Sat Nav Systems

By Andrew Harris

Portable satellite navigation (often shortened to ‘Satnav’) units use a network of global positioning system (GPS) satellites to work out the unit’s location on the surface of the earth. Once these GPS coordinates have been calculated they are applied to a map, which is stored on the device.

Then, by continually updating the position of the unit with the satellites, the system can track the unit’s location and speed on the map, which is then displayed on the screen in either a top-down (2D) or angled side-on view (3D).

GPS units are only as good as the maps they rely on. Most units come with pre-loaded maps from the manufacturer’s preferred software developer. Depending on where you are planning a trip, additional maps may be required, and can be easily purchased and loaded.

Portable Satnav units are powered by an internal battery (usually good for a few hours), AC or mains charger, and a DC or car charger that connects to the in-car cigarette lighter socket.

How do you use a Satnav unit?

Ultimately all Satnav units work the same way: type in your departure point and your destination and the system will calculate a suitable route. You can establish further parameters such as whether or not you want to travel along toll ways or private land, whether you are a pedestrian, in a car or on a bike, or whether you want the shortest route or the fastest.

Depending on the mapping software speed limits are accurately represented on the unit, both as a warning and for trip time estimation. Fixed speed camera and red light camera locations are also commonly included, and updates can usually be downloaded from the map-maker’s website.

Bear in mind that the technological capability of Satnav units is growing and some more advanced features, such as live traffic updates, are not yet available in Australia.

What’s it like using a Satnav?

Using a Satnav device is like having the best sort of navigating passenger on earth, on demand: all it does is give you almost-always-correct directions, without telling you how to drive.

Initially, I found driving with a bright, talking unit stuck to the windscreen of my car very distracting.

Listening to the directions while trying to match up the correct turn-off point with the on-screen map display, detracted from my ability to concentrate on what was actually happening on the road.

At night, the bright spot in my field of view was a little off-putting, but it only took a couple of days driving around to acclimatise. Not so, I’m afraid, for some of my passengers, who initially found the softly spoken device funny, then interesting, then plain irritating.

Why don’t I have one already?

Like all technology, the price of portable Satnav units and fixed-mount car navigation systems has fallen significantly over the years. Prices will continue to fall until they are standard equipment for everyone.

Having had a play with some premium units, I would recommend that anyone who’s likely to do a lot of travelling in unfamiliar territory should work out a Satnav budget and then buy the unit with the interface they like most, and additional maps if necessary.

Even basic units will get you where you want to go, without additional expenditure.

Does this mean you can burn your paper maps? Not yet. Keep them bundled and ready, because if there’s a power failure and the charge runs out at the same time as your petrol, then you’re in a bit of trouble.

Where can I get one?

The internet is a good start. Check out manufacturers’ websites for the units tested in this article to locate a distributor or retailer in your area.

Mio: www.mio-tech.com.au

Navman: www.navman.com.au

TomTom: www.tomtom.com

Mio Digiwalker C510

Screen size (H × W) 55mm × 73mm

Dimensions (H × W × D) 112mm × 76m × 20.6mm

Unit weight 170g

Mio’s Digiwalker C510 is the company’s premium portable offering. It’s a compact, solid little unit, the majority of which is taken up by a large, bright touch-screen. Four rubberised buttons are recessed on its right-hand side.

From top to bottom they are on/off, ‘Home’, volume up and volume down. Everything else is done through the touch screen. A mini-USB port is located next to a headphone jack at the bottom, along on with the master power switch.

The built-in antenna and SD card slot are on the top. The back of the unit has a lanyard loop, an external antenna connection and the built-in speaker. All this in a pocket-sized package.

The Digiwalker C510 comes with a USB cable, user manual, MioMap PC connectivity software CD, car charger, mains charger, windscreen mount and cradle. Another manual explaining the mapping software is also included on a CD in the box.

Programming the Mio from the home view can be complex. The six options available are ‘Address’, ‘Favourites’, ‘Map’, ‘POI’ (points of interest), ‘History’ and ‘Cockpit’.

Providing you have already correctly set your home location (something you do on first start-up) then Address will allow you to input a destination by city, suburb, street and house number using an on-screen keyboard, and will then plan a route.

