Most reliable bluetooth (poss. Navman 4100?)?

WATSON

Dear All,

I have spent a lot of time reading through the forums as I want to replace my current (fairly reliable) Holux 210 mouse with a bluetooth GPS as I am fed up with cables everywhere in the car (they can also snag on gear stick etc!) :D

I use TomTom and have therefore looked at their BT GPS receiver, but I have also been looking at the Navman 4100. I am inclined to go for the Navman despite increased cost, simply because after many trawls of the forum I seem to find few reports of it being unreliable.

I did once borrow a friend's Holux BT GPS and it seemed to be a bit dodgy. Can anyone shed any light on the reliability element as I would hate to have to pull the car over all the time to sort out the link etc...

Any comments on this or the Navman 4100 would be very much appreciated.

Thanks,

Toby.

TC · Posted: Wed Aug 25, 2004 10:04 pm Post subject:

Hi Watson,

What about the Clip-on? Its great value and as reliable as anything out there. You may not agree, but if you trawl the forums I don't believe there is much criticism of this unit. Yes there are many problems associated with the things that the Fortuna is part of, like Tom Tom, dodgy SD cads and the like.

One obvious criticism you will see is the time lag to compute the location when the Clip-on is in XT mode and used in navigation application. To me this is all much of a nonsense in XTrac v1 there was a very very small lag that you might notice when stopping at a junction. It might take 3-4 seconds to say 0 mph but this never in my experience made any difference to the instructions given or what you might see in sat the 3D view of Tom Tom.

Now the Clip-on comes with Xtrac v2, so this small an inconsequential problems has gone anyway.

The Clip-on is well spec'd with a removable battery, charger ,cigarette socket charger, belt clip and lanyard.

I know four people with a Clip-on, I've had mine 6 months others 4 or 2, all have been without issue.
_________________
Ipaq 2210
Fortuna Clip-on [Xtrac V2]
Tom Tom Navigator 3
Memory Map

lbendlin · Posted: Wed Aug 25, 2004 10:05 pm Post subject:

personally I think the old Emtac receiver is the most reliable. (ab)used it heavily, and it never failed on me. Has only 6 hrs of battery time, though. Maybe the Trine?
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Lutz

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WATSON · Posted: Wed Aug 25, 2004 11:49 pm Post subject:

TC - thanks for that feedback. The Fortuna does look good value - I note that Expansys have this down at 128.95 vs. 159.45 for the Navman 4100. So there is £30 in it, which is a useful saving.

After your suggestion I read the review on PocketGPSWorld and it seems that Fortuna were not traditionally known for reliability. There does seem to be a good feature set here, but I'm just slightly concerned by reliability. Have you always managed to maintain a bluetooth connection?

lbendlin - thanks for that. The Emtac seems to be tried and tested and perhaps would do the trick. I note this is only £113.95 at Expansys so seems good value, although possibly superseeded by newer units?

Would really appreciate any more advice from anyone. Smile

Toby.

drummer · Posted: Thu Aug 26, 2004 12:23 am Post subject:

Go for the clip-on. Thumbs Up

I've had no problems.

icsys · Posted: Thu Aug 26, 2004 1:07 am Post subject:

I have te 4100 and have had no problems at all using it in the car or on foot.
Lasts up to 15 hours on new AAA's although is a little pricey compared to others.

Horses for courses... read the reviews - ultimately the descision is yours!
_________________
Ian.
iPAQ 2210 | Navman 4100 BT Receiver
Navman iCN 635
TomTom GO
Anquet OS mapping

Dave · Posted: Thu Aug 26, 2004 8:37 am Post subject:

I also think one of the key reasons why we haven't seen failures due to over charging on the Navman BT GPS is that most people I have heard from do the charging outside of the GPS and just place the batteries into the Navman BT GPS which then results in not using the charging circuit.

TC · Posted: Thu Aug 26, 2004 9:19 am Post subject:

WATSON · Posted: Thu Aug 26, 2004 12:25 pm Post subject:

icsys · Posted: Thu Aug 26, 2004 8:38 pm Post subject:

Hi WATSON.

The 4100 does indeed use 3 AAA batteries but you can also use 3 AAA rechargeables however the Navman has no built-in charging circuit so the cells must be recharged externally.
The 12v lead is purely to power the RX from the car supply.

I would echo TC's remarks on BT connections. Being in such close proximity to each other the PDA and GPS shouldn't lose a connection at all.
_________________
Ian.
iPAQ 2210 | Navman 4100 BT Receiver
Navman iCN 635
TomTom GO
Anquet OS mapping

barryd

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