Customer Reviews

Garmin nuvi 2597LMT 5 inch Sat Nav with Full Europe Maps, Free Lifetime Map Updates, Traffic Alerts and Bluetooth

Well I was afraid it wouldn't do all the things I wanted it to, but it does and does so much more besides. Its simply great at what it is and what it should do, especially setting up a multi stop journey, so easy so quick. It even remembers your favourite searches and places and next time they're just there waiting to be selected, it searches very quickly, it changes your route very quickly if you divert or miss a turn, and on the odd occasion there was traffic trouble it came up on the display.
The 7 inch display is very clear and easy to use, and using the Garmin universal dash mount (which is great too) you can place it in just the optimum position for un-obstructive yet easy glancing viewing. Its powered by a thicj cable from the cigarette lighter socket that also doubles as the traffic warning news aerial, so thats a little messy to sort out, but soon got used to it, especially as the device works so well and you start to fall in love with it.
There is a little downside to it though, I found when in city centres and you approach very complex junctions, the car symbol can move a little too slowly and you think its pointing to one road when in fact it wants you on another, so I did miss a road or two, but that could be my error, but it soon re-calculates and gets you back on track again, in seconds. The other gripe was the traffic service, which did not warn of a major snarl up around a huge roundabout in Preston that was being 'improved', hah, the works had clearly been going on for weeks and the traffic was backed up all over the place (had two major roads and motorway junction to sort out there), and yet it was not aware and so did not avoid the area, we drove straight in to the chaos.
However, overall its a fantastic piece of kit and cannot recommend it highly enough. My only other experience of a SatNav by the way is the one built into the dash of my Honda Cr-V, which is very good, but this Garmin simply blows it away.

Bought this on the day it was released in the UK. Amazon shipped the day before and it arrived on the day of release.

I've owned many Garmin devices in the past but never a dedicated car 'satnav' - previously used an old Garmin Oregon which must be about 10 years old now (also own treking/outdoor hand-held Garmin devices).

This Garmin (2597LMT) was a fantastic update: clear display, 3D maps, voice directions and easy destination entry. The traffic alerts are a bonus too.

Two days after receiving this Garmin, I tested it 'in anger' on a one week holiday to Cornwall. The ease of use and accuracy of the directions are excellent. Arriving at the holiday cottage, a quick button press located the nearest supermarket and directed us there. Whilst en route, the 'Up Ahead' feature showed fuel, toilets and refreshments on the journey and the traffic delays were updated as we went (with the option to re-route to avoid).

This 5" screen version is big (and clear) enough for use without being too big to carry around once you get out of the car - I think the 7" version would be more of a pain to carry (even with the girlfriend/wife/fiancee's handbag to store it!).

I recommend this device!

I have not had a Sat Nav before so was searching for value verses quality and I feel this model achieves this, the display is good and I have found the various apps easy to use. I used it to go to a London airport, as I rarely drive in that area and it was very comforting not having to think too hard about which lane etc to be in. I found entering my trip details easy and warnings for delays and hold ups were good. I would recommend this to someone not wishing to spend too much on newer models that may have all the latest gadgets but you end up not making use of them. My delivery was prompt and well packed.

Not being a huge fan of Sat Navs I have to say this is fabulous. Purchased the week prior to going on holiday to the States, just in time to downloaded updated US maps, which did take a few hours but was well worth it. Sat Nav worked minutes after arriving and got us everywhere we asked it to, and even round a diverted route owing to a road closure. Images very clear and it's easy to use to find restaurants, shops and attractions. Did have a laugh at pronounciation of some of the US place names. The Garmin was a replacement for a Tom Tom which we had purchased a couple of weeks prior but which wouldn't let us load up US maps. Would highly recommend this product.

This garmin does everything that I want and more. It even tells me if i am exceeding the speed limit. A relatively fast acquisition of satellitdes. Good display, junction and lane positions shown.

Pre ordered mine and very pleased that it arrive on day of release. Having previously had years of great service from a basic TomTom One I was a reluctant convert to Garmin but so many bad reviews of latest tomtom products persuaded me to make the change. I really only wanted to add Europe for a long driving holiday and the old tomtom didn't have that.

