Becker Traffic Assist Review

funkytwig · Occasional Visitor Joined: Sep 21, 2006 Posts: 20

There does not seem to be a great deal on this site about the above so I am going to attempt to coble together a basic review. Comments/corrections etc greatly appreciated.

The unit is of a similar size to the TomTom one and has a simpler sized screen. It comes with a in car charger but no mains charger. It has a USB cable that charges the unit when its plugged into a computer. It is a nice looking unit, seems well built and the speakers are fairly loud. It uses the SiRF III chipset so finds where it is fairly quickly and is reportable the best chipset for Urban Canyon (i.e. city use). It has a external antenna socket and a headphone socket. It comes with a 1GB SD card with the option to extend to a 2GB card. It can store around 1/2 of Europe on the 1GB card. There are 5 different map sets, 4 covering Europe (with overlaps so you can always have the country you are as well as surrounding ones). The fifth map set is all of Europe (including Easton Europe) which requires a 2GB card. It is a simpler price as the TomTom One Europe. It seems to have a fairly large POI (Points of Interest) set but does not have cash machenes and you can not add custom POIs.

The rest of my review is a comparison against TomTom PDA solution with a Bluetooth TomTom receiver (I believe has SiRF II chipset). Firstly the Becker found where it was from power up quicker than the TomTom, this is probably due to the chipset. Traveling from Brussels to Matrick the two systems chose the same route, the Becker being much quicker to calculate. I would imagine this would not be a issue with the new TomToms. The TomTom zoom/browsing of in 2D has a better, more usable zoom feature and has more control over which POIs to show (The becker can only turn them all on/off, not allow you to only display selected ones, such as petrol stations). TomTom also seems better at making sure road names are on the screen. In 2D mode with the Becker you sometimes have to scroll down the road to find the name. TomTom also has a facility to have alarms when you are near a POI (i.e. petrol stations). TomTom does not seem to be able to show POI on the 3D map. The Becker also have a nice signpost feature, it puts up a banner with junction, road and where exits are signposted to. So when traveling down the motorway you get something like ‘(32) M32 Bristol’ telling you what signpost you should follow at the exit. Both show similar info on the screen but the Becker is maybe a little more cluttered. It is also easy to change between 2D/£D mode on the Becker, the TomTom requires you to go into the menu system rather than a couple of taps on the screen. When we got to Mstric we then looked for an Indian Restaurant (obviously we did not want to visit any Coffee Shops). The Becker showed only 1 while the TomTom showed several. The two restaurants we tried to visit were not there (This included the one the Becker listed).

In summary prefer the TomTom (although one with SiRF III). I think the two would perform similarly if the TomTom was a newer model. Although the Becker has the nice signpost feature and shows a more detail in the 3D maps I do not think this makes much deference to being able to navigate effectively. Where the TomTom really scores is in its POI database and how it uses it. Being able to download and add new ones, selectively turn off/on different categories and have the alarm feature is very useful. This is made much worse by the Beckers total lack of Cash Machines (The Cash Machines and Petrol Stations are probably the most used).

funkytwig · Occasional Visitor Joined: Sep 21, 2006 Posts: 20

When I say I prefer the tomtom I mean the 510/710/910. Given a choise between the tomtom one and Becket Traffic Assist I would go for the Becker as the TomTom one does NOT have any points of interest included. As the tomtom 510/710/910 are significatly more expensive the conclusion is that the Becker is a generaly good GPS and is good value for money.

	PocketGPS
	Web