Customer Reviews

Navman PiN 570 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

I've just bought this unit this past week and this is what I've noticed:

1) The price is very reasonable for a pocket navigation system with a built in PDA.

2) Very easy to transfer maps or synchronize with ActivSync.

3) It's very easy to learn, but the process of entering locations is very cumbersome.

4) The maps are very outdated. For example, I entered my sister's house, which is in a major city and was built 30 years ago and the Navman maps cannot find it. Another example: I enter my work address (I work for a public utility which has existed since 1880 and the building was built in the 1930's) and, lo and behold, this address and nearest cross street is not in the maps. One more example (although I can provide many more): I enter the address and/or intersection of a major casino in Reno, NV, which has been in existence for over 30 years, and this is also not included in the maps.

5) Technical support is only available during business hours on weekdays. Not very convenient for those of us who work for a living.

6) The features do not work consistently. I tried pulling up a destination from my contacts listing and the listing does not appear. This feature worked three days ago. After a few days, this feature started working again.

7) I used the navigation system on my trip from the S.F. Bay Area to Reno, NV, a trip of approx. 250 miles each way. The navigation system worked fine on the way to Reno and recalculated fairly quickly when I deviated from the recommended route. Once I got to Reno, the battery was drained (although I had it plugged into my car) and the software crashed, thus losing all the data stored on its internal memory. Fortunately, my maps was stored on a separate memory card. On the way home from Reno, the Navman took almost a full hour to acquire a GPS signal. Once the signal was acquired, the Navman worked as expected.

8) The mount for the Navman is not designed properly. The Navman cannot be held securely in its cradle when the adapter is connected. The pegs where the Navman sits are not wide enough to accomodate the plug.

The bottom line is, you get what you pay for. For the cost of this item, it can easily replace your existing PDA with a somewhat usable navigation system built-in. If you do a lot of driving and need a reliable working navigation system, I don't recommend you get this.

I bought my PiN 570 in London before starting a 6 week trip around the UK. Being a Kiwi, I thought I'd support the Kiwi product.

Out of the box, the unit is well constructed, and has enough weight not to feel like a toy. The interface is a little cluttered, but the unit is a PDA rather than just a personal SATNAV, so you have to expect a little bit of on-screen infrastructure to handle the units other functions.

The unit took quite a long time to get a satellite fix -sometimes more than two minutes. The SATNAV interface is not particularly intuitive -but it can be learned by reading the documentation.

On the unit I bought, there were a couple of hardware/software problems. Pressing the joystick in the wrong direction during navigation caused the system to crash, which nothing (not even switching the unit off) would fix. This was only resolved by rebooting the unit, with the loss of all data stored and the tiresome "tap the screen here" re-initialisation procedure. This problem was a king-sized pain in the rear, as the joystick is used to navigate through some functions and it was easy to jog it in the wrong direction.

The second problem revolved around a power cable that wouldn't stay attached -the slightest knock and it would pop out enough to cause the battery to stop charging. This turned out to be a hairline crack in one of the side clips of the power plug jack. Once the cable was replaced, this problem was solved.

The maps were useful and accurate, but some of the underlying information was not. In Shrewsbury and Edinburgh in particular, Betty wanted to take us the wrong way down one-way streets. In Edinburgh she took us to the centre of the city, then declared that there was no satellite coverage, so we were on our own.

After owning the unit for 6 weeks, I decided that the constant crashing was too risky to take to the States (where warranty on a UK purchased item might be a problem) so I returned the unit. Customer service was great, and I received a full refund almost immediately.

This product could have been, and should have been one of my prized "can't be without it" units in my array of gadgetry. Instead faulty manufacture and poor interface design meant it was returned, and the money went somewhere else.

Unit build quality - 5 Stars
Accessory build quality - 3 Stars (faulty power coupling)
Software nuts-and-bolts programming - 4 Stars
Software stability - 1 Star (constant crashing needing reboot)
Software interface design -2 Stars (if you need to read a manual to make it work, then a better design is needed)
Customer Service - 4 Stars

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.

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.

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.

I love this thing. OK - my wife hates that I love it but she doesn't want to give me directions half the time anyway. So she argues with the way it routes sometimes - which can be amusing.

It was an excellent deal for the money at around $200 discounted. The only feature it is lacking is WiFi which I bought an SDIO card from e-bay for. Of course browsing on a PDA is not as great a feature as it seems and when I am using the SDIO card, I don't have my 2GB SD card - oh yeah, you need a larger card to load more than a few states at once. When traveling, it would be nice to have a USB travel charger to connect it to my laptop for power as the included wall wart + cable is a bit annoying to carry around and running out to the car to charge is also a pain.

Not sure about the reviewer complaining about the mount - it is actually a lot better than I would expect but some cleaning of the windshield helps to make it stick better. I haven't had problems with the maps being outdated either although I believe they are [...].

My wife does like to play games on it - mainly the puzzle type so sometimes we fight over it. Support was a bit slow but in the end came through for me.

A few times in the beginning it would crash on long trips but it hasn't crashed in a while - I tell it to backup every now and then just in case. I would not recommend this to a non-technical person looking for a GPS to stay in the car as there are larger, more expensive models for this but for someone looking for a PDA with GPS capability, it is a win-win for less than a cost of either in most cases.

I like the Navman, for the price, and the features you get. I did find, like the other writer did, that it can take some time to acquire the GPS signal, sometimes. Usually, when it does have a delay, it's like 2 to three minutes. I've never experienced anything close to an hour.

It can be somewhat cumbersome to enter addresses, but, overall, I think it's a great little gadget.

Also, to the writer who stated that the pegs are in the wrong place on the cradle for the unit? Those pegs are actually adjustable, so you can slide them to where you need them.

Pros:
- It was the cheapest PocketPC with GPS in the market when I bought it a year ago.

Cons:
- no built-in Wi-Fi. Need to buy a SDIO Wi-Fi card for internet access.
- the GPS signal reception is very poor.
- The navigation software Navman SmartST doesn't have TTS (Text-To-Speech). For example, it only announces "turn right in 0.1 mile" rather than "turn right on Main Street in 0.1 mile."

I would recommend a GPS with SIRF star III chip for much better signal reception.