Customer Reviews

ViaMichelin X-930 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator

5 star:		(35)
4 star:		(51)
3 star:		(18)
2 star:		(19)
1 star:		(33)

 

 

I bought this unit after shopping around for an entry-level GPS. I had seen this particular item in the UK (where it is extremely popular) and knew ViaMichelin were finally about to release a US version. For those who didn't know, this product is from Michelin (yup, the tire company). It's a great unit, and the price is unbeatable for what you get. First and foremost, this is a GPS unit - not an MP3 player, audio book player, storage hard-drive or picture viewer. It has been made to do exactly what it should do - give directions. I appreciate the other little 'bonuses' but is it really worth the extra cost?

This unit has the usual 3.5" screen which is very clear and anti-glare. The supplied windshield and dash mounts are very handy and well-designed, but I haven't really needed to use them just yet - I usually just place it in a small storage area I have right below my console.

What is really nice about this unit is its size and weight. It is unbelieveably light and extremely portable. You can just slip it in your pocket and take it with you. I found this one of the nicest features since I wanted the option of taking it with me if I choose to - a great feature is being able to switch between vehicle and pedestrian modes.

There are four buttons on the side that let you choose options, and the volume button is the left. The software is simple and very easy to use, with just three main items on the home screen - no complicated menus here. Entry is via touchscreen and you can either use your finger or the provided stylus that conveniently stores behind the unit. If you have large fingers, it might be hard to input details without making mistakes.

Since the unit has an integrated antenna and uses the SiRF Star III technology, satellite access is extremely quick. Route calculation and re-calculation is quick and the voice direction is clear and loud. Plenty of information is displayed on screen, without being overwhelming, and you can choose 2D or 3D views. The unit DOES display street names (or street direction), you just have to turn them on in the 'settings' area (mind you this is only on the 2D display map, not on the actual directions map). POI's are great too, doesn't seem to be missing anything major so far. I had no problems with the maps being that out of date in my area (despite extensive roadwork), but I did run into one area where roads had changed - the unit re-routes very quickly though.

The 1GB SD card that is included is all you need to get started since it has detailed maps of all 50 states (Alaska & Hawaii ARE included - to correct the Amazon review. To change to Alaska or Hawaii, you just select 'change map' under the 'map' icon under 'settings'), and the supplied DVD-ROM for Canada is useful if you end up heading that way. If I ever do that, I'll probably buy another 1GB SD card and load the data from the DVD-ROM.

I agree with the Amazon review that the main con is the lack of being able to backup and correct after entering a mistake, but it's not that big of a deal. The keyboard not being in QWERTY format actually made it easier for me. I only find that format handy on something you can use both hands to type. So, since that is really the ONLY negative thing I've noticed with this item, it deserves the five-star rating.

Overall, this item is an amazing little unit for the price. It has most of the features of more expensive units, for a fraction of the moolah. For anyone wanting to try out a solid GPS unit and do not mind not having (or paying for) the ability to play MP3's, etc., then this is the perfect unit for you!

My first impression is WOW! At $200, no tax and free shipping this unit is a steal. I ordered it on Monday and it arrived on Tuesday! I live in Philadelphia,PA and it shipped from somewhere nearby in Pennsylvania.

After I opened the box, I was surprised to find that the unit was already fully charged. I turned it on and inserted the smartmedia card. I was able to set it up and use it without ever opening the manual. The unit is very intuitive even to a first-time GPS user like myself. It has a simple menu system that you navigate by touching the screen. It was easy to set-up and save my first destination as one of my favorites.

While driving or walking (you can change this mode in one of the sub-menus), the display constantly shows:
* how far until your next turn
* direction that you are heading (N,S, etc.)
* distance to your destination in miles (or you can change it to kilometers)
* estimated time until you arrive at your destination

All the places that I used it for directions to tonight are places for which I already know the directions. However, I used the unit to get an idea of how it works so that I will be more familiar with it methodology when I am going somewhere that is new to me. The unit gave good directions. The voice was clear in announcing turns before and as I arrived at them. I also thought it recalculated my route fairly quickly whenever i decided to ignore its directions.

It has lots of points of interest already saved in the unit like restaurants, parks, hotels, etc. You can search these categories based on your current location (as calculated by the unit), city, etc. It also has lots of sub-menus for you to adjust features like display (2d or 3d), brightness, language, etc. for those of you who like to customize things but it also works fine out of the box.

I waited over a month to find a unit at this price point without a rebate. My wait is over and I'm very happy with my purchase!

This GPS system is the least expensive of its kind and it works. For basic navigation, it is adequate, however, after a 2500 mile trip, there are some concerns. As other reviews have indicated, some of the information is outdated. Also, this system has a tendency to stick to interstates when other routes might be more appropriate. The battery life of the unit is slowly diminishing. Of course, because of the price, this unit will not apprise you of traffic slowdowns or accidents ahead.

