Findings on a new user's first long journey with the iCN510

[Daytona]

After much research, I bought a Navman iCN510 earlier this year and I’ve just had my first decent lengthy trip from our home in the South Lakes to South Kensington, Morden and Richmond Park. Although my wife is a good map-reader, doing so in a moving car (especially in busy, stop-start conditions) can bring on travel sickness so this seemed the ideal solution.
Unfortunately, I’ve got some reservations about the performance of the unit which, some which may be due to still being on a learning curve, although I do like it and overall am happy with it.

I had the routing set to “quickest”, with more preference for “freeways” but, in particular, it seems to have a dislike for the M6 section immediately north of Lancaster and tries to send me off on an A road which is 50% longer. The same happened on the way back, this time I’d changed the routing to default.
I’d set the Oxford services as an intermediate stop but although at Birmingham I followed the usual M6, M42, M40 signs and ignored the unit trying to divert me by the M5 to see how it would reroute me. Unfortunately, it lost the GPS shortly after joining the M42 and when it finally regained it just before I joined the M40 the screen flashed up a message saying it was unable to calculate a route to my intermediate stop further down the M40…. Eventually it did and seemed OK after that.
Strangely enough, it routed me M40, M42, M6 on the return journey with no problem although just on the M42 I had to turn the screen brightness down and (possibly coincidentally) the GPS signal was lost for several miles (just as on the way down and the screen isn’t coated or heated and was in an open area).

Within London, I trusted the chosen routing and it seemed to work and route (and reroute!) nicely. We got where we wanted to and the route preview looked reasonably straightforward. But often the turning is shown late and the screen often needs to be used to confirm which turning and this can be difficult in busy conditions, particularly with more than one junction set closely together. After one such missed turning, with difficulty I moved from the left to the right on the carriageway as instructed only for it to want a U turn performed at the lights on a dual carriageway. The gate into Richmond Park it insisted we use had been closed to traffic for nearly 2 years when we asked a local for a recommended gate to enter by, the one we did use was flagged as “No Entry” on the mapping but there again, it also thinks our house is in the other side of the road! On the way back home, it took about 10 minutes (with a good all round clear view of the sky – it’s normally been just a couple at most) to get a satellite lock from a cold start.

Screen glare was bad at times and required careful positioning to minimise. I have a Jessops screen protector on but while they’re OK on my camera gear they don’t help on this so will be looking for something better.

Speaker volume was OK and quite easy to adjust.

Night mode is little different compared with daytime mode and somewhat disappointing as the screen is still far too bright even when turned down to minimum. Even so, there should be a shortcut on the screen to switch to it.

The protective case fits best with the narrow end of the unit pushed in first. This leaves the memory card exposed and vulnerable. There should be a velcro flap over the end.
The processor could be faster and this would help the re-routing which can take seemingly ages when you need it most. Saying that, I’ve just replaced the Kinston 512Mb card I had been using with a Sandisk 1Gb Extreme III (ready for the European maps when we go on holiday this summer) and a quick trial seems to show a small increase in response. Certainly, manually moving around the map seems easier.

Overall? I still like it. The display is clear and a decent size but still in a reasonably compact unit which makes it easy to carry on foot or hide in the car when parked. Some concerns over the choice of routing although this can be tweaked with intermediate stops, just adds to the preparation time. Night mode needs a drastic change and it would be safer in traffic if something could be done to remove or reduce the lag between position shown on the display and real life.

[Nigbo]

hi m8 - take some getting used to I suppose - amuses me to see some of the routes it wants to take me down - most of the time i know pretty well where i'm going to - its the last exact bit is normally the problem and it works well for me there.

For screen glare, I bought an 112554 PPC Techs XDA Writeshield AG2-pak from expansys.com - @£20 - you get 2 covers - exact fit plus a clean / application pack etc. Works ok

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