Navway PNA470 disappointing

Category: Review on Navway PNA470 GPS

Posted by: 17-Aug

Strengths: Cheap, plenty of mounting accessories

Weaknesses: Poor test-to-speech engine, poor route generation algorithm, "contacts" doesn't work, sync to computer doesn't work, support from Medion non-existent

I bought a Navway Professional Street Navigator (PNA470T) recently and have to say that it was a bit of a waste of money.

Firstly, don't be fooled into thinking the "T" in the product code means that it accepts Traffic data, like I did. It doesn't. That's a $200 firmware upgrade from Ausway, btw.

I was expecting to be able to use it around Melbourne since it was marketed by Ausway, the publishers of Melway, and I was surprised to find that it couldn't do a number of things that are often needed in this city - like access side roads from service lanes. I haven't tried using it around the CBD so I have no idea what it's going to suggest with a hook turn.

It also can't pronounce "North Road", which comes out "Noth Road" and has similar difficulty with "Bourke Road" and a variety of other easy English names. The map data often uses abbreviations like "espl" for "esplanade" and the text-to-speech engine can't handle that, either.

The compass shows N, W, S and ... O. Yes, the system was translated from German where the word for "East" is "Ost" and no-one thought to change that. Curiously, while the compass works well while you're travelling, as soon as you're stationary, it forgets where it was going and starts to indicate that you're going North. Ok, so it might not be able to tell which way you're going if you're not moving but maybe if you're not moving, you might still be heading in the same direction as you were before. Just poor/lazy programming, I suspect.

The route calculation is very poor and does not appear to minimise time or distance. It refuses to take me to the freeway on ramp nearest to our house and tries to make me circle the block when coming home, too.

The Bluetooth/phone connection is simple enough to pair but the speaker quality is so poor, it's impossible to use for a conversation.

I tried to contact Ausway's technical support line, provided by Medion, and after sitting in the queue for 30 minutes or so, decided to take the opportunity of having them call back when they weren't so busy. That was last week. Apparently they're still very busy because I still haven't been called.

One of the things I wanted to know was how to use the "contacts" function. There's no mention of it anywhere in the very brief and unhelpful manual and I was hoping that I could sync my Outlook contacts to it so I wouldn't have to enter addresses every time. There is no method of adding contacts on the unit that I can find so I have to guess that they get sync'd on to the unit somehow.

Now, the version of ActiveSync supplied with the product is sereral years out-of-date and I'm not prepared to downgrade the version on my computer and lose my Smartphone connection. The unit itself is based on Windows Mobile 5 which is quite sad, too, since WM6 was released at least 2 years ago. Nonetheless, I had hoped that it would sync with my contacts and I still can't find a way.

The GPS can take quite some time to get a stable signal even in the open and it must do this every time you switch the unit on. Once obtained, it seems to be able to keep the signal, though.

The actual interface is quite informative, useful and easy to understand. Entering addresses is achieved by means of the on-screen keyboard which has the letters arranged in alphabetic order rather than as a QWERTY keyboard, which is inconvenient, really.

The unit comes with a number of components to make mounting it inside the car somewhat easier. It includes a USB cable, main power adaptor and car power adaptor, as well as headphones and an external antenna.

It's hard to know whether the failings of this unit are due to the map data (from Navteq), the programming (from Medion), the hardware (from ???) or because Ausway wanted to market a cheap unit and got the quality of product they purchased. What I *do* know is that I wish I hadn't wasted my money on it and now I have to go and buy a better unit.