tell it's a computer generated voice its quality is superb. The 265WT does a good job at keeping you updated. Also at any time you can hit the turn Icon and it will speak the distance to the next turn, giving you street name as well as direction. The audio is quite loud and in my noisy little Scion I have no problem hearing the messages.

Maps
I have found the map accuracy quite good. I live in Northern virginal and it seems to be very well updated as many of the very new streets included.

Automatic Routing
Very effective. You can choose between the quickest or the shortest with options to avoid U-Turns, Highways, Toll Roads, Traffic, Ferries. The automatic rerouting is faster than my TeleNav phone and my Laptop computers.

Points of Interest
On my TeleNav phone GPS system I can enter any business in the national database and I can get directions, address and phone number. This is where the 265WT falls short. The TeleNav system has the advantage of searching online. Since the 265WT is limited to onboard memory there is a limit to the number of points of interest. A good example is I was looking for "Off Broadway Shoes" and the unit could not find them. However a search for "Payless Shoes" worked very well.

Traffic Alerts
The lifetime free traffic comes at a price. You will get popup adds. These are very small popups that supposedly only come when you are in the menu. This is not true. I have gotten them while in the navigation screen. For now they it seems to be once per trip but there is nothing to say they wont start getting more frequent. The other thing I don't like about the messages is that you have to hit them to continue and doing so takes you out of the nav screen to a kind of favorites screen. You have to hit the back button to get back to your navigations screen.
How well does the traffic system work. I live in Northern VA and have coverage throughout my area. The included radio fails to pick up a single signal without using an external antenna. Sadly you can just go down and purchase an FM antenna.. The Power cable has a 3/32" jack. What I did was to pick up a 3/32" plug from Radio Shack and soldered a 4' wire to the tip pin on the connector. Once draped out one of the windows I get very frequent traffic updates.
Once you start getting traffic reports I found them to be accurate and they do help. You can automatically avoid high traffic arias or do it manually as they accrue.
I am still debating if the popup adds are worth the effort.

Bluetooth Integration
This is my favorite feature. I can keep my keyboard locked Motorola Q in my pants pocket and use my 265WT to make and receive all my calls at a touch of a button. All my phone features are available on the 265WT. Phonebook, Call history, Voice Recognition. The voice quality is quite acceptable on both ends. As a matter of fact the echo I get on my Motorola is not there when using the 265WT as a hands free set.

Picture Viewer
I found this to be a very useless feature. If the photos are very big it takes forever for the 265WT to load them. This may be due to the slow access to the SD card slot.

There are other features like the ability to connect the 265WT to your PC and automatically add favorite locations using GoogleMaps. All in all I am very happy with my purchase and would purchase it again.

FYI the Nuvi 265WT is the same unit as the Nuvi 255W without the Bluetooth ability and the FM reliever cable (GTM 25). You can even purchase the GTM 25 from Garmin. If you don't want the Bluetooth feature and don't currently need the traffic feature you can pick up the Nuvi 255W cheaper.

But, then again I have nothing else to compare it to other than my wife's Garmin Nuvi 205W, 3.5-Inch. Of course, this model version has more features and a wider screen, so it is much nicer. I have actually learned two other ways of getting to and from work that I was not aware of. One time it did sort of take me out of the way into some congestion. My thought is that it calculates a certain route as being faster and can't anticipate traffic jams too far in advance or on another road altogether. My preference is to always take the freeway unless of course there is major congestion or worse, an accident. One time, it was near rush hour. I then configured it to avoid the freeway and take a detour. It was wonderful to get home from a particular store in about half the time; and while I was driving on the street, at certain points I could look at up at the freeway and see the stop and go traffic. May have worn a smile all the way home.

My wife and I own an inexpensive Mio DigiWalker GPS that was given to us as a gift a couple years ago, and it's done a pretty good job of getting us places, but it had it's share of glitches and errors, so I figured it was time to upgrade to a better model, the Garmin 265WT, rated as a best buy by a leading consumer magazine. I figured I'd use the new Garmin and give my wife the Mio for her car.

My first impressions of the 265WT were great--lots of features (avoid toll roads or highways if desired, for example) that the Mio didn't have. The graphics on the 265WT are outstanding, and the widescreen is much easier to read than the normal width screen on our Mio. The free FM traffic appears to work great, and the ads are not at all intrusive. Having the unit speak street names as it gives directions is also great.

But the more I put the 265WT to the test, the more I noticed the same annoying glitches that I had with my Mio. On my first attempt at navigating somewhere--to my office--the unit could not find my office address. This bothered me a little because the office complex has been there for easily more than 10 years, but still the map did not contain this data. I had expected the maps to be of higher quality and accuracy than those on the Mio.

