Summary
Review Price £85.00
Routing and navigation
You do still get Garmin's ecoRoute option, which helps you minimise your fuel usage. First, you set up the manufacturer's stated urban and extra-urban petrol consumption figures for your vehicle. However, you can now update actual miles driven versus fuel used to provide a more accurate picture. Once you've set up ecoRoute, you can click an icon in the map screen to see how economically you have been driving today. Or if you're Jeremy Clarkson you could try and damage the environment as much as you can. Most importantly, it then becomes possible to choose the most fuel-efficient route, rather than just the fastest or shortest.
The nuvi 2240 also includes Garmin's myTrends, which optimises the routes you take between locations stored in your favourites menu. As you travel between two points repeatedly, myTrends takes note of the routes you take and how they affect your journey time. So if you find some good shortcuts during your daily commute these will be suggested next time you calculate that route. In theory, this sounds like a great idea, and similar provisions are offered by Navigon and TomTom. But it's hard to assess such a system without months of comparative testing, which is beyond the scope of this article. We have seen some improvements in routing in devices offering similar technology, however. The nuvi 2240 is also traffic-ready, although the GTM35 RDS-TMC receiver required will set you back an extra £49.99, which will make a more premium device that comes with this as standard a more cost-effective option.
During driving, the nuvi 2240 provides a clear map, and the verbal instructions include spoken street names. The occasional stutters in map updates we've noted many times before still occur, but they don't really impede navigation. The lane assistance at junctions isn't backed up by full-screen graphics at major motorway interchanges, a useful but not essential feature. Speed camera locations are included, and these come from Garmin's Cyclops system, which is kept up-to-date on a daily basis and incorporates information from Garmin's live-enabled devices. However, to benefit from this you will need to hook the device up to your PC via the myGarmin software on a regular basis. It's also possible to record any discrepancies in speed limit information, again uploading these to Garmin when you connect the device to a PC.
During driving, the nuvi 2240 provides a clear map, and the verbal instructions include spoken street names. The occasional stutters in map updates we've noted many times before still occur, but they don't really impede navigation. The lane assistance at junctions isn't backed up by full-screen graphics at major motorway interchanges, a useful but not essential feature. Speed camera locations are included, and these come from Garmin's Cyclops system, which is kept up-to-date on a daily basis and incorporates information from Garmin's live-enabled devices. However, to benefit from this you will need to hook the device up to your PC via the myGarmin software on a regular basis. It's also possible to record any discrepancies in speed limit information, again uploading these to Garmin when you connect the device to a PC.
