Garmin nüvi 2495LMT 4.3-Inch Portable Bluetooth GPS Navigator with Lifetime Map & Traffic Updates

[This review has become too unwieldy due to the many "Added in Edit"s, so I've restructured it to flow better. The basic content is the same.]

“I’m JerryWithaJ and I’m a GPS junkie!”

For some reason, Garmin releases a new mid-level GPS and I have to try it out. It’s not like I *really* have to. I was using a 1350LMT. I had lifetime maps and traffic…and lane assist! However, I’m lucky enough that I can afford a new GPS every year or two and I have family and friends who are happy to get the units I replace…and the split screen advanced lane guidance was too much to resist.

The more I use this unit, the more I like it! I was starting to doubt my sanity when I ordered the 2455. It really didn’t seem to have that much to offer over the 1350. When I saw the new interface, my first thought was to deduct stars for it. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. However, in the end it is the new interface that convinced me that getting the 2455 was the right thing to do.

There ARE annoyances.

* The ads (with traffic) do seem to persist a bit longer on the 2455 than on my 1300 series units. They can be removed with the extra-cost ads-free Garmin 010-01031-00 GTM 60 HD Digital Traffic Receiver), which I’ve purchased and reviewed.
* One scrolls down the screen by pressing an arrow on the left of the screen rather than the right. It makes for a shorter reach, but means that one’s right hand is blocking the screen while it scrolls.
* The units STILL do not accept zip codes for entering destinations.

That said, now, to the interface that has won me over so completely!

Suppose I wanted to visit the President.

The old way…
I’d press
–Address,
–Change State/Country,
–Spell State (press D and I’m given the choice between Delaware and District of Columbia, choose DC},
–Choose city in DC (I choose Washington DC),
–Enter House Number (1600),
–Enter Street (Pen brings up choices that include Pennsylvania Ave.)

The new way, with a SURPRISE(!)
[I call it a SURPRISE because Garmin doesn't tell you and, if you don't experiment, you might never realize it, but now you'll know! THE GREY BOX THAT SAYS "Searching In" is LIVE! You can press on it while a search is in progress. So, here's the new way:

–Press Address
–Enter House Number(!): 1600
–Enter Street: Penns gets me Pennsylvania. I add “Ave”. The Garmin starts searching the Northeast (where I live). If I let it continue, it will return seven 1600 Pennsylvania Aves but not the one I need.
–Any time after the search starts, I press on the Grey box that says “Searching in:”.
–A Qwerty keypad pops up and I type “DC”, which brings up District of Columbia.
Mr President, I’m on my way!

This might not seem like much of a change but it taught me that the new scheme makes a LOT of sense. I (like many other, I suspect) have always been mildly annoyed by having to enter the name of my home town to get directions to a local address. This new scheme eliminates the need to enter City unless it’s WAY out of the area. It just would have been nice if Garmin made it clear from the start about how things had changed and that the “Searching in:” box was live. Garmin didn’t, I did!

* Another nice change in entering destinations: No more looking for Points of Interest/Spell Name. You just type in the name and the unit seems to have some kind of smart search that offers a ribbon of suggestions as you type. I didn’t realize how quickly I’d gotten used to this until I found myself entering a destination into my old 1350. When you’re (me, anyway) pulled over on the side of the road entering an address, the last thing you want to be doing is drilling down menus. The 2455 has gone a long way to making things easier.

Here are some other things that have stood out:

* I had no problem transferring my favorites from my 1350LMT to the 2455LMT

* It comes with a limited number of voices, which had me copying voices from my older units, but there’s no need. When you go online to register the device, update the firmware, and check for additional software, you are presented with a long list of voices that you can “update”, that is, add, including my favorite–British English Emily (Excuse me, Emily. I meant “favourite”!)

* I often use my GPS for short hops that don’t really require a GPS, but I like to use it to estimate my time of arrival. When I first got the 2455, I set it for the train station, as I often did with the 1350LMT. When I got to within about 1.5 miles, the title bar turned grey with a Parking symbol in it! Having my rider touch it produced a list of nearby garages including the station’s garage. Choosing the garage had the GPS direct us there rather than to the station itself! While I didn’t need it to get to that garage, I can see how this type of feature can be extremely useful in unfamiliar settings.

