Customer Reviews
Good Device but a slow starter 
2007-11-26
The Iway250C is a great low end unit that will not get you lost.
Unit does have trouble locking on and getting a signal at start-up (2-3 minutes).
Decent MP3 player and picture viewer. Both extras are limited to the amount of space on the 2GB memory card.
This unit is being discontinued so if you can find it for $100-120 go for it !
I'm amazed 
2007-11-10
I actually purchased this for my wife, she kept nagging me so i picked this one and WOW was i amazed, this is a MUST have in this day and age, at first when it arrived i didn't think anything of it until she started using it and then she showed me all the features it can do, i still wasn't convinced until i started fooling around with it, i was amazed so much that i told all my friends, now everyone has one, so i guess i do know how to pick em (lol.
great little device 2007-09-28
How could we live before without a gps device? first time gps user and very pleased with the product.
pros: nice screen, maps work flawlessly, lots of settings to customize your device, looks good, locks good to windshield, ready to use, all u need is there.
cons: if set in standby mode, battery drains out real fast. if u miss a turn it takes a while to reroute long trips.
excellent device, easy to work around the little things its missing. if driving within a city it reroutes quite fast, voice prompts of turns in time, and ETA and time calculation is very accurate.
overall, very pleased.
Great GPS especially for the price. 2007-09-26
This GPS has worked well for me. I like the 3D mapping better than others I have seen. It has all the features that I need. You can find any point of interest you are looking for. The user interface was easy for me to figure out, I didn't have to read any instructions. I would recommend this product to anyone looking to buy a GPS for there vehicle.
Not bad for the price 2007-09-20
I bought this unit to use on trips where we get a rental car. I discovered that the car rental companies charge up to $11/day to rent them. In the past, this was still considerably cheaper than buying one but with the advent of inexpensive units like the i250C, I decided the tide had turned and it made more sense to buy.
Having experience with a much more expensive factory GPS unit in my own car, I was expecting to have to consideraly lower my expectations. In some ways I was right, in others, not so much
My first impression was that it was similar to those assemble yourself items where the vendor has succeeded in significantly lowering the price by basically pushing the work to assemble or use it off to the customer. If you're in to doing these things it can be a good deal.
Here are the main issues I had:
Startup Time
It takes a long time (five minutes or more) to lock on to a signal unlike my car system which appears instantaneous (note: this may be partly due to antenna differences). After some frustration, I learned, whenever possible, to wait five minutes after turning on the unit before leaving. Otherwise it might turn out I was going in the completely wrong direction.
Accuracy
For the most part the unit was pretty accurate. However, there were times, especially in places where the are a lot of streets a short distance apart, where it would take us on quite a detour. Fortunately, given that it is designed to recalculate a course on the fly, even if it makes a miscalculation at one point, it will eventually get you to the destination. Aggravating this is the fact that it was occasionally off the mark on very short distances (e.g. turn right 200 feet ahead might actually be 20 feet). This would lead to missing turns but again, due to its self correcting nature, we would eventually get to our destination.
In general I would say this happened probably 5-10% of the time. The rest of the time it was pretty good. I also learned that it helped a lot to look at the units display on a regular basis rather than relying on the voice alone. It was far more accurate than the voice in terms of making sure I turned at the right time. The voice alone can also be confusing at times. For example, it might say "right turn in 86 miles". Not very useful. In fairness, though, even on my car system I find the need from time to check the display and not just rely on the voice.
Choosing destinations.
The user interface for choosing destinations is actually quite good given the relatively low cost of the unit. The only real complaint I had was that it did not let you choose a city to narrow down the list. Instead I had to position the map at the city of interest and then do the search. Also, the limit on the number of displayed characters of place names could be a problem when there were many names that were the same for the displayed number of characters (for example: a hotel chain will have the first n characters the same for all its hotels). My car system allows you to horizontally scroll to see long names.
Distance indication
This behavior may be good or bad depending on your outlook. When you enter a destination,once the display screen is updated, it only appears to show destination to the next turn. If you told your wife this was going to be a 20 mile trip and its really 200 miles, this could be a good thing. Otherwise, when you arrive at the 20 mile point and suddenly the display changes and says another 50 miles,etc. it could be frustrating. Since I bought this only for vacations where supposedly one doesn't worry too much about distances, it was not a significant issue for me but could be for some.
In summary, I think this is a pretty good unit for the price as long as you adjust your behavior to compensate for the slow signal acquisition time and are not in a great hurry to reach your destination.
Not Impressed 
2008-04-26
I have had this unit for about 9 months.
It is relatively easy to see and the interface works well.
It generally gives pretty good directions, but (and this is huge) in October of 2007 we needed to get to Indianapolis airport from the Cincinnati area. We were guided through a series of dead end roads. Almost missed our plane. It turned out well for us, but this could be a huge issue for others.
The battery life is horrible and takes forever to charge. If you do not have a constant powered outlet in your vehicle this will not stay charged.
You cannot use the picture viewer through the SD card and have maps at the same time as they are not stored internally, but on the SD card.
The unit takes forever to find satellites. It often takes 10 minutes or more.
It causes interference with AM radio and as an avid AM listener this is a big problem.
Overall I have not been impressed and am very close to returning to Garmin and considering this a lost cause.
Great device for the price!!! 2008-04-23
Purchased this device to take a road trip across the Southern United States June 2007. This device was easy to upgrade on the pc with the USB cable prior to departing for our trip.
Unit stopped working on the trip, took it back to Bass Pro, and it was replaced, discovered that we were sold a unit that had been returned. So, no fault of the i250c.
We love the product, have used it for many things in the past year, all trips to unknown territory we use this device. We find it very helpful in getting where we are going, the POI's are good, we have only found one address that the GPS couldn't find. But when speaking to the owner of the B&B, she said all people that come to her say their GPS can't find her, it stops 2 blocks from the house, which is what this one did.
For the money, it is worth every dime, it save a lot of frustration trying to find locations in unfamiliar territory.
Not bad for the price 2008-04-08
I am an truck Driver and Have put over 90,000miles on it, my only major complaint is that if I Key up my cb mic that it loosed its positon, It is accurite most of the time.
Never Found a Satellite - Defective, as was Tech Support 
2008-01-04
Mine did not work ever. Ten calls to tech support, got through once and he hung up on me when I said that my machine ( a christmas gift) could not find a single satellite and I did not want to move to Tulsa.
Waste of money for this one. They want a credit card number to even think about taking a look at it.
AVOID THIS CHEAP PRODUCT
Nice Product 2007-11-27
Have had the Iway 250C for almost a year and it does all that I ask. However, upgrade required directly from manufacturer was difficult to perform. Needed help from a computer geek. Compared it to this year's models and found no reason to change.