But no big deal, I thought, and decided to take it on a trip to a furniture outlet mall about 45 minutes from home this past weekend. Once again, it failed to find this relatively old outlet mall in it's database, so we had to just set a course for the town it was in, knowing from memory that it was somewhere near the main interstate--I could have done this myself without a GPS. So needless to say I was getting a bit annoyed. And in addition to the fact that it couldn't find the places I wanted to go, it took FOREVER to show any results for my searches. With the Mio, I get search results (including if it can't find any matches) in a matter of seconds. With the Garmin, I'd type in a search and it would have an hourglass symbol on the screen for literally a minute or more--very, very frustrating. I wanted to say to it, "if you can't find what I'm looking for, fine, but at least let me know quickly so I can enter another search!"

Finally, driving in another unfamiliar area of Pennsylvania the same day, I had stopped at a convenience store and wanted to get back to the interstate. The 265WT directed me to make a few turns to circle around the store, and then, to make an ILLEGAL left-hand turn onto the main road! As if that weren't enough, it asked me to make yet another ILLEGAL left-hand turn later in the trip! Well, now I was getting seriously ticked off. These types of errors I had expected from the inexpensive Mio, but with Garmin I thought I was paying a little more for "the best." Apparently not, or apparently, the state of navigation systems is pretty sad if the consumer magazine considers this model a "best buy."

I gave the 265WT two stars because I do think it offers some great features and graphics. But for me, if the main reason you buy a GPS--THE MAPS AND THE MAP DATA--are no good, all the rest is just flimsy window dressing. So I returned mine.

Also, for some people, the sound of the navigation voice is important--I'm one of them. After all, at sometimes stressful moments of driving, you're going to be listening to this voice telling you where to turn, etc. Although the 265WT offered a few voice choices, I found both the American English male (sounds like a robot) and the American English female (sounds like a nasally woman nagging you from the back seat) to be irritating. I ended up setting the voice to an Australian English male, which I found to be the least annoying choice--but to be honest, I didn't like any of the voice choices. Our Mio has only one voice, a very average and pleasant sounding male, and I like it better than any of the choices on the Garmin. But that's just my opinion, and I'm sure to others the voices on the Garmin are just fine.

Oh well, I guess Garmin and me were not meant to be! :)

Good luck with whatever navigation system you choose!

I recently purchased this product from amazon. The first time I started this device, it took at-least 45 minutes for it to locate satellite ( i had kept the device in the car with open skies and no obstructions what so ever) and get my current location. The worst part was that when I drive, it suddenly looses the satellites and keeps displaying message "Locating satellite". It did this for my whole trip of 15 miles from home to work yesterday. I am very disappointed with this model and am returning the same for a refund. I am not sure if the higher end garmin models are better, will give 765T a try and will post my comments.

After doing extensive research I decided on this unit. Mainly because the 265wt is one of their newer NUVI products and it had the features I was looking for. If you look at the sites that have reviews on the 265wt, most are from nov/2008. I think this unit was released about 6 months ago. Anyway, here's my opinion on some of the key features of the 255WT.

1. Windsheild mount - works great. The suction cup is very high quality and I have no concerns that it will accidentally detach from the windsheild. I love the swivel capabilites and it allows you a perfect view no matter where you put it.

2. Satellite aquisition time - incredible! once you perform the initial aquistion, you are set. Now when I turn the on it's ready to go in usually under 3 seconds. Awesome!

3. Map directions and screen - wonderful. The GPS unit so far has given me perfect directions and the re-route capability works flawlessly. The screen is clear, bright and easy to navigate.

4. Free traffic alerts - works as described. I love this feature and I hardly saw any ads.

5. Bluetooth - giddy up! I had my Motorola KZR1 synched up in about 15 seconds. Easy to use and sure makes talking on the phone alot more enjoyable when driving. I've had conversations with multiple people and they could hear me fine. One cool thing is if your phone has voice dialing; because it allows you do it through the GPS unit. Also, all my contacts show up (even with multiple phone #'s).

6. And finally...the internal speaker. If you researched the 265WT like I've done you'll see ALOT of people complaining that the speaker is too quiet to hear anything. That was a big concern of mine but I felt I would give the unit a try and if it was that bad then I would return it. My thoughts on the speaker are this. The speaker size/quality could and probably should be improved. It's a cheapy speaker...BUT...I CAN hear the directions perfectly fine and can here the other person talking to me when using the bluetooth phone capability. Side notes: You HAVE to turn down your radio if you want to be able to hear it. Also, I was driving with the windows closed (it's friggin winter), so I cannot say how well you'd be able to hear the directions/phone with your windows rolled all the way down.

Bottom line - it has met or exceeded all of my expectations! I bought it on the day after Thanksgiving (aka Black Friday) and I got an incredible deal! $199.99 with free shipping, no tax, and got %50 off a $25 case logic travel case. I would have spent an extra $150 if I would have bought the same unit from a local retailer.

Finally if your in the market to buy any GPS my suggestion is wait until it gets closer to X-mas and see if the price drops. I'm guessing they'll do it again. I was fortunate to get it when I did and hence saved a nice chunk of change.

Hope this helped!