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For those that are used to the vagaries of GPS technology, the latest Navman incarnation is not so much a revolution but more of a minor upgrade, writes Branko Miletic.
Navman has once again upgraded its popular GPS offering. Known as the MY660LMT, this is a functional, useful and reliable GPS. That’s where the platitudes stop.
However, having used it for three weeks, the shortcomings of GPS devices were obvious.
Let’s start with its speed. Slow is one way of putting it. After typing in the destination address, the MY660LMT wants to think about it for a while. Then it does something strange – rather than proceeding, the device further asks if you’d like to log your journey, which only adds to the time-wasting factor.
Let’s talk about traffic diverts. This is a useful feature, especially in cities like Sydney or Melbourne where getting from A to B can be fraught with any one of a number of traffic issues. The Navman MY660LMT is quite adept at issuing these traffic alerts, however it is much less adept at helping you actually divert or avoid these traffic snarls altogether.
Speed cameras and radar traps? Well, the MY660LMT is not too bad at warning you for some of these, especially in school zones, but for others it was a bit ‘forgetful’.
How about actually getting one to their desired place of destination? Ok, so the MY660LMT was not too bad with this, however on one trip it tried to send me in what looked like almost the perpendicular direction to where I needed to go.
On the up side, its larger screen was a bonus and its large suction cup seemed to adhered well to my windscreen, while the soothing monotone of the ubiquitous ‘Karen’ as the well-known guiding voice was fine, too.
However – and I am being charitable here – the question is why do we need a vehicle-mounted GPS device? Isn’t that what our smartphones are for? Google maps seems to work fine and hey, if you want extra functionality, you can download apps at less of a cost than the MY660LMT to help you augment the already well-documented smartphone reliability.
I doubt that Navman could or would answer the ‘why’ in the question, however, for my money, if you need to use a reasonably functional GPS, I would be sticking to the smartphone that we all already have in our pockets.
Sorry Navman, but I can’t say that I’m a fan.