* You can choose the buttons you want on your map, up to 3. I chose Where To?, Detour, Traffic. Other possibilities are Mute, Stop, Exit Services, Where Am I?, Trip Computer, Map Layers, Brightness, Audible (audio books). You don’t lose the features you don’t select. They are still available through menus.

* Map Layers, BTW, are Places along the road (never miss a Dunkin Donuts in the Northeast), Traffic, and Trip Log. They can be turned on and off through menu choices

* Where To? can have up to 32 buttons including Saved Searches! For example, I added Starbucks and Whole Foods. You can add or delete buttons and rearrange them in any order you wish. One annoyance is that Cities, Coordinates, and Intersections are not visible by default. You have to add them yourself.

* Some familiar things have been renamed. Favorites is now Saved (with a heart icon). Places of Interest is now Categories.

* The unit has a new Portrait mode. I’ve tried it, but went back to Landscape. I find I don’t need a lot of detail when going straight ahead, but I want a sense of what might be happening next when I’ll be making a turn. So, I prefer Landscape, myself.

* It would seem that one drawback to Portrait mode is typing on a keyboard in that orientation. I find that it’s not bad at all. It’s a LOT more precise than my Smartphone. My Samsung Fascinate registers a lot of miss-presses. Some are my typos, but the rest have more to do with the unit. However, I’ve had this happen only once so far with the 2455.

I’ve had this GPS for about a week and overall I’m happy. The display is nice and bright and easy to see in the sunlight. Using this device in portrait mode makes a lot of sense because you are typically more interested in what is in front of you rather than on the side of you. Information on the display is well thought out and very usable.

The GPS is super simple to use with a very logical user interface, and the POI coverage is pretty good. I typed in a few obscure places and if found them all.

The one thing that is a little screwy has to do with re-routing. As a test, I programmed an address and selected a route that was a shorter distance but a longer travel time by 10 minutes (1:30 travel time). But instead of following the GPS directions, I drove a route that I was familiar with (1:20 travel time). The 2455 kept trying to get me back on to the route I originally chose even when I was at a location 1 hr from my destination and the re-routing would have taken 1:30. I would have expected the GPS to choose the route that I was traveling on when the time and distance became shorter than the re-route but that was not the case.

Overall I’m happy with the GPS. I’m just not sure about the re-routing logic.

This is finally the first unit that is worth upgrading to since the Nuvi 265WT came out 3 years ago. I kept an eye on the lineup for the past few years that there was not much to write home about win terms of new really Useful, worthy features or speed until now !!

First things first, this unit is still very new and the software may be a bit buggy when you first unwrap it. Do yourself a favor, Install the Garmin Web Updater and update the firmware to the latest version. I bet this resolves most of the stability issues you mayrun into.
Now for the meat of the review:
Having owned Nuvi series for the past 8 years and following the lineup, there is a bunch of real improvements in 2455 (or the whole Oct 2011+ lineup) software. I am not going to mention all the interface tweaks like Dashboard or Color scheme changes that most people complain about.. that is a matter of preference and taste, not function. Things that matter to me are usability, functionality and speed of the unit. I had a few bad experiences with last version of the Nuvi, 3790 LMT which would take 15-30 seconds to calculate routes and on occasion freeze up on rote recalculation. It obviously had underpowered processor since the maps would not scroll or zoom smoothly. The software was probably to blame as well for being slow, but the main reason I mention this is that the latest series, and 2455 in particular, has solved these issues! The unit is now fast at routing and map displays and zooms smoothly, so obviously the issues from last version were noted and fixed.

Functional Improvements

Route calculation time – This has been greatly improved in this software. The time it takes to recalculate the route is now between 2-5 seconds on average. The routing engine also looks to be more sensitive to traffic then the previous series units. It has so far made a number of new route suggestions that the old 265WT did not even know about (or bothered to drive me around traffic). I really feel that the unit is checking traffic every few minutes and adjusting the route, not just looking at it at the time of the initial calculation.

