GPS Devices: Finding Yourself

Digital Dan Scopes Out The Best In GPS & Other Location-Oriented Services

(CBS)  This unit is equally great for driving, marine navigation or hiking. Park the car, get on your boat, and navigate through the shallows using the highly accurate optional BlueChart maps, featuring updated coastal charts. Boaters, be forewarned: BlueChart maps are rather pricey (as everything else is in marine recreation.) An additional plus: drop this GPS in the water and it floats!

Landlubbers will "lub" the new large variety of additional street or topographical data now available, including many international locations (especially Europe and the Middle East). Using Mapsource software and the fast USB connection, the 76 CSX vastly reduces download transfer times for maps, routes and waypoints.

Garmin’s 76 CSX retails for about $589 and offers at least 18 hours of battery life using two AA batteries.

Garmin Streetpilot c550

If you have an excellent sense of direction and rarely consult a map, you still will enjoy Garmin’s new Streetpilot c550 in-car navigation system. Even the grumpiest or most technologically obtuse will enjoy the simplicity and elegance of this device. Preloaded with full city maps for either North America or Europe, the c550 also has a super-fast SiRF chip and a brilliant screen. So no muss, no fuss with map downloads, etc. There is a card slot that you can use to swap in other regional maps if you need them. Plus the 2D and 3D map views are easy to understand.

What makes the Streetpilot essential is meaningful real time traffic updates. The integrated FM TMC traffic receiver (free three-month trial subscription) provides the terrific insight into sudden traffic problems (delays, construction, even weather problems) in most major metropolitan areas. In both New York and San Francisco, the Streetpilot warnings of traffic problems saved me hours of frustration - rerouting me on unusual but very effective alternative routes.

The real time traffic service is not reliable everywhere: it didn’t warn me, for example, of several traffic jams I "enjoyed" recently in Phoenix. Once you become addicted to the traffic trial service, you won’t mind paying for the $60 a year service (from Clearchannel). (XM Satellite Radio also offers a competing traffic data feed, which I did not test.)

Another great feature on the Streetpilot c550 is the integrated Bluetooth capability. This allows you to pair your GPS system with several mobile phones and use the windshield-mounted display as your communications center (instead of dangerously fumbling and driving while holding your cell phone.) It’s great that, once you pair your compatible phone to the GPS, your full phone book, recent call lists, and other phone information are available to use right on the GPS screen. The built-in mike and speakers are fine; callers didn’t complain about my sound quality too much.

There’s a built-in anti-theft device and even an MP3 player (which I didn’t find particularly useful.) The unit recalculates pretty quickly when you decide to take an alternative route. I even found the automated voice turn-by-turn instructions and street name information especially timely and helpful. The half-pound c550 is very portable so you can easily take it on trips and connect it to whatever rental car you might end up with. Street price: less than $850.


JVC KV-PX9B Portable HDD Navigation

JVC hopes travelers will want to integrate even more digital content viewing with their eAvinu GPS device. It has a whopping 20-GB hard drive. That includes 15 GB of preloaded map data and over 13 Million searchable points of interest. (So many points of interest makes searching for them somewhat time consuming.) Use the other 5 GB to store movies, pictures, and audio files.

The JVC KV-PX9B has a nice full color 3.5-inch touch screen. The unit is small, hefty, boxy, and quite solid. I didn’t love the synthesized voice. But the screen is lovely and the car-kit seems quite robust. Suggested retail price for the eAvinu is $699.95 and is available both silver and black versions.

Pioneer AVIC-S1

Pioneer’s AVIC-S1 is ultra slim, lightweight, and portable. The bright touch screen appears identical to the JVC above, but the AVIC-S1 is literally half the thickness of the JVC.

The preloaded U.S. and Canada map base is fairly detailed, but I was somewhat frustrated by the fingertip navigation on this unit. Perhaps my fingers are too big, but I would be trying to navigate around the screen and I’d end up accidentally rerouting my trip to a nearby Burger King. There is a nice jog wheel - which took some getting used to - that did help put me back on target.