Garmin Nuvi 200W and 250W Announced

Garmin announced their Nuvi 200W and 250W today, sneaking the announcement in before the weekend. The two new units from Garmin were disclosed earlier this month and now are on their way to a store sometime in July. The units are a wider version of the Garmin 200 series line that has taken up a position below the most popular GPS in the US, the Nuvi 350. The Nuvi 200W and Nuvi 250W models feature a similar dead simple interface that should be pleasing to a lot of people out there. I used the Nuvi 250 back before it was released and thought it was a pretty good product, comparable to the Nuvi 350 but slightly different in several ways – Read My Review of the Nuvi 250.

Not a lot of new features here, but certainly a recognition that widescreens aren’t just for the expensive models anymore. I think widescreens are worth the extra money; see my post on widescreen GPS Units.

The Nuvi 200W will have regional maps (i.e. Continental US + Hawaii + Puerto Rico), while the Nuvi 250W will have North American Maps. The Nuvi 200W will be list priced at $499, and the Nuvi 250W for $549. These will be competing more directly versus the TomTom ONE XL that is priced at $399 (Read My Review of the TomTom ONE XL).

The Garmin Nuvi 200W and Nuvi 250W are available at Amazon
Press Release Follows…

“Many customers want a larger display on their personal navigation device, and the nüvi 200W series delivers,” said Dan Bartel, Garmin’s vice president of worldwide sales. “The nüvi sets the industry standard for elegant design and a simplified user interface, and these newest units represent the pinnacle in widescreen entry-level PNDs.”

The nüvi 200W series boasts a bright, sunlight readable 4.3-inch color touchscreen display (480x272 pixels). Like other models in the 200 series, the nüvi’s new design incorporates a high-sensitivity internal GPS antenna that makes it thinner and even easier to mount in a car. At startup, users are presented with Garmin’s intuitive “Where to?” and “View map” welcome screen, allowing for quick searches of addresses or nearly six million points of interest like restaurants, hotels, attractions, gas stations, and more. Turn-by-turn, voice-prompted directions guide the driver to their destination. The nüvi automatically recalculates a route and gets them back on track if they miss a turn along the way.

The nüvi 200W and nüvi 250W also feature extras like a built-in picture viewer, calculator, currency converter, unit converter and world clock. Owners can also purchase invaluable Travel Guide™ and SaversGuide® databases to make their time on the road even more enjoyable and economical. For additional security, Garmin has included Garmin Lock™, an innovative patent pending theft prevention system that disables the unit from performing any functions until the user types in a specific 4-digit PIN or takes the unit to a predetermined secure location.
Garmin has also added the ability for customers to augment the preloaded maps with custom points of interest (POI’s) from third parties such as school zones and safety cameras. The European versions of the nüvi 200-series come preloaded with speed camera information.
The nüvi 200W and nüvi 250W are expected to be available in July 2007 at an MSRP of $499.99 and $549.99, respectively. The nüvi 200W includes preloaded detailed mapping of the contiguous United States (lower 48), Hawaii and Puerto Rico. The nüvi 250W has preloaded detailed mapping of the entire United States (including Alaska and Hawaii), Canada and Puerto Rico.

Garmin will also offer nüvi 200-series products with regional specific coverage for Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and Brazil. The regional coverage for Europe includes UK/Ireland, Nordics, Belgium/Netherlands/Luxembourg, France, Italy/Greece, Spain/Portugal, and Germany/Switzerland/Austria/Czech Republic.