Sitting atop of the newer 200 series from Garmin, the garmin nuvi 270 gps system sports the 3.5′ touch screen (which is quite vivid and bright even topping some of the more expensive wide screen brightness and view ability) The x70 models main attraction is the comprehensive amount of pre-installed maps and data, that make them more suited to people that want to not just use their GPS systems at home but also take them across multiple borders in North America and Europe. Installing European maps on other units that don’t have them approaches $300-400 in many cases, so at this price it truly is a value unit for someone that needs that functionality.

Note that the 200 series is the entry level, and as such a few of the more advanced features are missing (bluetooth and wireless calling, mp3 player and FM traffic receiver to name the most common ones). At the core all the main functions, navigation, routing, accuracy and utilities are still present and for someone that is looking for a low cost GPS navigation system without the need for all the fancy and often very underused extra’s, it remains a powerful and affordable option.

Jump To - Table of Contents

1. Design and Portability
2. Viewing & Touchscreen
3. Navigation & Driving
4. Compare Nuvi 270 Vs. XXX
5. Visitor & Customer Reviews
6. Video & Whats in the box?
7. Accesories & Mounts
8. Verdict & Conclusion
9. Cheapest & Lowest Price to Buy

Design & portability:

With a slim form factor and the 3.5′ screen, it’s identical in size to the Nuvi 350/360/370 series and near the same weight with only a tiny difference in width. It’s sleek and clean in physical appearance on the outer shell, with the power button found on top where sliding to the left turns it on and sliding to the right will lock the device so accidentally touches of the screen won’t interfere.

Notable changes for loyal garmin fans and previous owners, is that the antenna has become internal rather then flip up, which I find to help keep the unit small and easily portable. The SD expansion bay has also moved to the left where you can insert memory cards to add certain features and space to your garmin nuvi 270.

Viewing - Screen:

Although introduced in the ‘cheaper’ 200 series, the 3.5′ inch touch screen on the Nuvi 270 has been drastically improved in my opinion! It is much brighter then the more expensive nuvi 350 360 and 370 counterparts and I find it to be more easily viewable at angles and with glare then my nuvi 350 unit.

The menus on the home navigation screens have been rearranged slightly to be more user friendly and I enjoy the change and they are quite sensible changes that long term garmin nuvi users will appreciate after getting used to them.

Navigation:

Figure 1: Simple and easy to follow turn by turn directions make missing something difficult	Figure 2: Customizeable vehicle icons for your preferred navigation display	Figure 3: Break down your route into very detailed and informative directions with various different views of your trip

This new entry level series doesn’t skimp on the core navigation abilities that have been a major reason why the other garmin gps series have been so popular. Directions are clear and clever, routes are accurate and quick to calculate or recalculate if you somehow miss a turn or direction. For people wondering the speed and signal quality of their new garmin nuvi 270 gps, if you turn on your nuvi270 and enter a location or point of interest – it will have completely locked on, calculated your route and be ready for every direction by about the time you get down your driveway (unless your parked on the street, in which case its still that darn fast hehe!)

Powered by an ultra high sensitivity chipset, it holds onto the satellite signals incredibly strong like past Garmin Nuvis and you’d be hard pressed to loose the signal if you tried as I found out in a torture test. I was able to go to the bottom level of the parking garage and keep the satellite locked on – although turning it off and then on again resulted in a much longer time taken +30% to find it again.

Turning it on, you are welcomed to the basic navigation home screen where you select from the Where To? Or view map submenus that take you through a series of possible ways to choose where you want to go (coordinates, names, search databases, favorites, etc…)

Figure 4: Easily find specific addresses or locations using the touch screen number and keyboards to type in the names and addresses of locations	Figure 5: Scout out local points of interest through the huge and diverse database of theme orientated destination	Figure 6: Get a detailed overview of the entire region through various overviews and map selections

Compare Garmin Nuvi 270

The models in the 2XX series have minor differences, mostly in the data that has been preloaded into them. The Nuvi 200 has the 48 continental US states, the 250 ads coverage for all of North America, and the 270 has N.A. and Europe covered for you.

