Handheld GPS Reviews - Customer reviews - Navman PiN 570 Portable PC / GPS Navigator

Manufacturer: Navman USA , Inc.

List Price: $499.99
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Used Price: $109.00

Average Customer Rating: -

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Spotlight customer reviews:

Name: Agustin V. Melendez
Location: NJ
Date: 2007-01-23
Customer Rating: -

Summary: Navman is great
Comment: I've had my Navman GPS only for about a month now but it is a great product so far. The only thing I didnt like was I had to buy an external gps antenna cause the gps signal wasnt getting through my heated windshield on my truck. But the gps signal reception is great and its just a wonderful thing to have.

Name: Roy Eassa
Location: Massachusetts, USA
Date: 2006-10-08
Customer Rating: -

Summary: Nice for the price!
Comment: This is a decent GPS device and a fine Pocket PC. I'd give it 3.5 stars if possible.

Pros:

1) It's a perfectly decent Pocket PC. I've owned several, and this is no worse than any of them except for CPU speed and RAM. It's perfectly OK and actually pretty decent looking. Its lights (charging, charged, etc.) keep you well informed.

2) The GPS functions work pretty well. The software for the PC is quite good. You can load maps to main memory and/or the SD card (your choice per map). You get a lot of control with reasonable ease of use. The US maps seem pretty good (but not up-to-date with the very latest street changes).

3) It's priced VERY attractively. Consider that you're getting a fully-functional PDA (with MP3 playback, games you can download, etc.) AND a GPS device with a 3.5" color touch-screen. Amazon is a great retailer and has a good price, but I did manage to pay fifty less on sale elsewhere.

4) If you make a "wrong" turn (intentionally or not), it's pretty quick to recalculate the route and give intelligent new instructions.

5) You can switch among 4 screens while navigating: 2D map (and you can zoom in & out and drag to scroll), 3D map, list of directions with current step highlighted, or a "large" screen of what the next major step will be (and how soon). To avoid being distracted while driving, that last screen may be your best friend. You probably don't need the maps much while driving -- just while planning the trip or if you pull over. DON'T DRIVE DISTRACTED!

6) This may annoy some people, but I like that it gives verbal directions about upcoming forks/intersections, even if you only need to continue going straight. It's reassuring.

Cons:

1) The mounting hardware is somewhat awkward. The device needs a pretty good line-of-sight to the satellites, so you really want it close to the windshield (unless you buy an external antenna, which I may).

2) Entering destination addresses is slow because the software tries to anticipate what you're entering as you enter each part. It has to consult its database, so you must wait until it creates a list of possibilities at each step. But you only have to do this occasionally (when you enter locations), so it's not a big deal. It doesn't affect you at driving time.

3) It doesn't speak the names of the streets as it tells you to turn. Some GPS devices (including the one in my wife's Motorola RAZR V3m phone) do. Again, not a huge issue.

4) The screen can get washed out in bright sunlight, especially since you need to have it pretty close to the glass (windshield) for it to have a consistent connection to the satellites. But if you've looked at the map ahead of time, you really don't need the screen that much while driving -- the voice will tell you what to do. Another side effect of having to mount it so close to the glass is that it's farther from your face, so it can be harder to read. But, as I said before, if you get an external antenna, then you can presumably mount the PDA anywhere, so it will be more shaded and closer to your eyes.

Bottom line:

If you're wealthy, get a car with a large, built-in navigation system. If you're semi-wealthy, get a stand-alone, larger-screen, top-of-the line nav system for 3 or 4 times this price. But if you are on a budget and want a nice nav system and a good PDA for one low price, this can't be beat!

PS: I did NOT experience the crashing or power problems that another reviewer mentioned.

Name: D. Xu
Location: Edison, NJ USA
Date: 2006-12-06
Customer Rating: -

Summary: Comparison between PiN 100 and PiN 570
Comment: I had used PiN 100 for about a year, then accidentally broke it, so bought a PiN 570. After about 10 days' use, here's a comparison between PiN 570 and PiN 100.

