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Reviewed by UK Guest, 8th Apr 2007. |
| Review Summary: Fantastic value for money |
Overall Score: 5/5
 
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Review: I needed a Europe SatNav for a long journey I'm making shortly from England through France, Belgium, Holland and Germany but I didn't want to spend very much money. I shortlisted my choice to the TomTom Go Europe or the Garmin Nüvi 350, both hovering around the £200 or more mark.. and then at the last minute I bought this one. And I am very happy I did so!
Having read other reviews I immediately ordered an extra SD card - I got a 1 gig one for under ten pounds. I installed the software on my PC (beware, it doesn't work on a Mac at all!), plugged in the Streetpilot with the 1GB SD card and off we went.
Interestingly I couldn't fit the whole of Europe onto the 1 gig card; I had to remove Egypt (I wasn't previously aware that was in Europe!), Turkey, Albania and Scandinavia; if you really want the whole of Europe you might want a 2GB SD card. But the remaining countries fitted fine on the new card - it took about an hour to prepare the maps and about 45 minutes to transfer them across to the Garmin; still, I don't suppose I'll need to do that again in the near future.
So what do you get for your hundred and thirty pounds (current Amazon price). You get a lot. Why do you get so much? Well I presume it's because the Streetpilot is a chunky unit, rather like a CRT TV in an age of flatscreens. The Nüvi that I was considering is the size of a pack of cards; the Streetpilot has the same size screen but in a chunky unit that sticks out backwards - but at a hundred pounds less! Mind you, I'm not exactly short of space on the dashboard of my car so the size doesn't matter - it's a light unit so I can take it away from the car easily enough for security.
The fixing and mounting bracket seems sturdy enough to me; it fixes very happily to my windscreen although there is no option to detach the charging cable. Bearing in mind the unit also came with a USB cable (which charges it through the computer) and a three pin plug charger, plus its battery lasts five hours, I don't foresee having to have it plugged in whilst driving very often. I actually don't mount mine on the windscreen but slot it into a cupholder in the centre console of my car and have no problems whatever getting satellite reception from that location.
The latest software for the Streetpilot does have UK and European postcodes and this is by far the best way to find your address. It also has a very useful feature whereby you can ask for local banks, restaurants, petrol stations and the rest of it. It picks up the satellites quickly, calculated my route from Kent to Berlin in about forty seconds, and its estimated time of arrival on various routes has been nicely accurate.
Disadvantages? You can't play around with the icon for your car (who cares), you can't use umlauts or other accented characters in naming favourite locations (not very European!), the screen seems quite bright at night (although it goes into night mode automatically) and it can sometimes take a while to redraw when you zoom out. These are all very minor inconveniences and they don't worry me at all because this is such a great value device. The speaking voice (a woman) is clear and she gives you plenty of warning before you have to manoeuvre. Sometimes she seems to think you're turning off a road when it's just an intersection and the left hand lane is peeling away but the map always shows you what's what and this hasn't caused any problems.
All in all I am delighted with this bit of kit, very glad I didn't spend the extra hundred pounds for the Nüvi, and would happily recommend this to anyone else... whilst it's still for sale. Grab it while you can, I expect it won't be around for too much longer.
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Ratings
| Value For Money: |
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5 |
| Review Score: |
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5 |
| Recommended? | |
Yes |
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