Compact, portable, convenient

The Garmin Nuvi 270 offers affordable and portable GPS navigation, along with a lot of pre-loaded information including restaurants, fuel, shopping, ATM/banking, etc. It also allows you to navigate directly to an entered address, and easily add via points to your destination as well. This is an great feature when you're on the way somewhere and remember you need to stop at an ATM, or the drug store. The Nuvi will find the nearest, and then after your stop will continue you to your final destination. If you miss a turn, the Nuvi automatically recalcuates a new route for you. All input is via a touch screen, there is only one external button.

You may also enter favorites, including a one-touch "return home." The recent destinations list keeps a fairly long list of your previous destinations which makes going back there very easy.

Navigation and routing is good, but not without fault. On a recent Gulf coast trip that should have taken approximately 3 hours, the Nuvi calculated a route that included taking a car ferry. . .which in the end added over 90 minutes to the overall trip. And yes, that was the "quickest" route, not the "scenic route" which the Nuvi does give you the option of selecting.

That being said, the Nuvi seems exceptionally good at urban routing with regard to one-way streets, locations where left/right turns are not permitted, and streets with divided medians.

Other options include changing the voice prompts, language, routing features, volume, view, etc. There are also screens showing turn-by-turn directions, average/min/max speed, distance, etc. Garmin also offers downloads for additional features as well. It automatically switches from a bright day mode (which is always sufficiently bright and not washed out by sunlight even in a convertible) to a night mode that is dim enough so as to not ruin your night vision. (Users may override the brighness as well.)