Address entry Revamped – This is BIG !! You no longer need to enter your state every time you are entering an address. All that is required now is street number and name, as you type the street, autosuggestions come up like spellcheck on an IPhone. After that, the Search function kicks in and searches the 5 neighboring states. You can interrupt the search to specify the state if you like or just wait the 3-5 seconds and scroll through the results to choose the right address.

Parking Recall- Great that the unit now remembers the last spot where the car stopped. I used to save it as a favorite on the old units with a name “car”. Can be found under Apps.
Advanced Detours – Finally you have a say in telling Nuvi how to go around traffic. There is now a submenu of the Detour button that you can choose to detour next .5, 2, 5 of the road or detour by road’s name. Not the most advanced features if you are a Tom-Tom or advanced GPS user, but more than welcome from the “magic” button.

Rest Areas – you can now look up the next rest area while driving on major highways. Under Where To–>Categories. Awesome!!

Exit services – Tells you what the upcoming HWAY exit has to offer. Gas food, hotels, all there.

Pedestrian mode- switching to it is easier and the GPS now has info on mass transit

Trip Log App- Finally all the apps are grouped together under “apps” menu and you can easily access your trip logs right on the unit.

Traffic Trends: This is a great historical trend data that helps the unit calculate optimal routs and give reasonable estimates in traffic. Been waiting for this for a while..

POI indicators on the Map- Little POI icons now show up as you drive past places, such as a $ for a bank/ATM or a Fork when you drive by a food place.. Nifty and non intrusive.

UI Interface Improvements:
The Zoom buttons – the buttons are now hidden until you tap on the screen once, they will come up. Great way to save screen real estate on this 4inch unit.
Tapping on the screen – this now goes full screen mode. If you tap on a location on a map, it will give you Street address or Latt/Long coordinates as well as options to route to it or save it. Great stuff !!
Mute Button on main screen- no more going into submenu to mute the voice when it gets too much.
Map buttons – you can toggle any of the volume/traffic/route stop buttons on/off.

Minor Complaints
Proximity alerts – It is good to be aware of Red light cameras and speed traps. The loud ding, tends to get annoying in large cities on every other corner though. It also comes on for overhead streets while driving on city highways. I hope this is fixed soon.. otherwise just need to turn them off, as it gets pretty annoying.
By default some TTS voices are excluded- I had to download some of the usual “American-Jack” voices into the unit via Web updater as it is not available by default. No big deal.

I cannot believe this unit is being sold for under $200. This is truly the next generation of Garmin Nuvi that I have been waiting for years and it is a steal!!! Buy it, use it, love it !!

I have been using Garmin automotive navigation systems for over 5 yrs. Recently I tried Nuvi 1450LMT, Nuvi 40 LM- all worked well. Nuvi 40 LM has only US maps so I swapped it with Nuvi 2455 LMT. My old Nuvi 360 is still working OK after 5 yrs., but she does not know any recent changes happening around the road-my bad no map update were done.
I purchased Garmin Nuvi 2455LMT (Life time map & Traffic) online. To start with it showed errors on the map of area well known to me. I tried to update map following the directions on the “micro” manual, it installed the map on computer (windows 7), but failed to update it on the device in spite of several attempts with the option 1 (recommended) on the installation wizard. I called Garmin client support and they walked me though the installation again with both fire fox and internet explorer browsers, it never got installed on Nuvi. At last the device froze. I Called Garmin again, they at last advised now to press down the start button for a minute or till it turns on. At last it turned on .This time they asked to install the map using the option No 2 (manual) on the installation wizard. It updated the map without any hitches in about 45 min and the device is working OK now. So if you fail to update the map try using option 2. They are having software problems with many new models with lifetime map update (LM).
Nuvi 2455LMT
Pros:
1. Small 4.3 inches screen size and 0.6 x 4.8 x 2.9 inches device size fits your pocket like a wallet.
2. Life time map update is a great feature; I am not sure about life time traffic though since it usually takes you through by-routes circumnavigating a vast area.
3. Interface is user friendly, typing a place has automatic auto suggestion support, so in most cases you need not type the whole street name; just pick one of the options.
4. Search option brings in a full Qwerty key board with numbers, a bottom key switches to signs also
5. Very good satellite reception even indoor
6. Option to change to miles/ kilometer- useful in Canada and other great places where Metric system is in use
7. Scrolling arrow panel is on left side of screen
8. Boot up is fast, recalculating is also fast except for occasional freezing of software.
9. 3D map view works great
10. Speed limit display is generally accurate, As soon as you exceed the posted speed; your speed is displayed red.
11. I could not find a signal for traffic camera in Nuvi 2455, but Nuvi 40 gives warning beeps
12. Lane assist and real photo like junction view are awesome
13. Audio book player- if you love to hear the selected book s in the memory
14. Pedestrian mode help you find places when walk ing/jogging.

