GPS Devices: Road-Tested and Reviewed

These in-car GPS devices can vastly simplify your driving life, and they're simpler to use and last costly than last year's models.

In-car GPS devices have more features, are easier to use, and cost less than their predecessors of just a year ago. Using one can help you find the best route to your destination, saving you time and money while traveling.

I tested five recently released GPS devices designed to be used in the car; two of them (from Mio and Pharos) also have pedestrian modes. All were accurate enough to use in unfamiliar locales, but software interfaces and route calculations differed. For additional details about the devices I evaluated, see the chart at left.

To plot your current location, a GPS device must acquire at least three different satellite signals. The more signals it grabs; the more accurate its positioning will be. All five of the devices I tested let you see your current GPS signal reception, the number of signals, the direction from which they're being received, and your current longitude and latitude.

Garmin's Nuvi 360 earned our PC World Best Buy. Despite a midrange cost ($413), it offers such high-end features as Bluetooth connectivity (for hands-free phone calls), pronunciation of street names, and plenty of tools and information for travelers. Finishing second and third in our GPS device rankings were the Mio Digiwalker C720 and the Pharos Drive GPS 250, respectively.

The fourth- and fifth-place GPS devices, Alpine Electronics' Blackbird PMD-B200 andLG Electronics' LN790, are capable units, too, but both of them cost hundreds of dollars more than the three devices that earned higher rankings, without providing better overall service.

The Garmin Nuvi 360 earned our Best Buy nod. Despite a midrange cost ($413), it has such high-end features as Bluetooth connectivity (for hands-free phone calls), pronunciation of street names, and plenty of tools and information for travelers.

Though the Nuvi 360 is only about the size and weight of a deck of cards, it's a capable navigator. Besides offering first-rate maps and an intuitive interface (with 3D maps), it also has a media player for viewing images and listening to audio; language guides from Oxford University Press; and travel information (including restaurants, hotels, and points of interest) from Fodor's North America.

The device's battery lasted for 4 hours, 6 minutes in my test--more than 30 minutes longer than any of the other four competitors.

Unfortunately, the Nuvi 360 lacks a pedestrian mode for obtaining information on pathways that a car can't travel, though you can use it outside a vehicle; the device does not provide speed warnings or school-zone alerts, either. You can use it to listen to music and audio-book files stored on SD Card or MMC media while navigating, but you can't stream the sound or the voiced navigation instructions through your car's FM radio. You can buy an optional ($75) SD Card containing a language guide for six languages.

The Nuvi 360's SiRF Star III GPS transceiver latches on to satellite signals quickly, and the routes the device suggested were timely and accurate. The unit's smallish (3.5-inch diagonal) display can't fit in the amount of information shown on devices with 4.3-inch screens; it is easy to read even in bright sunlight, however, and the touch-screen controls make the tasks of entering street addresses and changing settings quick and simple. The unit's Safe mode (off by default) prevents you from changing certain settings, to help you avoid getting distracted while driving. You can enter a code to prevent unauthorized use, too.

The Garmin Nuvi 360's compactness, accuracy, features, and battery life make it the best value among the five GPS devices I tested.

The Mio DigiWalker C720 doubles as a 2-megapixel digital camera and has handy features such as free (in limited areas) traffic information, voices in 16 languages and three different English accents, and customizable speed alerts. You also get modes for pedestrian, bicycle (a bicycle mount costs extra), taxi, bus, and emergency vehicle travel (the last of which assumes that the user can disregard traffic signals and other rules of the road).

The downside of the C720 is its battery life of 2 hours, 45 minutes--shorter than all but one other device. This result may be due in part to the power consumed by the 4.3-inch touch screen, which gives you a clear view of the map in 3D or 2D, as well as easy access to volume and other controls, and plenty of information about your route (including the estimated arrival time, the speed, and the distance to your destination). It's also easy to see the distance to and the direction of your next turn.

Images shot with the built-in 2-megapixel camera were typical of pictures taken at that resolution, and you can tag them with GPS coordinates. Mio says that the C720 comes with optical character recognition software that captures address information and then creates a contact record. I didn't have much luck using the camera as a business card "scanner": It photographed my cards but didn't recognize text.