The good things this unit provides are these features: distance traveled, distance and time to destination, speed and direction. Being able to estimate ETA has proved handy as I was able to tell those folks at the destination my estimated arrival time.

If you are looking for the basics, this is a good unit. If you are looking for more bells and whistles, you may need to spend more money.

A real steal for $200 with free shipping and no sales tax. This unit sells in England for 500 dollars. Got it overnight with their free shipping (ships from Pennsylvania). I have been using a TomTom GPS for two years, this one is for my wife.

Pros: Price, reliability, ease of use. You can place it anywhere in your car (and in my bedroom) and still gets the signal, even under bridges (did not say tunnels). Uses Michelin database, a world leader in travel charts. A big plus is that if you turn it off once you reach the highway, it remembers where you are trying to get to after turning it on again and will resume the directions from where you are now.

Cons: A bit slow to calculate and recalculate routes (remember, it is looking at the whole country's map unlike the TomTom that looks just at a region).

I was reluctant at first for the price (really) but now it is a keeper.

This is my second GPS. The first one I bought is from Delphi and I paid $700 about 3 years ago. Since then the GPS technology improved so much and the price has come down a lot. I have also used in-car GPS system on my friends' Honda and my father's Acura so I have compared this Viamichelin to the other two much more expensive ones.

It's very light and portable. It's so light that it almost feels cheap.. but the screen is very bright and colorful. It has some sort of plastic protective film over the screen, it is a bit too glossy. I will have to find some non-glossy protective film.

It finds GPS signal very quickly and when you turn it on, it comes on quick and is ready to go (my delphi took a while). It has an internal battery so you don't need to connect the power while you are driving (unless you are on a trip that is more than 3 hours). I like its mounting device. Very well designed but you cannot change the "tilt" angle. you can swivel side to side, but not the tilt angle.

Voice guidance is okay but the speaker quality is not as good as other ones I tried. But what do you expect from a PDA? Basically this is what it is. It is based on Windows CE platform. Speaker is loud enough that you will not miss turn. The navigation is not as smooth as others. it feels like the refresh rate is lower than the other devices. So it lags behind just a bit. But remember, the other ones I am comparing to cost x4 or x10 more than this device.

Some people complain about POI, but as long as you have the main ones(hospital, stadiums, shoppingcenters..etc), you will be okay.. It is not possible to keep up with every restaurants and all the small businesses, specially in a big cities. So I guess Michelin decided not to put too much effort in it. However, it does have major parks, golf courses, and other POI.. but not as extensive as other GPS devices.

Keyboard layout being non QWERTY was a big concern for me before I bought it, but after trying it out, it was not so bad.

If you live in a area where there is a lot of road changes, it will not have those new roads.. Most the GPS systems would not have them either.
Since this device uses NAVTEQ maps, I am sure you can buy and upgrade maps later if it really becomes obsolete. Some have proprietary maps so
upgrading may not be so easy.

I wrote a lot but here is my one line review:

"Definitely worth $179+"

Ok, I've been using this little beauty in California for a while now and have been very impressed by it. For those who say addresses are missing I don't think they're using it right. For instance to find 500 Main St you first have to enter Main or Main St and hit search then it will ask you for the intersection or address and that's when you enter 500. So far I've saved all of my friends addresses from Sacramento to San Jose and it has found every address. The points of interest that come pre loaded are amazing. No GPS in the world has every POI but this one has so many of them and all the important ones like ATM machines and gas stations are in there. It even gives you phone numbers of restaurants and businesses. My friends Garmin c340 looses satellite reception in the downtown area so I took my X-930 down there to test it out and it never lost reception because the X-930 can connect to up to 10 different satellites at a time. You can check how many you're connected to and around my town I connect to about 7 or 8 satellites at a time. The voice command is loud and clear and gives you plenty of warning before you need to make a turn. It also re-routes very fast. I can't believe anyone would give this GPS a bad review. The features can be a little tricky at first but if the user manual doesn't help you can call ViaMichelin customer service and they answer right away and are very helpful with walking you through the features. I would buy the X-930 over any $500-$600 GPS on the market today. The X-930 is a small, powerful, straight forward, easy to use, plug and play system. It doesn't play MP3's but that's what my Ipod is for. I had high hopes for this product and it has surpast my expectations!

The Michelin X-930 is a fantastic value. It works right out of the box and importantly it has the latest NAVTEQ (the best US system) maps loaded.

I did a lot of research before ordering this GPS and it does everything it says it will do. I did not want a music system or any of the other additional bells and whistles, I wanted a straight forward, simple GPS to navigate from point A to point B. This GPS delivers.

