Garmin Nuvi 2559LMT North America and Europe

We were so glad we had our own GPS on a recent drive around the Republic of Ireland! The rental car companies wanted $11 a day, so we figured after several trips in Europe/Canada this Nuvi will have paid for itself. My husband had never driven on the left side (and with manual transmission on the left), but the Nuvi made him a champ at roundabouts within 2 days. I love being the navigator and held the GPS - he preferred to hear the directions and not take his eyes off the road. Once in awhile I double checked the route with my iPhone and always found the two devices in agreement. I also had a great NatGeo map to consult since Nuvi really doesn't give you a huge picture. We traveled many narrow country roads with ease. A couple of times we got ourselves off course but I was tuned in to the fact that Nuvi doesn't alert you anymore, she just recalculates.Before our trip, I set Nuvi up on my Mac with no issues, although be prepared for frequent updates, which is good when you're paying $100 extra for maps. I used the free Garmin Base Camp app to pre-program it with the routes and attractions we planned to visit. Base Camp is not the most user friendly app at first, but it worked out great. I also used the BlueTooth interface between my iPhone and Nuvi and that really could eliminate Base Camp. But I like looking at a big screen. And since I was holding Nuvi, programming in the car was a piece of cake.As far as accuracy, we had excellent reception once Nuvi acquired the satellite after her trip across the ocean. That connection took about 10 minutes and after that Nuvi locked on the satellite in a minute or so every time we started her up, even in some really cloudy Irish weather. I packed everything up every evening into a small camera bag and took it into our hotel, no problem doing that and reattaching to your windshield. Also threw the screen unit in my purse when we got out of the car during the day, very easy. Battery power worked well for about 2 hours whenever I needed to charge my phone in the car's one cigarette lighter.I have to say that this is one of the best gadget purchases I've ever made, and there have been many. We will now be encouraged to travel by car instead of just cruise ship. I was worried about our safety driving in unfamiliar rural conditions on the left side, but Nuvi took the fear factor out of both of us. BTW, don't count on iPhone Maps for Irish travel. I never saw a Vodaphone 4G signal anywhere, and many places like Connemara lose the connection in the mountains.

We just returned from a five week trip during which we used this in the US, France, Poland and Italy. While in Europe, we traveled over 3000 kilometers - to give you an idea of how much we used this thing!! It worked wonderfully and was able to tell us the speed limits in many places as it is rarely posted and it was able to alert us to the many speed cameras found throughout Europe. There were only a few times during the five weeks in which the GPS could not find us or the address we needed at which point we had to use our cellular service. One thing we discovered, if your address is not found upon first typing it in, navigate yourselves to the main city in which you would like to travel, then as you get closer - maybe within 30 - 50 kilometers, try putting in your address again, as the closer you are to your exact location, the more likely the GPS will find it. Once you are near to your location, you also have the option of the GPS finding you parking, a feature we found very helpful. There were a few times when we were taken down very narrow streets (we had ours set on fastest route - something we changed once we realized this was not always the most comfortable route). All in all, this is really worth the money as the road systems in many European cities are difficult to navigate in the best of conditions. This little piece of equipment makes sure you have all the latest conditions, traffic and speed. It was a vital addition to our journey!!