Cons:
1. No wall charger, charge it in car or hooked up to computer, the latter takes about 8hrs for full charging. For a silly $5 wall charger Garmin charges about $25 -Great!!
2. No option to search by Zip code
3. The speaker icon helps you to mute only, If you want to adjust volume while navigating, you have to go back to the starting screen, find speaker icon and adjust volume. By this time the navigation display is gone, so you have to start all over again. This is stupid . Older models had the option to change it pressing lightly the start button. A provision to adjust volume from the speaker icon should have been there.
4. The “Recalculating” announcement is not any more, if you are going in wrong direction, there is no way to tell if the promptings are from the changed direction or from the continuation of the old directions you were following.
5. The port for charger/traffic updater cable/ `ultra-short’ USB cable are located in the back- this is inconvenient-I prefer side port.
6. Forget about the windshield suction mount, it is bound to fall off. Get a bean bag dash mount, which works great.
7. If you hook up a wall charger, the device goes to the navigating mode. You have to manually turn it off; otherwise it will start yelling “Please drive to highlighted route”. This is annoying. Garmin could not fix this silly thing so far!!
8. The software hitch in map update-which killed about 5-6 hrs. of different attempts, Garmin calls, trying and re-trying with different representatives with different ideas.
9. Only 2 ways to turn off the annoying pop-up advertisements are purchase life time traffic update for $60 or turn it off completely.

I am very happy with this GPS unit – it bought it for a long holiday trip to replace my old Nuvi 650 and it was a good purchase. I have an Android phone with Google Maps Navigation, but I find the Nuvi to be much more convenient and usable in the car.

Some features that I really like:

Traffic: After reading some other reviews online, I didn’t have high hopes for the traffic feature, but it performed much better than expected. It seemed to be relatively up to date on traffic jams and pretty much matched the traffic indications on Google Maps. The Nuvi helped me navigate around several long traffic jams (including one 9 mile stretch of stop and go traffic). As expected, it only picks up traffic near large cities, which was fine for me – check the coverage maps on Garmin’s website to see if it covers your area before purchasing lifetime traffic. I did see some ads from the ad-supported traffic, but they were not at all annoying, they only popped up on the map page when I was stopped (but were always visible on the traffic info page).

Speed limit indicator: This is surprisingly accurate, often the exact second I’d pass a new speed limit sign, the speed limit displayed on the Nuvi would update. This is a big help when you’re not sure if you missed a speed limit sign and wonder if you’re still in a 70mph zone.

Lane Assist – the lane position indicators were mostly useful, but not always accurate. Sometimes it would indicate that you should be in the far right lane, but you find out that it is only valid for the *next* exit and and if you’re not careful you might end up in an exit only lane that goes to the wrong exit. Not a huge deal if you’re paying attention to street signs and don’t blindly follow the GPS’s directions. Lane assist is definitely useful to see if the next exit is to the right or to the left. Lane Assist is mostly only available on freeways, but some larger city streets had it too.

The photo realistic junction views are nice, but I didn’t find them to be that useful. But they were quite accurate, almost always matching the street signs and intersections exactly.