You can display photos and play video and audio files stored on SD Card or MMC, but you can't simultaneously use the media player and view maps--something every other media-equipped unit I looked at for this roundup lets you do. You can sync the C720 with your Bluetooth headphones so that you can listen to audio files and directions through them, and you can sync your Bluetooth phone for hands-free calling over the C720's speaker.

Though it uses the same maps and GPS transceiver as the LG Electronics LN790, the Pharos Drive GPS 250 omits the LG's media player and other nonnavigation functions to lower its street price to $295. In this case, excluding features unrelated to navigation made the device easier to use. It also seems to have improved the navigation performance: When I tested both units simultaneously, the Pharos consistently alerted me to my next turn a second or two faster than the LG did.

The Drive GPS 250 does have a pedestrian mode, but the unit's limited battery life will restrict its participation in your extravehicular excursions to around 3 hours. Although the screen is big (4.3 inches) and easy to read, the size hampers the device's portability and battery life.

Unfortunately, like the LG LN790, the Drive GPS 250 plunges you into the heart of urban traffic rather than finding ways around it. On several occasions, the unit recommended routes that may have been shorter as the crow flies, but that took much longer to travel. One example: Instead of directing me over a slightly longer set of surface streets with higher speed limits of 35 miles an hour, the device suggested a shorter route that relied on side streets with 25-mph speed limits. You can choose between 'Shortest' or 'Quickest' after entering the address and before selecting 'Go' ('Quickest' is the first option), but you can't instruct the device to use one or the other setting for all your routes.

If you're looking for an affordable GPS device that has a very readable screen, the Drive GPS 250 is certainly worth considering, though slightly costlier devices suggest quicker routes and include a media player and other travel-related features.

The navigation features in the redesigned, high-end Alpine Electronics Blackbird PMD-B200 GPS unit are easy to operate, but lower-priced competitors like the Garmin Nuvi 360 offer the same functions and sometimes better accuracy.

Among the most significant options missing from the Blackbird are 3D map views, pronunciation of street names, and the ability to view images that you store on an SD Card. The device's Centrality Atlas II GPS chip was less accurate than the SiRF Star III GPS transceivers used by the other four units I tested. In addition, the Blackbird PMD-B200 was slower to update directions and map views than the other devices were.

You can sync your Bluetooth phone with the Blackbird PMD-B200 for hands-free calling, and its built-in player handles AAC, MP3, and WMA audio files stored on SD Card or MMC media.

This version of the Blackbird offers directions in English, French, or Spanish.

Alpine places four buttons in a circular controller on the right side of the device's touch screen. Though these buttons are intended to simplify zooming in and out of the map, adjusting the volume, and opening the options screen, they add bulk to the unit. I found it just as convenient to use the switch on the top of the device to adjust the volume, and to use the icons on the screen to reach the options for entering a travel destination.

The LG Electronics LN790 is a newcomer in the high-end GPS market. It offers easy-to-read maps and well-paced directions, but a clunky interface and dubious routes put it a couple of notches below other, cheaper devices.

The $600 LN790 has a bright 4.3-inch-diagonal screen and includes a media player for audio, image, and video files.

The 3D and 2D maps included with the device cover all 50 U.S. states and Canada. Tracking your progress as you travel is simple, and your next turn is easy to anticipate because you'll see the street name and turn direction on the screen. You'll also hear street names pronounced. Though the LN790 lacks an FM transmitter for listening to audio through your car stereo, it has a headphone jack that outputs to many new car audio systems that have an MP3 player input. You can also choose from ten languages, including English, French, and Spanish.

When I attempted to enter destination addresses, the LN790 offered me the option of entering the street name before the city--but when I tried to do so, the database couldn't locate the street. When I entered the city first and then the street, however, it found the location and was prepared to direct me there. Also, the type-ahead feature works so slowly that I frequently entered the incorrect key, leading the device to present me with the wrong choices, which in turn required me to press the back button and start over.

Like most other GPS devices, the LN790 lets you choose between the shortest route and the fastest one; however, the default routes that the device suggested dumped me into city-center traffic rather than directing me to byways that were longer but considerably faster. Navigators such as the Garmin Nuvi 360 and Mio DigiWalker C720 suggested routes by default that avoided areas of traffic congestion, even with no traffic service enabled. The LN790 lacks a pedestrian mode as well.

Dennis O'Reilly

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