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

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.

I always marvel at the 'love-hate' variations from user to user on product reviews. In my case, the 250C has performed quite well with functionality and features comparable to the last Garmin I owned (passed down to my daughter). Trying to be realistic and balanced there are things I like more and less about this GPS:

Pro:

*Excellent 2D display w/ variable map scaling. At freeway speeds, the display extends about 11 miles; as you slow, the scale shrinks down to 200'.

*The touchscreen works well (use your finger nail or the included stylis - don't fat-finger it)

*No more irritating "Re-calculating" nag that Garmin thinks is cute when you ignore the GPS instructions.

*Very fast route recalculation when you deviate

*Great NavTeq map software

Con:

*The initial satellite synchronization is slower than Garmin, but hardly painful (typically I will lock on 6 satellites)

*Until you configure the display to meet personal preferences, it is possible to have "too much" information on the screen

*The screen by screen navigation for selecting options/destinations could stand some improvement.

All in all a fine GPS aid that reflects a heck of a value. I'm clearly cheap, but still 'discerning' in my buying decisions.

I've used the 250c now for 2-1/2 months. It found a remote chuch on a dirt road in Vermont for us; guided us through tricky turns to an IKEA in Toronto; located and guided me to a remote church in New Hampshire for a funeral. Once you understand how to use its via point capabilities, and some of its more complicated functionality, it's a great GPS for the money.

The first one we got didn't have all the necessary software installed, so we decided to give it another chance and exchanged it.

This is NOT a pull-out-of-the-box-and-use product. It's NOT user friendly at all. And even after reading the entire manual and supposedly setting up the GPS, it STILL didn't work correctly.

Do yourself a favor and spend the extra money to get one of the more well-known GPS units like Garmin or TomTom.

I purchased the iway 250 about a week before i was taking a road trip to myrtle beach SC. I live in Massachusetts. I played with the iway for a few days before the trip. I am back home in Mass and survived to tell the tale. This is my review.

This is my first GPS. The iway is a fun toy. The car kit worked well. Stuck to the winshield and held and was easily transfered between cars. It also has great battery life. The iway isn't overly large. At times during the trip i would bring it with me into the hotel, etc. to do forward planning.

Lets start with the display/sounds/navigation. Changing views on the touch screen is easy. There is a 3d mode and two overview map modes. I liked the overview map the best as i could easily see the upcoming turns. A tap is all it takes to change the view. The Iway is loud enough to hear with the windows down or if you have tunes playing. Again this is also easily enough adjusted. This can be tricky to do with your finger. The volume adjust is on the touch screen and with average fingers it can be tricky to touch and slide the small on screen control. It is easily done with the sylus. The stylus is located on the left side of the unit which happened to come in contact with my dash and was difficult to remove during navigation. The menu is easily navigated even when in route with the touch of your finger. You can switch from the menus quickly and easily. One of my favorite menu options is a gauge page which estimates your time of arrival. On a long trip this was nice to have.

The bad. The Iways pre loaded addresses and points of interest are incredibly outdated. Driving through New Jersey at 2 am the gas light came on with no gas stations in site. I used the iway. I went to POI's and then gas stations. Great, the closest one is .14 miles away. The iway proceeds to take me miles away to the next exit and then loops me back around. The iway did not take into account at the next exit there would be closer gas stations. After finally finding this gas station it had clearly been out of business for years with weeds growing out of the spots where the gas pumps had been. I used the iway to look up other gas stations. I called the numbers on about 5-6 of them. No answering machines or answer. So i located the closest big name gas station. In route to it i spoted a gas station that was open that wasn't on the iways POI list. Thanks for the help.

Another instance i was going to Medievil Times restaurant in SC. It is located i presume on a company made road called fantasy way. I did a search... the iway couldn't find the road. I wasn't surprised as i figured it was probably the name of the road in some development. After finding my own way the road was labeled on the gps. I don't know why it couldn't find it by the search function.

In transit. The iway takes you in a straight shot route. If the highway you are on takes a relative turn it may have you take an exit to find a straigter route. On one occasion when the Iway told me to get off the highway i rebelled. The choice probably saved me a half an hour.

This GPS also does not account for traffic reports which i heard some can via advanced connections. I spend two hours in traffic at new yorks george washington bridge that could have been avoided if the iway had this feature.

Another example of the poi's being out of date. I did a search for dunkin donuts. It stated the closest was about 85 miles away. In reality there were 3-5 within 10 miles.

The iway will get you where you have to go. For me a the phone book from my hotel was important as i needed it for addresses as the places where i wanted to go weren't in the POI's. Apparently there is an option to update the maps but it costs 75 dollars. And if you are wondering if i updated the software via Iways website... it was the first thing i did when i took it out of the box so i cannot make comparisons.

The iway also occasionally takes long durations to find your location. This can be aggravating when you think it has found you and you start on your route only to realise it isn't directing you. If you are in a parking lot when it finds you and you go out the opposite side of the parking lot onto a different street which will connect you to the same road as the iway has you going, it will calculate your route over again to account for the road you are on. This can take minutes if you have a long trip planned.

I enjoyed having the iway but it has its flaws. I would buy it again, but there may be better options out there.

I had seen the Garmin StreetPilot c330 in operation but purchased the Lowrance iWay 250c because the literature indicated it offered the same features at a lower cost. I was wrong and returned the unit. I found the Lowrance to be difficult to use. Putting in a specific address was the area I found most troublesome. Secondly, accuracy in recalculation was way off. I missed the destination on purpose and let the machine guide me back to it. The machine missed the location by two blocks. I paid the extra and bought the Garmin c330.

My wife and I were interested in purchasing a navigation system, but did not want to spend $500+ for some of the higher end systems that we had seen in the stores. I ordered the Lowrance iWay 250C Multimedia GPS Portable Navigation System after reading several favorable reviews on the internet. After receiving the iWay, we tried to play around with it while we were in the house, but the GPS satellite was unable to locate us. The manual did say that obstructions such as trees, buildings, even the roof of your car, may cause interference. To make a long story short, we tried the iWay on several occasions, short trips to the store, and longer trips around town to see if it would work. In most cases, the satellite either took and extraordinarily long time to find us, or was completely unable to locate us at all. On the one instance when we were actually able to plan a route, the iWay plotted a much longer route than we would normally take. Aside from that, we felt that the iWay was not very intuitive. It seemed difficult and tedious at times to program the system and even our home's location was not recognized on the map. I would not want to rely on this if I were lost or somewhere out of town. I've tried out some of the more expensive units in electronics stores which seemed to be much more intuitive and I will probably save my money and invest in one of those.

this company should stick to fish finding! I live in mountains of pa and it never picked up a sattelite returned it and bought a tom tom go 300 and it picked up 7 sattelites out the box..same price though refurbed

Purchased as my first GPS through recommendation from a friend. Perfect operation although the maps/POI's are a few years old. Have contacted Lowrance for details on updating maps/POI's but have not received email response.

This is a small & compact GPS unit that will get you where you need to go. Screen is programmable so you can customize layout to fit your need. Yes it includes a stylus but it works fine using my finger.

I have used a few different brands in rental cars over the years and this one is just as good as those more expensive units.

Includes a built-in MP3 player and digital picture viewer but have not used these features as I purchased for use as a GPS.

I like the fact that it has built-in batteries. Not sure how long the full-charge will last but it's a nice feature nonetheless.

I also like the included suction-cup windshield holder. Holds tight even in the hot sun and allows me to position just where I need it.

Bottom line - if you don't want to spend more than $200 for a GPS then this is the unit for you!