| gps Navigation System gps
Not all who wander are lost. But not all who are lost wish to wander-and for those there are a host of navigation devices designed to keep them on the right path. Truckin' borrowed three automotive GPS navigation units to see how they held up to both routine commutes and business travel: Cobra's NAVONE 3000, Lowrance's iWay 500c, and Magellan's RoadMate 300.
These are portable devices, inhabiting the category between the handheld, battery-powered navigators that can be slipped into a hiker's pocket and the built-in, fully featured units that are permanently installed into a vehicle by automakers or the aftermarket. About the size of a book, portables are just compact enough to be moved from one truck or boat to another, but are usually heavier than a handheld and must be powered by the vehicle's electrical system.
Two of the units we evaluated were firsts for their manufacturers. Lowrance presented its iWay at SEMA last year. It was the first automotive navigation product for the veteran maker of aviation and marine navigation solutions. Cobra, a company that makes CB and FRS radios, showed off its NAVONE, its first automotive navigator, at CES in 2004 before releasing it later in the fall. Magellan is well established in the handheld and automotive navigation markets. Its RoadMate line benefits from the company's experience with its NeverLost Magellan-a product that has been available to Hertz car renters for years.
As for where each product stands in its company's lineup, the Magellan RoadMate 300 is the entry-level model in its series, the iWay 500c is at the entry point of the iWay portables, and the NAVONE 3000 is Cobra's only automotive nav model. All three companies offer handhelds; none has in-dash offerings.
Out Of The Box
From the standpoint of physical design, the RoadMate comes out on top. It sports a teardrop shape with a clean silver face. It's the smallest of the bunch, measuring 3.1 inches high, 6.2 inches wide, and 1.2 inches deep, and weighing 9 ounces. The NAVONE's square, gray body looks competent but less refined than the RoadMate. At 4.73x7.91x2.28 inches and 1 pound, 8.96 ounces, it is larger than the RoadMate. The iWay stands in between the two, weighing approximately 2 pounds and measuring 6.1x4.5x2.15 inches. Its rugged construction bears the demeanor of a fishfinder unit with very high production values, and it's waterproof to boot.
All units come with everything they need to properly function. The essentials include a mounting system and a power cord. Each of them has a suction-cupped windshield mount that works well. Attaching the units to their mounting arms and then attaching that assembly to a windshield is a simple process, but positioning them so that the units are supported by the dash and are angled for optimal viewing by the driver takes some trial and error. The iWay offers a dash-top mount in addition to the windshield version. It's a heavy, flat, rubberized base splayed out into three "legs" that can be bent to conform to the contours of the dash (bending them repeatedly to test their suppleness slightly distorted the shape of one of those legs, however). The nav units and their mounts fit well enough in the vehicles we drove.
Each unit plugs into a vehicle's accessory/cigarette socket with an included adaptor. Only the iWay includes an AC adaptor for home or office use, while RoadMate and NAVONE users can buy one separately. The iWay's car adaptor includes a speaker, as opposed to the internal speakers that the RoadMate and NAVONE had. That external speaker worked fine but for the constant hiss it emitted. While the noise never interfered with our ability to understand the iWay's voice prompts, it was distracting. A little fast-food engineering solved the problem: Stuffing napkins against the front of the speaker mitigated the hiss and allowed us to still hear the unit's prompts.
Both the iWay and NAVONE store map data on internal hard drives. The iWay's drive splits its 20GB capacity between map data and music storage. Yes, music. The engineers at Lowrance realized that they had some extra storage capacity, so they added an MP3 and Ogg Vorbis player to the iWay's mix of features. Users can download music files from Windows-only computers and listen to them over the power cord's external speaker. Or they can connect the iWay with the supplied cable to a car stereo's auxiliary line input, which is usually on the back of the head unit...and therefore buried in the dash. Give credit to Lowrance for providing a solution for enhancing the enjoyment of digital music, but it's an idea better suited for a semi-permanent configuration where one end of the cable could be connected to a head unit and the other end would poke out of a dash with just enough length to reach the nav unit. It would require a little time and forethought for a DIYer. It certainly wouldn't work out for someone traveling a lot and taking the unit from one car to another (which is what we did). For that, an RF modulator would be the second-best solution.
The iWay and NAVONE come fully loaded with street-level Navteq maps and points of interest (POI) for the United States that include the lower 48, Hawaii, and parts of Canada. The basemap that is preloaded into the RoadMate only has broad info such as highways and interstates. A Windows application on the CD-Rom that comes with the RoadMate allows users to download street-level information and POI quickly and easily for any part of the country. The only limitation is memory. The RoadMate comes with 110MB of internal memory. That can be expanded with Secure Digital (SD) memory cards. It's as-is storage capacity was enough for us to load detailed information for Southern California; the southern third of Nevada, including Las Vegas; and part of western Arizona (to include Lake Havasu City)-everything we, as SoCal residents, would likely need to routinely live, work, and play. The RoadMate came with the cables needed to connect it to the computer.
Only the iWay came with a detailed, bound instruction manual. Pamphlets explain the basics of getting the RoadMate and NAVONE up and running. Detailed manuals are available online for all three units.
From Point A To Point B
Most of our driving was done in the California counties of Los Angeles and Orange during daily commutes and while running weekend errands. We used the units quite a bit while traveling to shows, too: NAVONE guided us during a drive from Tennessee to Washington, D.C., and around central Florida. The iWay navigated a swing through Florida and Atlanta. RoadMate led the way on a trip to Arizona from the L.A. area.
All three units took to air travel quite well. They, their windshield mounts, and power adapters required a reasonable amount of space in our luggage and handled the rigors of dropped bags, tight overhead storage compartments, and presumably rough baggage handlers admirably. Neither did they draw the attention of TSA inspectors, although we wish we could say the same for our camera gear.