The voice cues are clear and easy to understand. The route re-computing is quick and accurate. The accuracy is uncanny. Certainly if you know special short cuts, it may not choose your favorite route -- but it gets you there.

I am really impressed that Michelin could undercut the market and make this unit available at one-half the cost of any comparable unit I could find.

I rate this unit 5 stars. In comarison with other GPS units, it performs the task at half the price.

Why is it that you can read review after review of GPS street locators, and virtually NO ONE answers the main question: how and where do you obtain map updates for the product, and at what price?

After all, it's all about the maps!

If you want reviewers to address this matter, you need to say this review helps!

I must admit, I bought this product with some mixed feelings. The reviews I saw here on Amazon made me wonder if I might be better suited buying a higher end unit. I decided it was worth the risk and bought it. Here are my thoughts after using it on a recent road trip.

The Good: I love the ability to pre-program destinations. This made it easy to find and save all of the places I wanted to visit on my trip, making finding them later a snap. The satellite was very accurate and quick to reroute when I missed a turn or chose to follow another path. The audio was solid and made driving easy.The unit is also very portable.

The Bad: Finding locations was a pain. The interface is hard to get used to and the POI info is a little lacking in my opinion. The screen is a little small, and those without good vision may have to rely on the audio.

Overall: I think this is an awesome unit for the occasional user who does not want to spend the big bucks for a more full featured unit. What it does, it does well. The user interface is embarrassingly poor, but you can learn it eventually. The ability to look locations up ahead of time is a huge advantage.

Who this is good for: The occasional traveler, that does not want to spend big bucks on a GPS.

Not recommended for: Those who struggle with technology. Those who need to program addressee on the fly. (Delivery drivers etc.)

I bought this as my first GPS and really enjoyed the fact that I could figure out (yes, it is a little complicated to put in your address) how to put in my home address and that it got me home with the voice prompts. But over the month that I have owned this product I have found that it has several SEVERE!!!! limitations. So, to be fair, I will list out a few pros, to the X930

Pros:
1. Size - It is small and light weight which makes it easy to carry around.

2. Price - Well... it is priced cheaper than other product. But to say that it is in the same class as the others??? Well, I dont know enough about other products to say that, and that is why its in the pros list.

OK now thats all I can think of for the pros, now here are the cons and you have to realize that I am not comparing it to any other GPS. These are just things that I expect from a basic GPS and the X930 fails miserably at...

Cons:
1. The second day that I bought this unit, I could not figure out how to put in my office address on it. My office is on a US-Highway (RT-1 in NJ, to be exact) and there was no way that I could figure out how to put it in. I later called customer service and found out that it apparently have a "problem" with locating addresses on major US highways and that they would contact me about the next day about a solution after contacting their development center in FRANCE. Day 7 - No contact yet!!!

2.It doesn't calculate directions unless you start driving and get on a road that it recognizes, which means, if you are in a parking lot and the unit doesnt recognize it as a major road, you have to get out and guess the direction you have to turn before it actually calculates where you have to go. A 50% chance that you get the first turn right (for me, i've gotten it right about 20% of the time), this is really bad, because depending on which road you get onto, it has to recalculate the directions and by the time, you might have made a wrong turn again.

3. Speaking of route calculation, it is really slow for long distances, I tried it for a couple of trips that went over 300 miles and it took about 5 to 7 minutes to recalculate. I am assuming that the recalculation occurs from the point that it has picked up the signal, so in the 5-7 mins that it is recalculating, if you make a bad turn, it goes into the 5-7 mins recalculation cycle again and again and again. I finally resorted to stopping the car and waiting for it to calculate the route so that I could get to where I was going. Route calculation for shorter distances is reasonable.

4. Maps are fairly outdated. I have been to places where the device does not recognize the road and keeps giving me the start driving prompt so that I get to a road that it does recognize. This is really frustrating since this is product that was released in 2006 (october I guess) and the road has been there long before that.

5. ViaMichelin did not even have a US website until recently, and even there the support page (I went there hoping for some MAP/Firmware upgrades) only lists the un-helpful customer service number.

Again, all these comments come from a person who has never used a GPS before. Maybe I have very high expectations from a GPS unit, but I would assume that these are basic expectations from a GPS unit.

I would recommend that you stay away from this product.

-- UPDATE

I only have 1 thing to say about this GPS and to all of you who give this greater than 1 start.

Try putting in an address on a local highway, for eg: route 1, route 22, route 21, etc (sure, it will show you the road when you get there, but it will not let you put it in as an address) and see if you can get this thing to recognize it. If you can, please respond to this post an tell me how you did it and I will change my rating.

For me, the entire purpose of owning a GPS is to be able to put in an address and get there, doesnt have to be the prettiest or the easiest route, but it should at least accept the address that I am trying to punch in.

I give it 1 start coz I can not give it 0. :(