Garmin - Nuvi 200 Review

My Nuvi 200 arrived two days ago, and after a few minutes to locating satellites, the unit found my location and in all later driving followed my routes faithfully. The POIs are accurate, and reasonably up to date although resturants, gas stations, and hotels have changed names although not locations. The routing to destinations seems good with my limited experience although the estimated mileage to destinations I have visited often seems under estimated.

I purchased the Nuvi 200 unit (my first GPS) for upcoming trips to Midwest USA, England, and Northern Europe. I anticipate that it will perform well with mapping and directing my movements in these regions.

But I suspect that the unit has many additional capabilities that I have not been able to learn because the "manual" for the unit is a joke. Where is a full guide for users who want to fully use the Nuvi 200's features? This lack of documentation is the primary reason that I give the Nuvi 200 only three stars instead of 5.

Presently I would like to learn how simulate directions from a location different from the present location of my unit. For example how can I sit in California and find the driving directions from Bloomsbury in London to Oxford. How can I display a map of my likely destinations? (I find that "sliding" the map with my finger, will bring me to London. But I can not then zoom in with out the map display changing back to my home.) Without better information I guess I will have to wait until I arrive in England.

Another issue where better documentation might help is in the use of the picture viewer. This is a rather nice feature, and a fairly large number of pictures on a SD card can be displayed in a slide show. The show can be stopped at a particular slide, and the image can be enlarged and "slided" to regions of interest. However with a large number of pictures (arranged in directories on the SD card), I can not figure out how to view efficiently a picture far down the list of files. The Nuvi 200 appears to not allow the user to use the directory structure for images, but rather just presents a long list of pictures that take a long time to sequentially display and provide only a slide show with all of the pictures. What is a user supposed to do: buy many SD cards with different sets of pictures?

I am very happy with the unit, and in no way do I regret my purchase. However with more attention must be made to users who want to get maximum benefit from their investment. There should be more clear directions so that you can better understand the product. I am not very tech savvy so there should be some easy directions that make senses to those that do not know anything about technology. Why should I be punished for having better things to worry about? Could be better...