Key Features

  • 3.5in non-widescreen
  • UK and Ireland maps
  • RDS-TMC ready
  • Ful UK post code entry
  • Cyclops speed camera locations

Garmin nuvi 2240

Nowadays, just over £100 can buy you a 5in widescreen sat-nav, such as Mio's Spirit 685. But if your budget is even less than that, you will still be looking at a device with a 3.5in non-widescreen, and just UK and Ireland mapping. Garmin's nuvi 2240 can now be had for £85 with UK maps, although the European version will set you back £25 more. Build quality is up to Garmin's usual standards, but the range of features does not cover all of the company's latest widgets.

The main menu is the familiar Garmin arrangement of two large icons and a small array of lesser ones. Garmin's menu has been quite easy for newcomers to get to grips with for some years. A single Where To? icon takes you to a familiar submenu of options, where you can enter an address or search for a Point of Interest (POI). You can set up a single Home address and a list of favourites, browse destinations recently found, and even head for a set of longitude and latitude coordinates.



One important thing Mio's budget 5in Spirit 685 doesn't offer is full UK postcode search, but the nuvi 2240 does. This can be a particularly quick way of entering a destination, so it's great to see the facility here. There's also a Trip Planner, allowing you to create a multi-waypoint journey. Although you can search for a keyword across the address and POI databases, unlike Mio's Spirit devices these are separate searches, not combined. Nevertheless, apart from the lack of any live services, Garmin's nuvi 2240 offers the same solid set of destination-finding tools as its higher-end devices.

We weren't expecting to find this feature on a sat-nav below £100, but we're still sad that Garmin's class-leading voice control system is not present in the nuvi 2240. Routing is also the traditional calculation based on a nominal speed for different classes of road, rather than the actual statistical average speed for specific roads based on traffic data recordings. Garmin has mirrored TomTom's IQ Routes with its trafficTrends, which is available in its latest higher-end devices, but it's not included here.

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