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Navigation Systems
Onboard or In-dash car GPS navigation systems are fast becoming standard fittings for luxury cars.
Car navigation systems are becoming standard fittings in luxury cars and are a popular after-market addition to the dashboard of many standard and off-road vehicles. With many models now available on the market, it pays to compare feature sets carefully. DisplayUnfortunately the image quality of car navigation systems is sadly lacking and for no good reason. At best, most look like a cheap game screen. Considering online maps such as those found on Google and Yahoo do not require a lot of processing power to render, we can see there is room for rapid improvement here. User InterfaceA large safety and convenience feature is how easy the unit is to interact with. Many new higher end products such as the Garmin 2720 have text-to-speech ability. Check that the voice used is not irritating, and whether there are options of voice personalities. It's amazing how many users turn audible alerts off because of an irritating voice tone. Play Video To Find Out More CD / DVD DriveMost in-car navigation systems operate using a combination of DVD maps and GPS updates. Earlier models contained only a CD drive, and this may have been the reason behind the poor resolution maps. With todays models sporting a much improved DVD drive, the maps are of high-resolution. PortabilitySome models of car navigation systems are designed to fit neatly into the dash. Others are dash mounted with permanent fittings, whilst others fit snugly into cradles, which provide for out of vehicle use. This is especially useful for off-road vehicle users. For those navigation systems that are portable, check how they connect to both the car and the car AV and power systems. Look for good quality cradles and output jacks to plug neatly into CD/DVD receivers rather than suction cups and ugly wires that plug into the cigarette lighter. Better still, portable Bluetooth GPS receivers are available and may also extend the option to using a PDA navigation program to give even more functional flexibility. With a little bit of bolt and tackle the PDA is easily adapted to become the vehicle's GPS receiver using a hot-pluggable slot in the dash, that serves a bit like a server hard drive to automatically connect with the PDA. With PDA OS, GPS and Telecom standards still a bit wobbly, take care that all systems are compatible. Long may open-source reign! System ProgrammingCheck each system for:
NOTE: Most production vehicle systems require the car to be stationary to enter new destination addresses. This is a good driver-safety feature but is frustrating if one has passengers capable of acting as navigator programmers. Others will allow en-route programming once the Indemnity Statement has been accepted. Portable systems do not have this lock system. I would suspect that this feature is more about car manufacturers managing their liability insurance premiums. And with USA litigation laws, I don’t blame them. Maybe a good in-between solution would be to have some sort of passenger detection system that unlocks the system. This same logic is already installed in cars to enable the passenger-side air bag. Screen AlertsDifferent systems have different alerting functions. Car Start – bit like starting up your PC to sound effects, some car navigation systems have an annoying screen that pops up whenever the car is started to remind the driver that using any part of this car's onscreen interface while driving is dangerous. Worse still, the driver has to click an ‘I Agree’ button. En-Route Alerts – enroute alerts include a range of things such as: intersection turning points, points of interest, nearest category locations etc Traffic Alerts – if a Traffic program is included, this subscription supplied alerts of traffic build ups or delays en-route, and will map an alternate route to avoid delays and rush hour traffic.
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