The differences between units may seem hard to understand at first, so let me briefly describe the differences:

Nuvi 200: 48 continental states

Nuvi 250: All of North America

Nuvi 270: All of North America and Europe

Garmin’s 2XX series: Cheapest Price value level - Basic Navigation features, slightly less powerful chipset, no text-to-speech (street name pronunciation), Bluetooth, traffic conditions, etc…

Garmin’s 3XX series: Most popular Series - adds text to speech capabilities optional, FMC traffic data, SiRFIII chipset, etc…

Garmin’s 6XX series: Larger Widescreen models. Text-to-speech, FMC Traffic Data, MSN direct integration, Bluetooth hands free calling, etc… included

In the near future I will try to do a more specific per-model comparison for those that really want to narrow down the best specific model, the above is just a brief guideline and shopping guide for the time being

Visitor Garmin 270 Reviews:

Kim Gives her Garmin Nuvi 270 Review talking about its superiority to a Magellan GPS system that she has previously owned.

Jason sends in his personal Nuvi 270 Review discussing how he enjoys the nuvi270 more then a streetpilot by garmin and how it has great value if you intend to travel to Europe but would need to upgrade the map data if not owning a X70 series garmin gps.

Tim emailed his Garmin 270 Review and discusses how he was hesitant and decided on this because of its cheap price, and how he fell in love with it and regards it now as money well spent

David says in his Review of Garmins Nuvi 270 that he was glad he picked up this one as he didn’t need all the extra features of the fancy and expensive models but did need European data without a big price crunch

Stephen gives some experience in his Garmin Nuvi 270 Review where he describes it as the best GPS system out of the four that he has owned so far for the price.

Video of Garmin Nuvi 200 series:

The following is a video that shows off the basic in the box package of the Garmin Nuvi 270 as well as a quick run down and overview of how the menus and tools are laid out. This is actually a nuvi250 system, but the core functions shown in the video are all similar to that of the garmin 270 model.

Garmin Nuvi 270 Accesories:

After market mounts are the most common Garmin Nuvi 270 Accessory by far, but others such as SD memory card upgrades, antenna’s, carrying cases and more are quite popular as well.

I recommend shopping for Nuvi 270 accessories, mounts and more at Amazon.com to make sure you can compare all the offerings as well as get help to compare and locate the cheapest and lowest price on the certain garmin 270 accessory you are looking for.

They have a pretty extensive list, and as you might find if you look at some of the prices of the upgrading to the European maps, the nuvi270 has some great incentive as the price of an upgrade of a different unit alone would cost you nearly the same!

Verdict:

The Garmin 270 Nuvi unit is a great all around GPS system that does offer incredible value for the casual user. The cheapest and best prices on the 200 series still seem to be a bit high at the moment and upgrading to something like the nuvi 350 does seem to be the better purchase at the moment if you have the extra cash for a more powerful and flexible unit, but I expect Garmin to drop the price soon or perhaps they already have at the time you are reading this, as they wouldn’t want to make the entire line obsolete. Expect the nuvi 270 / 250 / 200 to have some good discount sales as summer closes and help bring in more users – yourself included possibly into the world of GPS convenience… they will never go back to normal navigation and paper maps again, and I think they will be thankful that this great company decided to offer a value level unit for hesitant shoppers this year!

Cheapest / Best Price on Garmin’s Nuvi 270:

If you want to buy garmin’s nuvi 270 gps system, one of the hardest things to find is the cheap sales and best discount offers if you aren’t used to shopping online and off. At a glance in my area and online, it seems the big offline consumer stores will never sport you the best deals, with places like wal-mart and bestbuy being rather expensive compared to some of the cheap prices on garmin nuvi 270 available online.

Another famous shopping arena, eBay.com isn’t exactly user friendly and comes with some security issues for novice shoppers, and in my experience from searching for GPS systems, don’t really have that great of a deal on these items once you factor in all the additional and hidden costs of getting your purchase (IF you get your purchase in said condition that is )

The Garmin Nuvi 270 Best Price found?

I recommend after comparing many only merchant and trustworthy stores - Amazon - as it isn’t only the most trusted and largest online retailer out there, but they do indeed offer the lowest and best prices to buy Garmin Nuvi 270 GPS system from my research. They actually represent many little individual stores all under the same roof, and it seems that they like to compete for the sale thus driving prices way way cheap for us compared to elsewhere, while maintaining high levels of customer service, integrity, trust and delivering on their promises through the stellar reputation of their brand.