Exit Services – I found this to be *very* helpful when deciding which exit to use to get gas and food – you can easily compare restaurants for the next few exits and choose the exit with the best food choices. If you’re looking for a hotel, it’s also useful to see what hotels are coming up, and the Nuvi shows the phone number for the hotels so you can easily call to check vacancy and rates. Athough I can do all of that with Google Maps on my phone, the information on the Nuvi is organized better by exit.

Routing – the unit usually did a good job of routing, except for very short distances. In one amusing case, my destination was a short trip over a freeway overpass, but I didn’t realize it, so I followed the GPS which routed me through 2 freeway cloverleaf circles before taking me to the destination when in reality I could have just driven straight over the overpass. It calculates routes pretty quickly – much faster than my old Nuvi 650.

Category searching – I use this a lot at home and on the road when I’m looking for a type of store or restaurant. It works well and the ability to get the store’s phone number is also useful.

The only really bad experience I had with the unit was that it crashed a few times. Always when accessing traffic data. It quickly rebooted and picked up where it left off, but it’s disconcerting to press the traffic info button and have the unit go dark and reboot. Hopefully this will be addressed in a future firmware update. This is why I gave the unit 4 stars instead of 5 stars.

The map updater is a little flaky on Win7, I had to run it a few times before it finally update the maps.

The user interface is somewhat complicated, but I think that’s to be expected because of the number of features this has.

Overall, it’s a great unit and I’m glad I bought it.

I bought the Garmin 2455 LMT a few weeks ago to replace a Garmin 285 WT that I had been using for the past 2+ years. The one feature I didn’t like about the 285 was the routing engine. When going from point A to point B with the fastest routing option selected, the Garmin 285 almost always would seek out and navigate me through the most congested city streets, streets often with the most stop signs and/or traffic lights. These city routes may have been shorter than alternate highway routes, but having to constantly stop and go and stop and go, they rarely got me to my destination in the fastest time possible. Fed up, I bought the 2455 hoping that with its new 2.0 navigation engine, the overall routing would improve. Unfortunately, it didn’t. Still the same old routing inefficiencies… I returned the 2455 and purchased a TomTom GO 2435. While the Garmin, in my opinion, has a nicer visual display and a more intuitive menu system than the TomTom, the routing choices on the TomTom, at least where I live in the Washington D.C. metro area, have been much better at getting me to my destinations in the fastest times possible, which is what’s most important to me in a GPS. Until Garmin fixes these navigation issues, I’ll continue to purchase my GPSs elsewhere.

I purchased this after my Nuvi 660 went on the fritz. It is thin, with a nice sized screen. I really like the dual view when you need to know which lane to be in. I definitely recommend it. The only thing I dislike is the short battery life (2.5 hours, whereas my old one had 4 hours) but that seems to be the standard with GPS units now.

I got this lovely GPS to use it onmy later trip to North America. I live in HongKong so I bought a southeast asia map which include the Hong Kong map. This GPS works so perfect in hong kong and the download and renew of map has no problem. Unlike my last GPS, Tom TOM, they have a serious problem to download maps who live outside of North America. S i switch to Garmin and i am very satify.

The unit itself seems well put together. Out of the box it works as expected. Quick to connect to satellites and good routing. The mount works well and the unit is decent in direct sun light. The distance accuracy is a bit off – I can be at a stop light and the unit indicates I am still 80 feet away. I don’t know if this is typical or simply my unit. The traffic ads, as mentioned in other reviews, are annoying. Yes, they are small, but still it is frustrating to see them pop up.

The bad news – I find the map updates impossible to download. I have tried several times (six on two different OS), did Google searches to try and discover how to get them to work and contacted Garmin support. Attempt after attempt with no success. My latest attempt got to the point where the software indicated there was “less than one minute” to completion when suddenly the now familiar “we encountered an error” message popped up informing me to contact Garmin support. Google searches support this seems to be a common problem.

In short, the unit out of the box is fine. Long term, I am concerned the map update issue won’t be resolved making this a soon to be outdated unit.

Update: After writing this review I decided to give the map update one more try. Using an older laptop running Vista the map update was finally successful. Based on this I have upped my rating to 3 stars.