Home > Consumer Reviews > Acer n35 GPS handheld Pocket Chauffeur

I have recently set up in business and need to be able to get from A to B without getting lost! I couldn't afford the posh Tom Tom kit and needed the funtionality of a PDA for email on the move. After looking around I went for the Acer N35 Lite. I must admit I was disappointed at first with the poor reception of the on board GPS antenna, it took sometimes almost an hour to find a vaild GPS signal on some days! I took it back to the shop and got it swapped for another one thinking it was faulty - it wasn't as I found out with my second one. The guy in the shop was pretty blunt and said either "buy a PDA or at sat nav device not one that does both." I decided I wanted one that did both and wanted to try and prove him wrong!
Simply put all I did was buy a separate external antenna with a MCCX connection plugged it in and bingo it was picking up 10/11 satellites in a just few seconds instead of 3 in an hour!
The antenna is magnetic so fits neatly on the outside of my car and tucks in dicretely under the door seal.
The best thing is it only cost £9.68 from a well know on-line "e" auction company and came next day. I can use the PDA and my mobile to pick up POP3 email through an infra red dial up - this took five minutes to setup. It has a decent size 256MB memory card on it and I use it every day. I have used Acer kit for years and always found it to be good value for money and long lasting. Now I never get lost at all!
So in summary, for those of you who have £700 to spend, buy a separate PDA and sat nav that is "high end." For those like me who haven't, spend less than £200 on the PDA GPS device and less than a tenner on an antenna and stop whinging! Use your nogin and make a low cost device work for you and have value for money (and prove the man in the shop wrong!)

I bought this item primarily for the GPS. Unfortunately the Acer hardware does not tolerate being left unused for even short periods. The battery runs down and the Destinator has to reboot.

The last time this happened to me it also dropped the registartion information and left me without the GPS.

Why not fit a small lithium cell to maintain the information?

It's is not a bad idea to combine a PDA and a GPS in one unit, but it must be reliable. The Acer n35 isn't and the Destinator software is pretty much unsupported.

I was given the Acer n35 as a gift and must say that the road to nowhere is now mine. I can download my work documents to review later or in meetings which saves time and paper. The navigation system has never let me down and I have taken the wrong routes to see what happens and within seconds your back on track. For the money you get a pocket PC and a Sat nav why pay more for less?

After using the Ace n35 GPS for 4 months, I have concluded that its a big waste of money.

First a bit of background. The Ace n35 GPS is a PDA with a built in antenna and to make it work as a GPS, you need to install some software. You can either use the very basic software that comes in the box or you can buy your own, like Tom Tom Navigator 5, far superior to Acer’s offering.

Without GPS software, the Ace n35 will not function as a GPS. And unfortunately it is very easy to loose the GPS software, rendering the whole thing useless. I was let down badly twice by this device.

The first time I left the Acer in the car but I omitted to leave it on charge. By the time I got back, the battery had run out. I plugged it into the car’s cigarette lighter socket, switched the GPS on and got greeted by the initial “welcome screen” but the GPS software had vanished. I had to continue the trip with a traditional road atlas.

On another occasion, the Acer simply seized up. I couldn’t switch it off. The “soft” reset switch didn’t work so I had to use the “hard” reset switch which got it working but the GPS software was lost. I had to pull over and buy a road atlas to continue my trip.

If you need a GPS then get something won’t loose critical GPS software in the middle of nowhere. A GPS should be robust and reliable and the Acer n35 fails on both counts.

I spent about a month researching which PDA to buy as I only really wanted a Sat Nav system but didn't want to pay hundreds of pounds for a TomTom or NavMan. Opted for the Acer N35 and I haven't been disapointed once. For the price, its fantastic. Haven't used Destinator 3, but have installed TomTom 6 and after fiddling with the settings a few times, it works like a dream. It can be a little slow in picking up a GPS signal, but if you have the settings right, and you do things in the correct order (lift up antenna first, then start GPS software) it usually picks up enough satellites within a couple of mins. I used it for a 600 mile round trip over Christmas (London to Lancaster and back) and it worked a treat. Picked up a signal straight away, only lost it when I was going through a tunnel, but picked it up again instantly.
PDA functionality is quite good too considering the price. Pocket Office is great for work stuff, I bought an SDIO wireless card so can access the internet at home now with no problems (though having to swap the card in and out of the one SD slot is a bit of a pain!). Memory is limited and programs do freeze up occassionally (though the sat nav software has worked great so far), but haven't had to do a hard reset yet!)
For the price you pay, this is a great bargain.