I have lots of reservations however about this Garmin not least of all was it failure to work properly after a couple of hours down the French motorway on day 1 of the two week drive through Europe for which I had specifically bought it (I had previously done a trip to scotland and the West country and it was fine then) ! The unit froze on us whilst driving and then having switched off would not restart it just kept cycling through a start up screen and then off again, and no amount of button pushing would stop it. Several hours of internet searching that evening and pushing bits of the screen to try to do a master reset seemed to sort it out in the end but I had by then lost all the trip data for that part of the journey, and all my favourites all put in for the trip we were on! I was not happy at all. If we had been on our own on the trip with no web access we would have had a serious issue, fortunately we had friends with us to assist and get us back on track on that day. We had paper maps etc, but not so easy locating hotels in strange town with those is it.!

A few more cons compared to my old and very basic tomtom.
You can't get all the info you need on the main screen. I want to see the current time, the distance and time to my destination all at a glance, tomtom does it, Garmin needs more presses of the screen to get all that. And I can't understand why they don't allow this, as you can customise the sidebar but you simply can't add the info to that I think you need. Very poor that. You should not need to touch the unit to get something as basic as the current time up. UPDATE, this model now has all the info on the screen you need, a software update put that right a few months ago. It makes this a far more friendly unit to use now..
Tomtom warms about toll roads etc when it plans a route, Garmin doesn't. You can add them as "avoidances" but it would be nice to get a warning beforehand.
Tomtom give you options to customise the sound of alerts, no flexibility at all with Garmin, you get what you a given.

Pros.
The ability to browse and zoom in and out of the maps is a lot better than on my old tomtom. And the overview map that shows mountains etc is a great way to get a feel for your trip and its then possibly to zoom right into the details of the route.

Routing.
Dodgy in my opinion, but aren't all sat navs! Several times Garmin has tried to take me off motorways for no apparent reason, or cut corners in small villages to take you down bumpy narrow back roads where its way better to carry on through on the main road.
This Garmin also has no option to set a route for walking, my old tomtom did, and so do older Garmins so why not this one? Particular stupid as it will remember where you parked your car if you need to find it but it then gives you driving directions back to it !

Beware if planning to use this somewhere like the Alps as we did. It will lose reception in the numerous tunnels and narrow gorges. OK I would expect it to do that but why then does it often show you miles away on the screen ? It knows you were on the road, it should know you were in a tunnel so why can it not just assume you are traveling along at a set speed on the same road. It can be very tricky when there is a junction just outside the tunnel as all routing is lost once it loses the sat signal and you just hope it gets it back quickly the other side.
And why on earth does it not have toll booths shown on the maps ? A pretty important feature in my opinion, and would be very useful to know ones coming up so you can can get ready but nothing at all is shown.
You can configure the side bar to show what's ahead. Its useful but why not somehow indicate if the petrol station for examlpe up ahead is on your route or off it ? You think one is coming up in a mile or so but in then disappears off the screen is it turns out its a few streets away and not on your actual route, not very helpful. Again tomtom does this better with on route and off route searching.

Traffic warnings
These seem to work but as is often the case with such things they are usually a bit behind and hold ups and gone before you get there. Several dire warnings driving down through France of 90 min delays were ignored by me and traffic was heavy but moving and any delay was minimal, nothing like that predicted. No doubt not the fault of Garmin that, but just a general warning on taking advice on such route diversions.

Bluetooth.
A bit disappointed that it will sync with my old Nokia phone but not read the phonebook, so not much use for dialing out. Its strange because my old phone works fine in my Audi with its own bluetooth it reads my phone book with no problem.

Screen and instructions etc.
I like the photo real junctions, lots of them on motorways across UK and Europe, they do help. Lane guidance when you get it also helps. On occasions however especially on some roundabouts the arrow on the screen seems a bit fat and you lose clarity on the actual direction you need to go. It would be great to get an overview map of your route and progress along it with one touch, you can get it but it takes multiples screen touches to do it.
I can't comment much on the voice instructions as most of my use has been in an open top car, and it not easy to hear them with the wind noise, and anyway I tend to rely on the screen by habit

Screen attachment.
Works fine for the most part but I have noticed you can get vibration through the car that will make the unit vibrate as well for a few seconds, (and that's worse in a sports car with stiff suspension) so mount not that solid, and if you are a bit heavy handed when pressing the screen the unit can move on the ball joint.

Garmin Basecamp.
I have tried to use this to do routes on the PC but have found it very frustrating and fiddly to use and gave up. Tyre was a lot better and easy to set up waypoints to then create routes using that.