Favourites will allow the home point to be set as the user-defined ‘Home’ or ‘Work’ location. POI is the same as Address, except it has software defined transportation, services, shopping and entertainment locations to choose from.

The real complexity is in choosing somewhere to start the journey that isn’t your pre-defined home point, and somewhere to end the journey that isn’t pre-programmed. That involves selecting Map, then the tiny ‘Route’ tab that appears in the top left of the screen, then clicking ‘Edit’ from the six options that appear.

You are then required to add and remove points on the itinerary using the tick and cross symbols on the bottom left of the screen. To complete the process, click the back arrow at the top right of the screen, click the translucent ‘Lock’ circle that appears, and you’re on your way.

Once it’s programmed, the Mio unit is functional and easy to understand. My chosen navigator’s voice – Phillipa – had a pleasant English accent and was unobtrusive, unless interrupting a conversation already under way in the car.

While she didn’t read out street names, she did make it fairly simple to understand where to turn. Although, a couple of her ‘At the second street, turn right’ instructions were a little bit mystifying.

The view the Mio presents while driving (or cycling or walking) is one-fifth information bar, on the left-hand side, with a pictographic instruction in the top left-hand corner and the distance to the next traffic manoeuvre, as well as the estimated remaining trip time, speed and the local time.

On the right-hand side covering the rest of the view, is the route as you are travelling through, in either 2D or 3D. Other information, such as speed limits and fixed speed camera locations pop up as they become relevant. This is the strength of the Mio: it provides all the information you need, at a glance.

The Mio’s non-mapping functions include a Bluetooth mobile phone hands-free, picture viewer, music player and address book.

An optional SD card provides storage for MP3 music files and images. This is unfortunate, because although the Mio includes an exceptional MP3 player, sufficient storage on

an SD card is not cheap enough to make the player truly worthwhile.

The Mio attaches to the windscreen with a large suction cap that locks on to the glass with a clever latch system. Once attached though, the cradle itself is hard to position and doesn’t attach directly to the power source.

TomTom GO910

Screen size (H × W) 50mm × 80mm

Dimensions (H × W × D) 112mm × 81mm × 66mm

Unit weight 340g

The TomTom GO910 is smart and welcoming. It sits on its stylish little dock peering up at you at a great viewing angle, with the gently curved housing around a bright wide-screen display.

There are no buttons or ports on the unit itself, save for an almost-concealed power button on the top left and small dock-release button in the middle of the fascia. It’s not flat like a pack of cards but rather resembles a bedside alarm clock.

Included with the unit is a TomTom GO910-tailored neoprene pouch, the AC power source, car charger, PC dock and in-car dock, audio line-out cable, remote control and holder, instruction manual (on CD and hard copy) and external microphone. PC connectivity software is already on the unit’s hard drive.

All the connectivity is through the two docks: the USB-cabled PC dock and the multi-functional in-car dock.

Programming the TomTom for destination planning is simple. It either involves navigating to a destination from its user-defined home point or its current location, or ‘Advance Planning’, which involves setting both a departure point and destination.

Icons are simple to understand and once you’ve tapped the main view to bring up the menu, it’s an intuitive process. It’s equally elementary to change the route according to certain areas you’d like to avoid, using ‘Find Alternative’ in the main menu.

Despite the TomTom’s ease of programming it isn’t infallible. In one part of Melbourne, the onboard map instructed me to drive straight through several cul-de-sacs, forcing me to U-turn.

The major distinction between the TomTom GO910 and its competition is its nifty text-to-speech functionality. This means that if you select a computer-generated voice to guide you – as opposed to the easier-listening pre-recorded human voices – then as the directions are read out, so will the relevant street names. So, ‘In 200m, turn right’ becomes ‘In 200m, turn right, Filbert Street’.

Although some more complicated or polysyllabic street names might come out a bit garbled, this saves you having to keep an eye on the on-screen map while driving, trying to be sure of what ‘In 200m, take the second right’ means.

The unit can also read aloud your mobile phone’s text messages, as well as any other navigation-related alerts or warnings while you’re driving. Couple this with the Bluetooth hands-free and on-the-go communication is made very efficient indeed.