Both the iWay and NAVONE can track 12 satellites at one time, while RoadMate can reach 14. All three use WAAS, which uses ground stations to supplement the GPS satellites orbiting overhead, allowing the nav unit to pinpoint its own location to within 10 meters (as opposed to the typical 100 meters). NAVONE and iWay have internal GPS antennae, while the RoadMate's stubby antenna is attached to the outside of the unit and swivels up from its stowed position. The iWay comes with a patch antenna that plugs into the unit with a long cable that allows the antenna to be placed anywhere on the dash. The RoadMate and NAVONE can accommodate a similar antenna that is sold separately. When it comes to satellite acquisition, neither iWay or NAVONE encountered any unique problems that we could tell. All three devices seemed a little slow in getting their bearings when we would turn them on after we had shut them off and moved them from one location to another (for example, turning one off at the airport in Los Angeles and on again at the car rental agency in Knoxville or Daytona, or powering it down and bringing it from one of our houses to the office).
NAVONE has a gyro in it that measures inertia, helping the unit track a vehicle's straight-line movement for times when its view of the GPS satellites is blocked by overpasses or tall buildings. It's a feature more commonly found in higher-end, in-dash navigation units. Does it work? We couldn't notice the difference between the NAVONE and the other two portable navs in these situations. Granted, it may be that we didn't put ourselves in a position where the gyro's utility would have been obvious.
The RoadMate presented us with a peculiar problem. From the start, some staffers complained of it not seeing satellites right away, even after they left it on in their car and walked away for a while. During a drive to Lake Havasu City, Arizona, the RoadMate completely lost GPS guidance for a 100-mile stretch between Desert Center, California, and Parker, Arizona. We made sure that its stubby antenna was properly connected and flipped up. We surfed the RoadMate's diagnostic screens for a solution, resetting the satellite tracking multiple times. One of the diagnostic screens is devoid of the RoadMate's otherwise friendly, layman-oriented user interface. Alphanumeric characters trickle in orderly columns and rows, but initially look as cryptic as the data stream of The Matrix. Eventually we puzzled out its purpose: Apparently, it monitors the RoadMate's progress in tracking GPS satellites, indicating the number of satellites that it can see and their positions in the sky. It looked as though the device wasn't tracking enough satellites to be able to get a fix. Securing it on the dash directly under the windshield to give it the best possible view of the sky didn't help, neither did holding it out the sunroof. Eventually the RoadMate sorted things out for itself, and began working properly about 40 miles from our destination.
The three units exercised excellent road manners, gently offering direction with female voices and visual cues like arrows and a countdown in fractions of a mile. In fact, their timing was impeccable as they delivered the needed directions exactly when we needed to change lanes to exit a freeway or turn into an intersection. Whenever we got off course, each unit quickly rerouted us to the next available turn and would guide as back on course.
All three of these devices exhibit the same lack of intuitiveness. By setting the RoadMate to route by minimal use of freeways, for example, it told us to exit a freeway and drive on a road paralleling the freeway until it dead ended, and then prompted us to get back onto that freeway. Meanwhile, we were no more than a few yards from the same freeway the entire time. The inherent imprecision of GPS sometimes convinced the iWay that it was on a road 10 meters away from us. Sensing that we were "off course," it would dutifully, and unnecessarily, redirect us. Our occasional difficulties with these units illustrate an important point: No matter how sophisticated a navigation system may be, it can't be perfect. It's only a tool. Turning on a gee-whiz piece of tech doesn't follow with turning off the brain.
Touchscreen is the way to go with these products. In map mode, iWay and RoadMate's touchscreen interfaces serve to shift viewpoints from one part of the map to another. The iWay's touchscreen lets users highlight a specific area on the map and zoom into it, and a touch of a POI brings up its vitals, such as the establishment's phone number. The other two units also offer detailed info for the POI, but access to it takes a few more steps. Tapping buttons on the outside of the units allowed us to delve into other functions, where we used the touchscreens to navigate menus or enter data such as addresses.
NAVONE doesn't have touchscreen. It works fine without it, although the experience is less refined and the overall quality of the screen does not seem to be quite on par with iWay and RoadMate.
All three have a feature that we found very useful. Their address books save the most recent destinations, allowing users to quickly set up routing info for destinations that may be frequented (like a hotel or a friend's weekend house on the river).
Both NAVONE and RoadMate will automatically switch to a night view that changes the colors of a map to cut down the brightness. The iWay does not do that, but screen brightness can be stepped down four levels by touching one of the unit's buttons.
So, Which One To Buy?
We couldn't possibly discuss everything there is to know about these products. Putting the remarks we've made about them aside for the moment, we can say that RoadMate, iWay, and NAVONE each get you where you want to go. Products like these are incredibly useful whether you frequently travel in the big city or in the boonies. And unless you are trying to drop smart bombs, the accuracy and acumen of each of these units should suit your purposes. Each offers a mix of features that is realistically reflected in its price and offers great value.
The RoadMate is priced at $629.99 on Magellan's website. If the pocketbook were the prime mover in your buying decision-and if the satellite acquisition problem we had is not typical for the product-then the RoadMate would be an excellent choice for someone who tends to travel no more than a few hundred miles from home. At $899.95, per the company's website, Cobra designed the NAVONE to undercut the competition but still offer bang for the buck. Commanding a price of around $1200, iWay comes on strong as a solid choice that's still worth the price. If you are willing to spend that kind of money, however, and don't need the portability that the iWay offers, then you might want to take a look at an in-dash unit. If we had to pick just one, however, the Lowrance iWay 500c would get our nod.
