Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)The Nuvi 1240 is a great size for slipping into your pocket for pedestrian use, doesn't need much open sky to find your position, but on a sunny day, you'll have to shade the screen to see it.
We traveled to many old European cities, where Nuvi instructed and amused us with its funny pronunciations, but not bad considering the difficulty of long German names. Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands were all mapped out in fine detail. Usable mapping for the Czech Republic and Poland, for example, are not included in this map database.
American English Jill's voice sometimes seems to be saying "Turlap" instead of "Turn Left" but almost all of our navigation mistakes were ours alone. Pay extra attention to the given distance estimates to freeway connectors, so you don't do as I did in Strasbourg, exiting too soon, into a rush-hour delay driving away from our desired destination. Also, accept that you will have to think more for yourself where a viaduct creates two layers of roads. Jill might not know about the surface road hidden underneath.
In the tight turns of narrow medieval streets that change names every block, the unit, as expected, occasionally lost track of its position, or the verbal instructions couldn't keep up. However, the map addresses and calculated positions were surprisingly good under those challenging circumstances. It is a miraculous little box!
In two weeks of driving, and heavy pedestrian use, saving positions at the parked car or at attractions, searching for recommended restaurants or palaces by street address-- only a few times did we end up more than a few steps from our destination.
Jill doesn't talk to you in pedestrian mode, map centering tool sometimes erroneously centered on our starting position instead of the current position.
A few new interchanges, construction detours, and many of the best points of interest are missing from the database, which we did not update online because I did not want to risk fouling it up.
You'll still need to watch the road signs, and mostly find your own gas stations, laundries, and parking. In the densely populated tourist areas we visited, the clutter of restaurants and hotels made other points of interest unselectable on the map touchscreen. The menus are intuitive, though there is room for improvement. You'll probably choose to turn off the option that provides oral notice every time you pass a cross-street! My teenaged daughter managed the GPS and helped us find the right way without taking my eyes off the traffic too much. (But I could have done it without her, honest!)
Unlike a paper map, you have the ability to zoom to whatever scale you like, but remember you'll have to zoom back in to see usable details. For pre-launch planning, a little GPS screen can't really compete with nice big maps, to get a sense of your surroundings, but we did fine without good paper maps on this trip. On the road, it was great to relax knowing that Jill would keep us on track. She even guessed pretty well when we were about to come out of tunnels.
By the way, our U.S. credit cards didn't work at some European unattended self-service gas stations and parking garages, so don't forget to fill an empty tank before evening, while the attended stations are open, and carry some cash!
Click Here to see more reviews about: Garmin Nuvi 1240 GPS Satnav, 3.5" touchscreen, Western Europe maps - Europe maps ONLY on this unit
Garmin Nuvi 1240 preloaded with latest maps of Western Europe, 25% slimmer than older Nuvi versions, high-resolution 3.5" touchscreen display. Includes ecoRoute feature, speed camera database and much more.