The docking plate at the back of the unit clips easily onto the PC dock for easy access to its 20GB hard drive, for MP3s, photo and contact storage, or to update its maps, languages, voices or software.

Clipping onto the in-car dock allows the included external microphone and audio line-out cable to be connected (which requires your car to have an audio line-in), the all-important car charger, as well as an optional external antenna and optional iPod-control cable.

The TomTom GO910 also comes with a highly functional omni-directional remote control, with an easily mountable in-car holder.

The TomTom’s suction-cup windscreen mount has a sturdy twist lock, although the unit did vibrate visibly while attached.

Some may dislike having to dock the unit every time it needs a charge, but that didn’t bother me. With the TomTom unit, form follows function, and given that the PC dock and the windscreen mount are included in the package, its minimalist design is not a problem.

Navman N60i

Screen size (H × W) 56mm × 97mm

Dimensions (H × W × D) 82.5mm × 138.5mm × 23mm

Unit weight 240g

The Navman N60i is one serious Satnav unit: it’s black, flat and simple to use. Along the right-hand side of the large, wide touch-screen are five buttons that do the following (from top to bottom): display nearest petrol stations, display nearest car parks, enter ‘Preferences’ menu, enter ‘Go To’ menu and back/change map view.

On the right side of the unit there is a volume toggle and a headphone jack; on the top is a camera access/shutter-release button and the power button; on the left side are an external antenna jack, an SD-card slot and a mini-USB port; the master power switch and optional T1 Traffic Pack connector plate are on the bottom. There’s no need for a dock as everything connects directly to the unit.

The windscreen mount, car charger, mains charger, PC cable, slip case, infrared remote, a thoughtfully included cleaning cloth, Australian GPS maps on CD and another CD with the SmartST PC application are all included.

The instruction manual is clear enough and programming the N60i to navigate from A to B, using points of interest or specific addresses, is easy, especially with the external shortcut buttons.

Three English accents (US, UK and Australian) are available in male and female varieties, and a selection of major European languages is also included. My female Australian navigator was easy to understand and easy listen to, although the sound from the speaker on the unit was a little muffled.

The in-car display is sharp. Trip time, time of arrival and speed are not all viewable at once, but rather one at a time in the top right-hand corner. The map view was simple to read, as were the pictographic instructions displayed in the top left.

The Navman N60i enables navigation by image, through its Navpix functionality. Simply download relevant images from the Navpix website (www.navman.com/navpix), with GPS tags attached, or take your own photos with the built-in 1.3-megapixel camera which will attach the tags for you, or use the downloadable Navpix toolkit to turn ordinary photos into Navpix images.

Then you select the desired location from the unit’s image library whenever you want to go there. You can even share your personal GPS-tagged images on the online community. Lonely Planet has teamed up with Navman to offer its own photo library as Navpix complimentary to their guidebooks.

The built-in camera isn’t of a high-enough standard to replace your trusty digicam, but it’s good enough to be used for Navpix.

The Navman’s spring-loaded cradle attaches to the windscreen with a sturdy push-lock suction cup and does not attach directly to the power source.

Perhaps at $899 retail it’s difficult to understand why the Navman N60i includes no Bluetooth mobile phone hands-free functionality or MP3 player. It seems that Navman have eschewed anything non-essential, in favour of adding their own dimension to the Satnav experience: the Navpix built-in camera with GPS location-tagging.

Magellan RoadMate 300

A best-selling, windscreen-mounted Satnav unit in the US, the Magellan RoadMate 300 is powered by MapInfo, a US Government database, and allows multiple-destination trip planning to be done in a flash. If you lose the signal in a tunnel or car park, despite its antenna’s reportedly excellent reception, a list of possible traffic manoeuvres will pop up. Route recalculations are quick and detours are well accommodated for.

VDO Dayton MS 5400 Pro

A professionally installed, dashboard-mounted Satnav unit, the VDO Dayton MS 5400 Pro works via an ultra-fast CD-ROM data-access system, which allows maps to be easily updated or changed.

The unit speedily calculates and recalculates routes and displays destination photographs embedded in digital travel guides, and features simplified destination planning by postcode. This is a state-of-the-art satellite navigation.