I've just bought my 1st Satnav and chose a Garmin Nuvi 265WT as it seemed to have all the functions I'd want. Not seen much evidence that the traffic function is doing very much – anyone here find it works well? I bought hoping it would make journeys easier by trying to avoid traffic problems so hope it's useful.

It relies on the trafficmaster info, so should be fairly good, but I've no idea how good. I'm in the market for one right now so Id like to know how well it works and how you find things like lane guidance on it – only ever used tomtoms and this one isnt even for me.

This Garmin doesn't have lane guidance; has blue tooth for your phone though….

Some pair up with your phone and download traffic data over the mobile phone network – they're usually subscription based. Some use TMC, which picks up data encoded into the FM radio signal (Classic FM in this country).

I've had both, current one does TMC and both are only really useful when telling you something horrendous has happened and a road is shut. Invariably if it's reporting "busy" or "queuing" traffic you can bet the surrounding roads (which it doesn't know about) that it tries to route you on will be awful too.

Not as good as FM/RDS traffic reports through your stereo, but quite nice when you're listening to something and don't want reports cutting in all the way through rush-hour.

My Garmin suggested I keep off the A3 when I was heading back from Wimbledon last Friday. 10 mins later the radio tells me there's a big smash at Wisley and the queues are backing up to Esher. So the traffic thing works for me! Though around midnight on Boxing day last year it tried to tell me that there were massive holdups on the M25, which there weren't.

So is the Garmin fairly obvious in it's directions at large junctions, or does it just "drop" you in it? I've seen the TomTom solution which seems to be a vague flash-up sign that roughly tells you which direction to take at the junction but it doesnt seem much different from the spoken instructions (like "keep right").

<sorry for the threadjack>

Used the Garmin on the way home today and it did well in telling me when the M25 was going to get bad and how long the badness would last – which was nice to know. Not explored the traffic function further but I believe it will show me how surrounding roads are doing though suspect only the main roads have useful traffic info.

Not used it on a route I don't know but the screen shows directions as clearly as I can imagine. It also tells me the speed limit for the road and beeps if I'm going faster than it. Gives warnings of speed cameras too.