Garmin Case
Bought the genuine case as well. Nice and easy to use but does not fully enclose the unit as side are elasticated so i dropped it, and unit still got a dent on the corner, another Garmin disappointment.

So there you go. I did plan to send it back after it let me down but its been fairly good since then. But overall I am a disappointed Garmin customer and wondering if I should have just forked out for new Europe maps for my old faithful tomtom and saved a bit of cash!

So much faster than my ageing Garmin, although the Traffic updates/warnings are a bit on the slow slow side. Vastly improved GUI and screen. And to top it all free map and traffic updates for life.

Edit- dropped to 3 Stars as traffic updates are rubbish

The Good:
Very good satnav with lots of useful features and extras.
8G internal memory (~3.5G free) and SD slot for expansions.
Life time map updates (End of Life is when the maps wont fit anymore).
Full trip planning and routeing tools (not documented but they work well!)

The Bad:
Very poorly documented so finding out how to use anything other then the basics requires a certain 'savvy' and plenty of luck.
2A USB means connecting it to your computer for updates needs extra thought as many standard USB ports are only 1A.

The Ugly:
Garmin, as a Company, do not seem to understand the internet and are near useless to deal with. I originally tried to purchase this product through the Garmin.uk web page and they accepted my order and payment details quickly enough. However, after a week where their web page still did not reflect my order status (it said I had no order) and my emails were not replied to, I tried to cancel my order. After another week, they acknowledged my original mail requesting status updates and while they talked of issues with their web pages, they did not tell me the status of my order. It was another week before they confirmed the cancellation. In the meantime, I had bought and recieved the unit from Amazon (if it goes wrong I have someone I can send it back to). If Garmin are unable to manage their web pages and unwilling to respond to emails, they should not attempt to do business online.

[Creating routes:- Use base camp to create a route on your PC(no spaces in the name). Connect Garmin to Basecamp. Right click on specific route and select 'send to' and select your Nuvi. After you disconnect the Garmin, go into 'apps' and open 'Trip planning', and your routes will be visible. You can select which route you want and it will ask which waypoint it should use to start form. Very cool and works very well!]

I was disappointed to find that when using the search facility for my nearest DIY shops, it shows shops in Germany! After ages of waiting I managed to contact Garmin who told me this is a known fault and they have no idea when it will be fixed.

I bought this unit (Garmin 2567LM) to replace my ageing Road Angel Navigator 9000 (which was a good unit but sometimes was unreliable and subscriptions expensive and expired). I have only had the Garmin unit for about a week but have covered over 400 miles with it. The routes chosen are generally more sensible than the road angel although some errors do occur such as stating the wrong lane at junctions (the map (so far) shows the correct route). Delivery was on time. The Garmin Speed camera subscriptions (Cyclops database) for the UK is only �17/year (still to be purchased). Ordering on line (Amazon) allows you to have a 10% discount on Garmin purchases on their website once the product is registered for up to 30 days from purchase date.

Positives:
- Quick to register on the Garmin express website, however the initial map/software update did take about 2-2.5 hours but was easy to do (windows 7 with IE 10 + 13MBps broadband), just followed on screen instructions and did not use the PC for anything else during the update process. Once complete you are left with about half the units memory (~3.5GB of 7GB) this is for UK and W Europe with one map update (done on purchase), not sure if it adds to memory usage each time you update or replaces it so it may not take many updates before you need an external micro SD card (slot in bottom of unit) to expand the memory, will need to see if this is the case - especially as this is a lifetime map updates product.
- Finds a satellite signal very quickly (so far < 1 minute each time), I park in a underground car park in Birmingham city centre.
- Routes are usually sensible including use of high speed (60/70 mph) A roads where applicable as opposed to just sticking to motorways with long detours as my old unit always insisted on.
- Time to destination is quite accurate.
- Mapping is quite clear with auto zoom en route, you can also choose UK road colours (Motorways blue, A roads green, secondary A roads red etc.).
- Spoken voice is clear and can be set to quite a loud volume (but some street names are pronounced incorrectly).
- Photo real junction view is quite good (and quite realistic), these are only on motorways and appear automatically on approach to the junction (~0.5 miles), they are static and disappear once you pass the junction.
- Includes a postcode search, UK 7 digit and you do not necessarily need a house number (good for industrial estates - just bypass the house number step).
- You can display "total distance to go" in navigation map display mode.
- Over speed warning - a couple of beeps and the displayed current speed goes red, speed limit is also displayed (not 100% accurate though)
- Speed camera warning - you can select audio warring in the stet up menu, if done so it beeps when you are near the safety camera/zone (~0.2 miles), if you are below the speed limit only one audio warning is made on approach but the visual details are displayed in top right hand corner of screen (in red) and on moving map (red camera symbol displayed in position on the road), if you are above the limit it beeps fairly regularly to remind you (as well as the visual display), the higher your speed the more urgent and frequent the beeps. So far verified on fixed cameras, average camera zones, mobile camera zones, red light cameras and variable speed limits (only where the camera exists on the gantry, confirmed on M6 J10A - 8 both ways), I have not updated the unit yet using the optional Cyclops subscription, the warnings described above are supplied with the unit as standard out of the box (once menus are set up).
- So far speed camera database seems fairly accurate, especially locations.
- You can detour by 0.5, 2.0 and 5.0 miles to avoid upcoming roads (if you know you want to), this requires manual selection but is quick to do.
- The unit is quick to execute commands on the touchscreen (may be a sign of the times)
- Can connect to your mobile for more services (you need a smart phone for this and a data package) the services are traffic, live safety camera information etc. (2567LM or Bluetooth unit only)
- Can connect to a mobile for phone calls. (2567LM or Bluetooth unit only)
- Can search for local facilities in any town (bit complicated to do but good for petrol etc.)

