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Reviewed by UK Guest, 23rd Jan 2007. |
| Review Summary: Good things do come in small packages |
Overall Score: 5/5
 
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Review: Having owned a Garmin quest for well over a year now I have had the opportunity to test this Garmin Quest car sat nav quite thoroughly (ranging from Yorkshire down to the south coast). It has performed pretty much flawlessly.
Certainly one gets occasional "odd" or unclear instructions but once you get to its idiosyncrasies (like instructions to "bear right" on a motorway, where two motorways fork from one another, which usually means remain on the motorway rather than take the fork left onto the other motorway) it's messages become quite clear. (One may hear "turn left" or "bear left" when approaching a sharp left corner in the road with a right turn coming off it, this simply means the software does not identify specific road markings and bases its instructions on the map and since the junction looks like a T-junction on the map the instruction becomes "turn left".)
Like all GPS systems the maps do become dated. Sometimes road markings have changed, or even who intersections changed (like a crossroads becoming roundabouts, so instead of saying "take the third exit" you hear "turn right"). These are all minor problems shared by all GPS systems and the simple application of intelligence to interpreting the instructions resolves them.
Satellite acquisition has always been reasonable (ranging from a few seconds on open fields to 40 seconds or more in built up areas). Again, in common with most GPS systems, the unit has problems in environments with no clear line of sight to the satellites. That said, I have never had any significant loss of navigational capability even when driving though areas with overhanging trees (there always seems to be just enough signal for the unit to track progress, even when I one day took an off-road track through a woods fully expecting the unit to lose the signal it did not and performed like a trooper).
Route calculation is fairly quick (certainly quick enough for any practical purposes) and the routes produced are reasonable. You may be able to identify more efficient routes, particularly if you know the area involved, by applying local knowledge of road conditions (like "oh, that road is peppered with lights, I wouldn't go that way", or "oh, that road gets busy about now, I wouldn't choose that route") but this is to be expected and most units will suffer the same issue (barring those that have a link to a traffic condition alert system I guess). Anyway, if you know the area you probably won't use a GPS to get around and if you don't know the area then getting to your destination is probably more important than getting there by the most efficient route possible.
Should you miss a turning the unit quickly recalculates a new route. Sometimes this will result in a "perform a legal U-turn", especially on long roads with few turnings . (What else would you expect?)
So far as the quality of the unit, this is excellent. It is small, robust (with the antenna folded away), and water resistant (can be submerged to 1m for 30 seconds, so no worries in the rain or if you drop the unit in a puddle while out walking).
The voice in-car is provided through an external speaker integrated into the power cable. The voice is clear and concise, and as previously noted the instructions given are generally very clear too.
The display is small (what do you expect on a pocket sized unit) but very clear and once you have set up your unit to your taste (and eyesight) it provides a very clear track of your movements and importantly it zooms into junctions as you approach them so you can see the details of what is coming up.
In-car the unit runs from the cigarette lighter so no problems with batteries running down during a car journey. Battery life out of the car has never presented a problem and a fully charged unit can be used for several hours without any worries (I have had no cause to use the unit continuously for more than a couple of hours out of the car, so I leave it to others to comment on longer battery life tests).
The controls are simple to use, and the interface is clear with most common functions readily available.
Lack of postcode entry is definitely a minus, but for the most part I do not miss it greatly. The address entry facility is fairly quick to use.
The only problem I had with this unit was using it in someone else's car. It turned out they had a heated front windscreen and this blocked the satellite signal to the unit. (A friend bought one of these Garmin Quest sat navs on my recommendation, and uses an external antenna with it, this obviously resolves the heated windscreen problem.) |
Ratings
| Value For Money: |
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5 |
| Review Score: |
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5 |
| Recommended? | |
Yes |
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