Shop and compare 1000+ GPS models @ Amazon.com

This will be my forth Garmin GPS system, and I am actually willing to say with my experience in using the Garmin and Nuvi lineups that the Garmin Nuvi 270 does offer me the best value for what I need it to do. All of the Nuvi’s are superior in my opionion to the other lines although the garmin 270 does seem to have less speaker power volume than the streetpilots, but also isn’t massive in size which is more important for me as I like it to be portable, light and easily traveled.

The Nuvi 270 seems to pick more logical and better routes when compared side by side to my two other non-nuvi series units, and also has a much better viewing angle and brightness then others which is more obviously apparent when you have them all setup together and viewing with the same types of ambience, glare and sunlight/direction.

The new mounts and onboard accessories I feel are also much better then the Garmin 670 I own, as well as the streetpilot 2610 and a Magellan unit, and after owning so many I can safely say that an appropriate mount is one thing that many first time GPS buyers may overlook (there is nothing more annoying then a hard to mount system, nor a brand new expensive toy that falls and smashes into your car)

I truly love the garmin nuvi 270 gps and it comes packed lighlty with all the features I need without running up the lowest prices you can find online for them, I give it a near perfect score with my only beef with this is that I have got used to widescreen already so downgrading to back to a normal 3.5′ viewable area has been a pain in the butt, but should change as I get used to it again on an upcoming adventure!

The gamrin nuvi 270 had all the data I needed, I didn’t need the widescreen of the 670 version as I wanted to be able to easily carry it in my pockets on long trips and from vehicle to vehicle and was much cheaper then similar models from other GPS companies and brands at the time I bought it.

I’m truly happy with this purchase and thought I would come back and leave my feelings and thouhts online to help persuade other thinking about buying the nuvi 270 from garmin that it really is a great deal with powerful features, great design and build quality, along with having data for all areas you may need it while maintaining ultra portability for the frequent traveler.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Well I tell you folks, she finally got her way and we bought the Nuvi 270 (Europe ready and still fairly cheap compared to similar market units) and I am really glad we did! It is much more capable and intelligent then myself with a plain paper map, and looking back we actually had quite a few troubles on long car trips due to my really inability to navigate, despite what I had lead my family to believe hehe!

The whole package is useful, the features intuitive and fun, and I just can’t get over the fact how smart a robot can really be! Can’t wait to take this on long road trips across the ocean this winter, 5 stars for this Clever little piece of gadgetry!

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I have owned the Garmin Streetpilot C530 since last year and bought it for just over $400 and then when I decided to goto Europe. I was disappointed extremely by the fact that I had to pay an extra $299 for European map upgrades bringing the total cost after all was said and done near $800. The garmin nuvi 270 however is much cheaper and has the bonus features of the European maps already included, along with some other noteworthy additions that make it a really good deal if its priced under $600-500.

I don’t own the Nuvi 270 but I wish I did now reading other garmin nuvi 270 reviews online compared against my own c 530, I mean I really love mine but in comparison you get the same and so much more from the 270 over the c530 at a fraction at the cost, especially if you need the European maps like I did.

I have also used in the past other older GPS systems, and driving in some places such as Manhattan island I was expecting the same problems as previous models, but it seems that Garmin’s SIRF III reciever and well done maps are extremely prope and I experience none of the problems I had with older and other systems.

Highly recommend Garmin to all of you, and the Nuvi 270 or Nuvi 370 if you want an affordable, awesome and European vacation ready system!

Switching quickly to the garmin nuvi 270, it was like the difference between night and day; the menus and interface were really simple and intuitive and near perfect in every way. I also travel frequently to cities in Europe and was pleased that the nuvi 270 gps offered European and Canada/USA maps already preinstalled without the need for a costly upgrade. I also looked into buying a TomTom go910 but ultimately after doing some good research and reading many garmin nuvi 270 review comments compared to the tomtom 910, I settled on this one seeing as how the general majority pointed it out to be the superior unit.

One of my favorite things is the ultra sensitive, accurate and bright touch screen, which is easily viewable in all sorts of angles, glare and dim light. It has great build quality and features for a lower end model, and thus a great cheap price and extraordinary value overall for the average person looking to buy without spending a life savings on a more expensive model.

One problem I’d like to point out is that the charging adapter for the gar, as I like to walk with my portable travel assistant without having to rent or use a car to charge, and I had to rectify the issue by ordering an AC charger for about $25 after shipping and such.

Besides that its an all around joy and from what I have gathered through my research and experience the best value and bang for your buck at the lower end price ranges!

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars