Review by Dave Burrows

Introduction

Haicom is a well known brand in the GPS Market, and have a whole range of GPS Receivers depending on what you're really looking for.  Haicom currently have the the Haicom 302 CF, the new 303MMF CF card that can be angled to varying degrees, the 302 LP (Low Power Edition), the Haicom 202E USB GPS Receiver and finally the more popular Haicom 203E which is the GPS Mouse of choice for many.

The GPS Receiver we are reviewing here is the Haicom 302 CF.  This holds a Compact Flash Type I form factor.  This means that any device be it Pocket PC, PDA or Laptop that supports Compact Flash Type I, Type II, or PC-Card will be able to use this as a GPS Receiver.

Haicom 302CF GPS Receiver

Versions

The card itself is very light weight and comes in several designs.  Haicom are renowned for their OEM receivers.  Haicom have several versions of the 302 CF, one is a solid coloured plastic housing, and the other has a coloured see through housing.

The Haicom 302 CF comes with an impressive selection of stats.  Manufacturer TTFF times are quoted as 48 seconds from cold, 38 seconds from warm, and 8 seconds from hot standby. 

The GPS Receiver is a 12 all-in-view satellite receiver using the NMEA protocol 0183 v2.2 at 4800 baud and sports a SiRF II/e chipset.

Drivers

One thing in this day and age I always hate is drivers.  Why are they really needed ?  Surely we know enough about most product sets now to include generic drivers ? 

Luckily, the Haicom 302 CF doesn't require any drivers.  If you run up a diagnostic program like WinFast Navigator (on our downloads page) then insert the Compact Flash GPS Receiver, you'll see the COM port assigned immediately to this receiver.  After you know that, it's real easy to configure the application you're going to use the Haicom with, just simply specify the COM port you're Haicom is using, select the NMEA protocol and 4800 baud, and you're all set!

Form Factor

Compact Flash GPS Receivers tend to be a little more sensitive compared to GPS mice and Bluetooth receivers, partly due to their small design, but mainly due to they are never in an optimum position in-car pointing to the sky.  Some people find depending on the surroundings, and for in-car use that an external patch antenna is required to boost signals.  Quite a few Compact Flash GPS Receivers don't come with such a solution, but the Haicom 302 CF does.  You'll see below that not only is the Haicom 302 CF thin and not bulky, but on the right hand side of the receiver is an MMCX socket allowing you to connect any patch antenna with an MMCX plug into this socket to re-transmit the signal down the cable to the GPS Receiver.  Although external patch antennas aren't necessarily required, they can boost signal by 2-4 sats when mounted in difficult positions.  With a GPS mouse or a Bluetooth mouse, it's very easy to move these around on the dashboard giving maximum exposure, the patch antenna which is optional with the Haicom 302 CF is magnetic, and can be placed on the roof of the car giving maximum signal exposure.

Haicom Patch Antenna

The Haicom 302 CF Patch Antenna comes with a magnetic base and a long flex of cable which terminates in an MMCX plug.  Any MMCX antenna will do, or you could use this antenna on other GPS Receivers with an MMCX socket.  With the antenna on, we did find satellites in view increase by around 2 sats in normal conditions when the receiver was hanging from a vent mount in-car.

One thing to bear in mind with Patch Antennas is the MMCX plugs aren't usually that well made.  This is no real reflection on Haicom, just the standards on the plug.  When you plug in an MMCX antenna into an MMCX socket, there is a very tight grip between socket and plug.  Unplugging this sometimes requires a lot of strength to pull it out of the socket, and as you'll see on the Haicom MMCX connector to the right, there's really not much to grip onto.  If you are plugging and unplugging an MMCX connector on a daily basis, then don't expect the MMCX plug to last that long.  Again this is no direct reflection on Haicom, we've had lots of emails regarding Pretec's, and other makes where people prefer not to leave the patch antenna connected to the CF card and wear and tear sets in quite quickly after several months use.  Patch antennas although they're not expensive, they're not cheap either, some come in between £20 and £40.  So you don't really want to be purchasing one every couple of months.  If you think you're going to need a patch antenna, leave it connected all the time, if you need to, the antenna cable will coil up nicely and you can leave both receiver and antenna in the glove box in-car and nobody would be the wiser.

How does it compare with other receivers ?

The Hiacom 302 CF did very well.  We did find about 1 sat more than the Pretec Compact which really is a great GPS Receiver, and many Compact Flash GPS Receivers are never this close, so the Haicom did very well.  In-car we lost satellite signal without the external patch antenna once, but this was in a high foliage area but re-acquired very quickly without fail.  From a Time To First Fix perspective, we received very good results from the Haicom receiver, in-fact much faster than the Pretec in previous tests.  One of the bonuses about Compact Flash GPS Receivers are they are good if you want to use them outside the car.  They will drain the Pocket PC battery quite a bit, but if you've just arrived at a location, parked up in a multi-storey car park and need to complete the rest of your journey on foot, you need something that you can take out of the car and complete this journey with.  The Haicom works very well under this scenario.

Other accessories included

Apart from the GPS Receiver and CD, a nice novel accessory included in the box is a Haicom leather case.  This allows you to clip this to your belt and carry the GPS Receiver around rather than having it sticking out of your Pocket PC all the time.  This is good when you want to put a Compact Flash card into your Pocket PC and then have nowhere to put the GPS Receiver.

GPS Hardware TTFF (Time To First Fix)

Technical Specification

Summary

If you're looking for a GPS Receiver that can be used in-car but also on foot when you're walking, then you can't do much wrong with the Haicom 302 CF.  Haicom provide with the receiver, a nice belt clip leather case which you can clip to your belt and put the GPS receiver in when you don't need it in the Pocket PC, and this is a nice addition.

One thing to bear in mind with Compact Flash GPS Receivers is for most GPS Navigation maps you need a storage card to store maps, 32mb or 64mb of ram just isn't, this then means if you're going to use it with an application you need to make sure you have two storage slots, one of which obviously has to be Compact Flash Type I or II.

References

Manufacturers Website

http://www.haicom.com.tw

Pocket GPS Reviewer

Dave Burrows

Pocket GPS Reviewer Website

Dave Burrows.com

Rating

Durability

Windscreen Suction Mount Strength

not supplied

Air Vent Mount Strength

not supplied

Car Power Cable Quality

not supplied

Overall Rating 70%

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Review Ratings

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