The Competitors. After reading up on available units, I passed on in-dash navigation units because they were nightmarishly expensive ($2000.00 or so just to get started). I passed on PDA based units because I didn't want to be tied down to my current PDA for years to come. I passed on the exquisite looking Garmin iQue3600 because, as amazing as that thing looked (1) it wasn't yet available, and (2) once again, I didn't want to be tied down to one particular PDA for the foreseeable future. The choice came down, then, to either the Garmin Streetpilot III, or the Navman iCN 630.

Why Navman? In the end, I settled on the Navman for a couple of reasons. For one, it looked nicer than the Garmin, sleeker, and with an integrated speaker. I had also read that it recalculated routes faster than the Garmin unit. And a big plus, and perhaps the deciding factor: it accepted standard SD memory cards, as opposed to the proprietary memory of the Garmin. And finally, I guess I just like to be different. The Garmin is by far the most popular stand-alone unit out there, so I wanted to try out the other one.

How well does it work? The answer to this question is: magnificently! I made a point of buying the unit a couple of weeks before making a trip to Seattle for a friend's wedding. This gave me time to try the unit out, work out its bugs a little, and become comfortable with it on my home turf before subjecting it to a trial-by-fire. Once I felt comfortable with the unit, a couple of days before heading out, I loaded the Washington State map and then created a bunch of "shortcuts" to the places that I would be visting while there (the hotel, my friend's house, the location of the wedding reception, the mall where I'd be picking up the gift I bought by phone). Once I arrived in Seattle, I picked up my rental car and plugged the Navman in and let 'er rip. After that, I just followed directions and viola! I arrived, on time, every-time. The Navman also does a pretty good job quickly re-calculating alternate routes when you miss your turn for whatever reason. This proved especially useful in that one particular road on the way to the hotel was closed for construction while I was there, and every time I went back the Navman would have to find an alternate route for me. It's a pity there's no way to program the GPS so that it "knows" that a particular road is closed and can calculate alternate routes beforehand. Still, this was only a minor annoyance. In the end, the little gray device proved a hit with everyone who rode along with me, or followed behind me to get places. This thing is definitely a must have gadget for anyone who rents a car on vacation. Take one along and you'll be cruising the streets of distant cities like a cab driver who's lived there all his life.

The Bad and the Ugly. Of course, no device is perfect, and even the Navman has its weak points. First and foremost is the heavy duty DRM (digital rights managment). Once every thing is set up, installing maps is pretty effortless, but before you can get going you've got to register online with Navman. It appears that Navman's website approves your software and your unit and your maps. I suspect the idea here is to prevent people from buying one set of maps and installing them on 20 different iCN 630 units. But any time I have to get long-distance, electronic approval to use my product (a la Windows XP) it makes me feel uncomfortable.

Another problem with the Navman unit is that there appears to be no way, to my knowledge, of limiting dowloaded map-data to just street names and numbers. For this reason, a two or three state region can easily gobble up 40-50 megabytes of memory. That's because the unit also downloads hotel information, restaurants, gas stations, tourist attractions, etc. And while this stuff is certainly nice to have, I'd really like to be able to just dowload all US road, highway and city street information onto one or two 128 mb SD cards to keep with the unit at all times. In all honesty, I don't see myself using the rest of the information much at all... maybe with the exception of museum and tourist attractions.

Then, of course, there's the question of screwy routes. In general, the Navman does a pretty nice job of keeping you on track and taking you directly where you want to go in a logical fashion, but every now and then, it does not. I found this out myslef, on the way back from that very same trip to Seattle when, coming home from the airport, the Navman, at one point and for some inexplicable reason, decided to eschew a major highway and instead guided me home through a most unpleasant section of town (at midnight!). But this sort of experience, is thankfully quite rare.

Final Analysis: A unit like the Navman (or the Garmin also, I'm sure) is the sort of gadget that, when you first try it out, you keep it on all the time because it's "so kewl." Eventually you get tired of hooking it up every time you drive, and it mostly stays in the trunk. But when you do find cause to take it out (such as recently, at night, when I got lost on some Maryland back-roads) you'll find you're really, really glad you bought it.

-Dave Flores

Recommended:
Yes