A comparison of autonomous GPS systems: 7 16/9 PND devices

It is now a long time ago that TomTom had a monopoly on the market! Today, the competition is organised and just as competent by providing their GPS’s with either 12 or 24 months warranties. For a bit more then 425 dollars, you are able to take advantage of a complete GPS.

Concerning the precision and sensitivity of the peripherals, there is nothing that can be taken away from them. Behind the windscreen and operating without an external antenna the GPS Star III chip is a marvel, but this is nothing new.

We particularly appreciated the BlueTooth generalisation which allowed drivers to take advantage of a hands free telephone kit paired with their mobile phone. Most models allow you to dial and receive calls via the GPS’ touch screen. Not all though are equipped with the possibility of importing an address book though. The Mio DigiWalker C620 was the only one to correctly complete this task with our LG KG 800 also being quite good.

We especially appreciated the richness of the POI’s offered in all of these models, with the traffic info working on the major roads and the radar updates being available for life for the Takara Nomade GP43 and not just for the first 12 months. On some of the devices, it is possible to update the POI’s and radars without having to spend anything, which is made possible thanks to the work of the active GPSpassion.com community!

All products use an SD memory card. Here, for the maps of Europe, it is often 2GB of memory that is provided. The Magellan Maestro 4245, an excellent GPS, has internal memory, which means that the SD port is left free. The only inconvenience is that this empty slot can’t be used to store MP3’s, photos or videos as the device isn’t capable of handling multimedia.

A table of the GPS’s characteristics (click to enlarge)

The quality of the 3D display on all is quite good. The current position of the roads is a lot more distinct then in 2D and the large screens allow for an ease of use that is more natural then on the traditional 4/3 layout. Some models, which come with 400 MHz processors quickly show the full screen of POI’s, which means that they can suffer from latency when navigating through the menus. This is particularly evident on the Becker Traffic Assist 7928 Europe and the Navigon 7110.

The driving functions (Lane guidance, Lane info…) in the VDO Dayton PN 4000 and Becker Traffic Assist 7928 Europe are a real plus in terms of security. When multiple routes are possible, the one which you need to take is clearly identified!

Finally among the rest, the voice recognition commands are quite good on the Magellan Maestro 4245 and the Mio DigiWalker C620. The multimedia options available with the MP3 player and JPEG picture viewer are also quite common. From now on, you are able to watch videos in the MPEG and WMV formats and even watch the television on the VDO Dayton PN 4000.

In the end, the big winner of this test is the Magellan Maestro 4245 with is navigation software, its dark 3D display and successful voice recognition. The only thing it is missing is the multimedia options! If you want more functions with the multimedia options then you can always look at the VDO Dayton PN 4000, the Becker Traffic Assist 7928 Europe or the Takara Nomade GP43 which are all good choices.