This is the only Garmin model with Europe and North America (including Canada) that comes with Lifetime Map and Traffic updates. My last Garmin is a few years old and the battery doesn't hold a charge anymore, and also it didn't include map updates so was starting to get obsolete.The user interface/menu system continues to be poorly designed, requiring unnecessary and multiple selections for frequently used operations, and this has become even worse with the new model: THREE taps (used to be two) to see the map overview of your route and 2 more to get back to the live map). Even simple things like entering GPS coordinates has been poorly designed. It forces you to type the ENTIRE coordinate now even though the first 5 or 6 digits are the same for short-distance routes. There are also other annoyances like after you enter an address it searches three neighbouring states to give you all possible matches when you really want the one in the city that you're in. So you have to wait 5 seconds unneessarily while it does that search. Simple operations like setting your Home location are hidden away in highly unintuitive places. And there are dozens of other examples. It seems that the people who design the user interface never use the product in real life. They should just copy the far superior and more natural Tom-Tom user interface.The voice reading algorithm is poorer that in the 5-year-old previous model! For example, with English as the spoken language, if you are travelling in Montreal where lots of streets have names like St-Denis, St-Hubert, etc., it will speak them as "Street-Denis" instead of "Saint-Denis," because it decides that St is always the abbreviation for "Street." This is 10-year-old voice-synthesis technology!!A few items in the user interface have actually improved, such as automatically switching to night mode when you're in a tunnel, even during daytime, and switching back when you're out of the tunnel. And the pet peeve of having to hit "Back" 8 times to get to the main menu has been somewhat addressed with a long-press on the Back button taking you to the home screen (but from where--sigh--you still have to press the Map button once more to get to the live map view you really wanted). When you add a new Via Point to an existing routing, it lets you reorder the sequence of stops so that the new point can be an en route stop, or an add-on after the first destination.Notwithstanding the user interface issues, I do buy Garmin over Tom-Tom anyway for the simple reason that it supports downloaded open-source maps for the areas that are not already included. And the hardware is pretty good, locks to the GPS signal rapidly (much faster than my old model in new locations). Customer support is good--got a person who knew what she was talking about within a few short minutes of calling.I don't care for the much-heralded "Real View" of exits. You have to be pretty clueless not to be able to figure it out from the other directions, and sometimes it can be confusing by showing you the exit "real view" prematurely, sometimes making you exit too soon at a similar-looking earlier exit! Also, the reflective glass makes visibility of the screen harder than the matte glass in my earlier model, though the capacitive touchscreen (llike modern smartphones) is a welcome improvement over the old pressure-sensitive one that required hard presses.So between the wide map coverage, lifetime map updates, support for downloaded gmapsupp.img files from OpenStreetMap and similar sources via the micros SD card slot, I still give this 4 stars. The -1 star reflects my disappointment that 5 years later, they still haven't figured out a user interface that is intuitive and doesn't seem to come in your way.

I had a trip to Linz, Austria coming up and I wanted a SAT NAV (GPS) device that would provide me with adequate coverage of the road networks, points of interest, and shortest routes back to my hotel from wherever I was located in the city at any time during my visit.The Garmin nuvi 2559LMT turned out to be a very good device for the job.Why didn't I just use map and navigation apps on my phone? Well the Google Maps app on my phone normally gets the job done but I needed something that included live traffic alerts. When you go visiting and exploring unfamiliar territories, one thing you may not want is to be suddenly stranded when roads or streets get closed midway through your journey and you had no prior warning. This beautiful device helps you overcome that niggling situation with its live traffic alerts feature.The screen is pretty good size and crystal clear, lane guidance is just too pleasing, downloadable full Europe and America maps makes it possible to plan travel routes, voice command, and expandable storage makes this unit a very good addition to my gadget collection.This is my first Garmin device (I'd always used either my phone or my old Tom-Tom unit), and I'm very glad I went along with the decision to purchase this unit because it has turned out to be pretty impressive.

This offered the best value with both Europe and N. American maps loaded. For me it performs well, with no evidence of any of the problems suggested by other reviewers.

So far I've been very pleased with this Satnav.The graphics and spoken directions are very clear, and complex motorway junctions both at home in UK and abroad can be easily navigated using this device.I recently used it in USA, where the highway interchanges could be a nightmare; the American road signs aren't up to UK standards! I was really thankful for having this satnav. Taking your own satnav is a much more cost effective option than hiring in USA.The lifetime updates are easy to use, and cover both Europe and USA.However,12 months down the line, it has developed a fault whereby it will turn itself off after 25 mins or so, repeatedly try to turn back on and off again. the route information is lost, and the device only becomes temporarily usable after it has been off for quite some time. It's just out of guarantee!Update: I read reviews where other people had the same problem. I was on the verge of buying a different satnav.... glad I didn't ! After updating the software and maps, the problem totally disappeared, and it now works just great again. It would seem that a rogue version of the software was to blame. I would imagine that Garmin were aware of the issue; plenty of people seem to have been affected. Would not an email from Garmin to registered customers have saved a lot of trouble and bad feeling?

I bought this for a road trip to USA. I had read some negative reviews but from the outset I found it easy to use set up and update. It was brilliant in the USA where we had to drive a large car into central Boston . We did over 1800 miles all over New England and it never let us down. You can put in a specific address or just the town . It also tells you where to find petrol food toilets etc. I can't fault this at all and I am no techno savvy person. I did buy the friction mount pad which also makes like easy. I have used it in the UK and it was clever enough on our way home to pick us the same off motorway route. Can't fault this product at all.

Having owned various Garmin units since the early days, I am delighted with the upgrade I afforded myself. The screen is very clear, the user interface is more explicit than ever and the combination is intuitive. We were away in the USA this summer and it performed faultlessly, as one should expect. Would recommend any day to a friend, especially if USA travel ever likely to occur (with lifetime map updates for Europe and USA included).