mtgops's Full Review: Lowrance iWAY 350C Car GPS Receiver
I have owned the Lowerance iWay 350c since March of 2006. I have traveled with it a few thousand miles; through rural areas, mountainous areas and larger cities and have experienced both excellent performance and terrible performance.
Initial experiences
The iWay 350c worked out of the box as advertised. But some very annoying issues came up immediately. First, the interface seemed a little cumbersome in nature. Although there is some elegance in a tabbed menu system for both options selection and navigational and point-of-interest search, when you are trying to adjust these items on the fly two things get in the way. First, the tabbed menus are only labeled 1, 2, and 3. So no matter if you are in options or find, the tabs are labeled 1, 2, and 3 and you essentially have to memorize what search or option menus are under each tab. Some frequently utilized POI lists and options are under a 2nd or 3rd tab requiring a number of touches of the screen to navigate to the POI search or option you wish to utilize.
Random shutdowns
You can be driving along and the unit will just go black and shut down. Consider that the unit is plugged into 12v vehicle power and the front LED indicates that it is plugged into a power source. You can power it up again and it will resynch with the satellites, usually with great delay, and continue your navigation, but it shouldn’t just be shutting down randomly. If the unit is searching for an address it may also randomly shut down. The only explanation I have is that the unit becomes "bogged down" in the search and its only response is to shut down. Neither of these shut down situations is acceptable.
Software issues
I honestly have not had a consumer electronics product require so much attention with regard to software updates. When I received the unit it had 1.0.0 version of the software. After a few months I checked the Lowrance web site and they had a 1.4.0 version of the software. In the hope that a new version of the software would eliminate some of the shut down issues I downloaded it. Or rather I tried to download it. As a side story, one of the reasons I purchased a Lowrance was because they had made a commitment to make GPS units that were open standard and they seemed intent on making interface software that was compatible with Macintosh computers. So, I tried to download and run their updater. When it came time to do the installation, I followed their instructions exactly, connected the GPS unit to the computer via the supplied USB cable. Although the GPS unit did mount a drive on my desktop, the drive was not writeable, so I could not do the update. I found a friend with a PC, downloaded the PC installer application, which was also a Java app, and took the GPS and the flash drive I had the installer on and did the installation at the friend's computer. The installation of the software on the GPS unit took nearly 45 minutes. And then when the computer to GPS portion of the install was done the GPS unit then required a restart and another install occurred on the GPS unit itself, taking another 30 to 45 minutes. The 1.4 software update did improve some aspects of the unit's operation, but it did not fix the shutting down issue or the poor interface features associated with tabbed menu interfaces.
Very slow satellite acquisition, weak antenna
Satellite acquisition is very slow. It may take 5 minutes at a cold power startup, or after many days of non-use for the unit to find satellites to synch with. This is just annoying. You can watch the unit search for and discover satellites, however it requires a great number of satellites available before it will lock in. What is amazing is that GPS only requires 3 satellites to put you on the map, and a 4th to give you elevation. It would make sense that after the unit acquired 3 satellites that it would plot your position on the map and let you start navigating. Then as additional satellites came into its view it would further enhance the accuracy of its calculations based upon the additional satellites. But that doesn't seem to be the way it works.
Driving in cities with tall buildings or in mountain passes with thick trees and vegetation is also very disappointing. The unit typically looses its lock with satellites when in areas where visibility to a wide area of sky is limited. Driving through canyons, mountain passes with tall vegetation at the side of the road and urban canyons generally leaves the unit searching for satellites. The unit will show you a list of turns to take if it can not find satellites. Helpful, but not a good substitute for a sensitive GPS antenna.
Poor mounting bracket
The mounting bracket that comes with the unit is very poor. It is a suction cub, which works well, but the iWay is held to the suction cup on a gooseneck arm connected to a tray that clips to the bottom of the unit. In appearance this is a very good mounting solution, but in practice it is terrible. When driving, the gooseneck mount is not rigid enough to hold the unit steady with the movement of the vehicle, so the GPS is bouncing around and vibrating making it very hard to view on some roads and streets, especially those that are a little rough. Lowrance intends that the gooseneck be attached to the windshield and the base of the cradle that holds the GPS be resting on the dash, but in both of my vehicles this is an impossibility because of the angle of the windshield and the configuration of the dash.
The bracket is so poor that I eventually found a bracket made by a third party, RAM Mounts which is modular in terms of the type of mount (suction cut, hard mount), the length of the holding arm, and the cradle that holds the device. RAM has a cradle specifically for the iWay 350c. In this whole experience, the RAM mount bracket kit that I purchased some months ago is the best part and greatest improvement to a product which has had many major issues.
Latest software update experience
Last week I attempted to do the most recent software update to the unit. The update to 1.4 had improved some things and I was hoping that the update to 1.5 would help some more also. However I cannot report any success in this endeavor.
I chose to perform the 1.5 software update from my Mac, and to my surprise the update seemed to work perfectly well. The GPS unit was recognized by the Mac when it was plugged in via USB. The installer software saw the unit and agreed that the install could proceed. The install seemed to proceed well. Even the 2nd install that the GPS unit does independent of the computer after it is powered down and unhooked from the computer seemed to work well, however when I tried to power up the iWay after it completed its internal install, it only came up to the flash screen and then shut down. The unit is now non-operational.
I plan on returning the unit for service. It appears that Lowrance has fixed pricing service for their units, and the iWay 350c is $199 plus shipping for repair service, however I'm annoyed that something like a software upgrade could kill a GPS unit. I am seriously considering purchasing a product from a competitor and lending this unit to family after it is fixed.
Summary
The Lowrance iWay 350c is a physically nice looking GPS unit with a deceivingly simple exterior appearance, yet somewhat cumbersome internal menu structure. The factory supplied mounting bracket is very disappointing and third party mounting brackets will provide better support and utility. The unit shuts down at unpredictable times when navigating and often when searching for an address. No software update to this point has solved this issue. The software update process is cumbersome, uses a Java based installer app (very bad). The second installation that is run by the GPS unit itself is very time consuming and may leave the unit unusable without much explanation as to how or why (personal experience only). Random shutdowns of the unit are the most annoying situation you can encounter while navigating or when searching for an address. A successful software update has not resolved the random shut down issues, as such I believe that the random shut down is something inherent with the hardware design of the unit, and not related to the software.
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