Negatives:
- You have to use the supplied Garmin in car charger with integrated power cable, I hard wired mine in as it is neater and less to forget to put away in car parks etc., I used to have a 12V/5V USB (2 amp) charger and universal USB cable with the road angel, this does not work on the Garmin as it thinks it is connected to a PC and takes a few minutes to get going after realising there is no PC and does a master reboot, using the supplied charger works OK (no reboot) once wired in if that's what you want to do, be aware if you are considering using a commercially available universal non Garmin USB charger/USB power cable to use with this unit it will re-boot each time it sees power. you haver to use a Garmin car charger/power supply.
- My unit did switch off without notice today on the M6 South near J14 on a journey, it came to life automatically but was out of use for about a minute, OK on a motorway but not sure how I would feel if navigating in a busy city centre.
- Some speed limits wrong (mainly by a hundred yards or so - but be aware)
- If you have the speed camera audio warning you also get a warning for exceeding the speed limit in a non camera zone, this is less frequent but can be annoying when you are in a 70 zone but the unit thinks the limit is 50! Will have to see how I get on with that.
- You cannot display arrival time and distance to destination on the main navigation map screen at the same time, you can have one or the other (and other things like elevation, time to destination), although there is a sub menu to view both away from the main map (one menu press). I set it to display "distance to go" on the main navigation map screen as in the sub menu the arrival time is on the top of the list and quite easy to get to (view) when driving.
- Speed camera warnings are just beeps as are over speed and other warnings, the road angel told me (audio message) what camera type it was and speed limit (very accurate), you really have to keep an eye on the unit i.e. map for cameras etc. (or your speed!), but not bad considering the navigation and other functionality is so much better,
- Lifetime maps are actually only 4 updates a year for the "useful life of the product" however long that will be?
- Speed camera database will need updating using a wired USB PC connection and subscription, my old unit did it over the air

Conclusions:
This is a good unit for a replacement to my old road angel it seems a good choice and so far has been fine (despite the differences in warning types + one off unscheduled reboot), these are differences that I need to get used to but find it is much better and easier to use and has the basic features I used to have for navigation. There are lots of features that I will never use but the basics that I am used to are on the unit and have mastered how to use them quite quickly. I have not used the smartphone apps (no smartphone) but used the Bluetooth for calls, this is not as good as the Bluetooth in my car but good for hands free if you do not have this feature. There are no instructions supplied in the box but they can be downloaded from:

[...]

The instructions do not provide many screenshots and how things appear but are suitable to get going.

To note: I have never used a Tom Tom, Navman or other satellite Navigation unit (apart from my old road angel) so cannot comment on how this compares to them (user interface etc.)

UPDATE OCTOBER 2013

I have reduced the score to 3 as the unit seems to reboot or freeze randomly, sometimes twice in a few minutes, other times nothing for hours. Garmin support is OK but not really that good, also today noticed that I cannot update it anymore, you pay for updates and they don't work. Will see what Garmin come back with. Support is nowhere near as good as my old Road Angel