Gadgets: Navman S90i GPS Navagation Unit – Review – 69

Navman has had a hard time of it lately, with Fair Go turning its sights on the company in a not altogether fair way. Proclaiming a GPS unit as worthless just because the maps are imperfect and/or invariably a little out of date seems disingenuous: Navman relies on the same map makers that make hard copy maps, and these become out of date overnight with the road alterations that are a fact of modern life.

Having said that, my first experience with an in-car GPS navigation device a few years ago was with a Navman that famously instructed me to take a right turn off the middle of the Auckland Harbour Bridge, so it’s with delight that I can report that I’ve discovered no such foibles with the top-of-the-line S90i, a unit that has all the bells and whistles a frequent traveller could possibly want for.

According to the booklet, the S-Series is “sophisticated yet suprisingly [sic] easy to use” and while I would agree with that in principle, this unfortunate spelling error doesn’t bode particularly well for the unit under scrutiny.

The S90i is notable for the extra things it does. For instance, it’s Bluetooth enabled, which means you can make or receive hands-free phone calls. Its other key extra feature is its 2 megapixel camera, which can capture locations you wish to return to. When you want to go back, just find the pic and tap its image on the touch screen. One really useful feature is the mileage expense reporter, which is just like a logbook, and perfect for keeping tabs on expenses, especially for the frequent business traveller. Also useful are the 75,000 points of interest, from which you can choose businesses/locations just like you would with the Yellow Pages.

The downside of the S90i comes not with the bells and whistles, but the basics. While its navigation is much improved, the instructions are often a little wonky: when the road veers left, for instance, it often tells you to turn left. Its ability to read street names is seen as a plus, but unless you find the mispronunciation of Maori words incredibly funny, this function is of little use. More importantly, the Navman took substantially longer than my TomTom (at almost half the price) to find the satellite and to automatically readjust itself to a new route. The quality of the audio from its speaker was also much more compromised than that of the TomTom, and despite numerous voice choices, they all came across with a slight robotic quality.

A Fair Go?

One key point for Fair Go’s scorn of GPS navigation units was the cost of downloading updated maps. Shouldn’t they be free, like so many software updates? While the key in-car GPS unit brands offer helpful websites and some free downloads, typically they do charge for new maps. On the other hand, you would have to pay for a new hard copy map book, and presumably GPS manufacturers have to pay the map makers for every update too. One of the problems for the likes of us (those who live on a tiny island at the bottom of the world) is that very few GPS units offer the full functionality they can in their country of origin. TomTom has smart features that don’t work in NZ, and the voice instruction street name problems Navman suffers are because the company would have to create new software with Maori vocabulary to handle this effectively. Ironically, Navman started off as a New Zealand brand before selling to American interests. I guess we’re lucky to get satellite coverage at all.

What they said:

“Like the spurned high school prom queen in every slasher flick ever made, its surface beauty is marred by intermittent spurts of insanity” – Cnet

Details

• 4.3-inch touch screen
• Bluetooth hands-free capabilities
• Text-to-speech reading of street names
• 2 megapixel camera for navigation with photos
• Comprehensive maps of New Zealand
• Shortcuts to petrol, parking and emergency services
• PIN security code anti-theft deterrent
• Mileage expense reporter
• Samsung 2443/400 MHz processor
• 2GB internal Flash memory
• SD/MMC memory expansion
• SiRF starIII GPS receiver
• Rechargeable Li-ION battery up to five hours
• 3D and 2D map view

Dimensions: 79 x 139  x 20mm (H/W/D)

Weight: 200g

Pros

• All the bells and whistles
• Camera to visually remember favourite places
• 75,000 points of interest

Cons

• Shonky pronunciation of street names
• Slow satellite pickup and redirect
• Expensive
• Poor speaker quality

Verdict

The S90i has all the bells and whistles, but Navman needs to get the humdrum stuff right first to get back on track

Score: 2.5/5

GARY STEEL

This review is from Tone issue #69.