1. GPS functionality. PiN 100 worked smoothly right out of box in this respect. But PiN 570 had been giving me quite some headache for about a week until I finally grasped all the tricks after doing a lot of research online and conducting experiments myself.

First trick is that, when the mapping software on PiN 570 complains GPS Device Not Found, go to Settings -> GPS and tap on the "ON" box. Somtimes the GPS is automatically turned off (nobody seems to no why) after you exit your mapping software. Sometimes the GPS is actually off even when the "ON" box is highlighted. So you want to tap on "ON" anyway no matter what it shows, then start your map software again, then the GPS Device would be back after a few seconds.

Second trick is regarding the angle of GPS receiver. When you use PiN 570 in car (in the windshield cradle, in an up-straight position), a common mistake that novice users often make is to unfold the GPS receiver fully to 180 degrees so the GPS receiver points straight up. However, this is a very bad angle for the GPS receiver to detect satellite signals, because a large part of sky is blocked in the car. What you want to do is to unfold the GPS receiver to a smaller angle so that it points forward, to the front of car. That way the GPS receiver under the windshield would have a much easier time receiving satellite signals. PiN 100 didn't have this problem, because its GPS receiver was designed so that you could unfold it to at most 140 degrees or so, hence its GPS receiver naturally points forward, not up straight. In this respect I'd like to say that the PiN 570 GPS receiver design (which allows user to unfold the GPS receiver to 180 degrees) is much worse than that of PiN 100, causing quite some frustrating trouble for novice users when trying to use GPS in car.

Speaking of car windshield cradle, I feel the cradle that comes with PiN 570 is designed much better than the one that came with PiN 100. In the old days when I used PiN 100, it's difficult to keep the Pocket PC in a upstraight position for a long time, because the cradle slips to left or right easily when driving on not-so-even roads. Now with PiN 570, the cradle holds the machine much more stably, never slipping. I am very happy with this improvement.

2. Size and appearance. PiN 570 is quite a bit larger than PiN 100. I used to be able to easily slip PiN 100 in my pants pocket. But with the new PiN 570 I can't do the same. Also, the pure gray appearance of PiN 100 looks more sleaky than the black-and-gray of PiN 570. But that's just my personal taste.

3. Speed. PiN 570 seems faster than PiN 100. When using MS Reader the read e-books, when I try to look up words with Encarta Pocket Dictionary, PiN 100 used to need 5-6 seconds to find a word, while PiN only needs 1-2 seconds, a big improvement that also makes me quite happy.

So overall, after grasping all the GPS tricks, PiN 570 is quite good a purchase. Only problem to me is its size, but I'll put up with it.

Name: Dreamer
Location: Australia
Date: 2006-01-17
Customer Rating: -

Summary: Great GPS with PDA functions
Comment: I recently bought this item. The GPS functions are great but take a little getting used to. Your can plan a trip and the PIN 570 will tell you where to turn and quite cleaverly if you decide to take a different rout it will re compute the rest of the journey after warning that you have deviated from planned rout. It can be set to avoid toll roads and for varous ather settings.
As well as GPS devive its a regular PDA with adress, phone numbers, games and other utilities that run under Winsows Mobile.

Name: J. hill
Location:
Date: 2006-10-31
Customer Rating: -

Summary: Best of both Worlds
Comment: I purchased this Navman with a 2gb SD stick and it works great, which i have tons of maps and music loaded. Download sompy's and pocketdivx encoder and you can encode a whole divx movie with excellent quality at only 300MB of space. The navigation is great once you get used to it. My only complaint is the suction cup window mount keep falling. This is a overall steal if you utilize all the features. *update* You can also load Iguidance on it which uses Navteq maps. I dont know which is better, but its good to have both. I also have a waypoint software that can be used off road or camping. There are very few gps's that let you add software and multiple maps.

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