Leading the way

GIZMO GALLERY

Go left or is it right? If you are afraid to ask, you can depend on these GPS devices.

Global positioning system (GPS) devices have begun making inroads, although the progress is slower than one would expect in a country with millions of cars.

The recent additions to the list include MapmyIndia's navigator and SatNav's personal navigation device (PND). Both the devices claim to provide turn-by-turn navigation, besides sporting an average music player, an image viewer, and a calculator (for reasons best known to the company).

MapmyIndia's navigator is primarily a small form factor device that uses the SiRF star III chipset, which is a mark of quality for pulling in the sometimes-tough satellite signals.

Priced at Rs 21,000 for the Delhi and NCR region and Rs 22,000 for rest of the country, MapmyIndia's device might look pricey but nonetheless a must-have gadget for all those who hate taking roadside directions.

There are two models introduced by MapmyIndia, Delphi NAV200 and AMAX 06GP5A. The NAV200 comes equipped with maps connecting 55,000 villages and town points, 150 cities and 18 major cities containing complete set of streets, localities, sub-localities and landmarks.

The NAV200 can take up to 2GB SD memory card as opposed to the usual 1GB found on competing products.

This extra memory enables the NAV200 to store 200,000 points of interest (POIs). Now, the disadvantage is that the NAV200 fills the card almost completely with data, leaving you only about 60-90MB for your music/pictures/movies.

If you need more space for your multimedia content, you can pop out the SD card and insert your own. You will lose your navigation capabilities, but it doesn't really matter, because you can't simultaneously play multimedia content and navigate with the NAV200 anyway. You are able to go on and pick a street address, or intersection in the screen and start navigating there at the tap of a button.

When navigating, we found the voice prompts loud and giving appropriate warnings of turns without being annoying. Also worth noting is that the internal battery delivers performance of about 4 hours.

It is disappointing that the NAV200 doesn't have a way to preview the turns for a route. Often you want to know how the GPS is going to route you before you actually embark on your trip.

For its PND hardware, SatNav Technologies has partnered with Mio Technology, that has been developing personal GPS devices for global markets. The device, too offers a touch screen interface with simple intuitive software.

It runs on WinCE 5.0, the latest in the market, sports a 64MB Flash with 512MB RAM that is much less than what MapmyIndia's NAV200 offers. Priced at Rs 12,000, it is almost half the price of NAV200.

The Mio C230 (powered by SatGuide map software and maps) is definitely more compact than competition and while the size is great for cars or for even on a bike, the C230 seems almost too petite for convenient use.

To start a trip, you can enter a specific address, select a destination from your 'My Favourites' or recent destinations list, or tap a point on the map and hit the 'Route To' option.

The C230 calculates directions by the shortest, fastest, or most economical route. Otherwise, if you don't have a specific destination or trip, you can use the Follow option to have the unit track you as you drive around.

Once on the road, the C230 held a steady signal except when we drove through a underground pass (a normal occurrence with GPS), but it was able to immediately find our position again. A nice feature of the C230 is the ability to make multi-stop trips.

You can enter in more stops along with the destination and it will create a route that hits all of them on your way. Along with adding extra spots to hit, you can add spots to avoid if say you happen to know there is construction going on or something. You just hit the "Avoid" button and it will give you a list of options.