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Personal Navigation Devices |
Over the last couple of years Personal Navigation Devices (PNDs) have become popular. These have moved the SatNav market into the mainstream consumer arena.
The Garmin Street Pilots have been around for some time, but the market has exploded over the last year or so with the introduction of the Navman PiN and TomTom GO devices. |
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Bluetooth |
Bluetooth GPS Receivers are new and first came out in the autumn of 2002. These have their own battery source, so unlike the GPS Sleeves and CF GPS Cards do not drain the Pocket PC or Palm's internal battery.
These are great for in-car street routing, giving you a wireless setup, and are also good for when you are out walking or hiking. The only thing you need to make sure is that you do have a Bluetooth connected PDA. If you're unsure if your PDA support Bluetooth check out our GPS Hardware Comparisons page and look at the relevant table for your PDA. |
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Compact Flash |
CF GPS Receivers are great for both in-car usage for street routing applications, or for out of car use like for walking or hiking. Modern CF GPS Receivers also come with on-board memory for storage of map data.
These systems are usually compact, but do run on the power provided by your Pocket PC or Palm, so if you know that your average battery power for your PDA is say 5 hours, in most cases you will only see around 2-3 hours use with GPS Receiver. There are ways of getting around power problems by taking a battery extender with you on walks, and we have reviewed some in our GPS Accessories section of our reviews. |
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Datalogger |
Dataloggers are able to record your position and some may also report the position back to a central location. Some Dataloggers match GPS positions to photo timestamps and can embed the position the image was taken. |
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Handheld |
Handheld GPS Receivers are the "Original" GPS receivers. Handhelds come with their own backlit screens, some with colour, but most are greyscale. Some handheld GPS Receivers come with built in compasses, barometers, waypoint, track and map screens.
You can connect most Handheld GPS Receivers up to a Pocket PC or Palm with cables from PC-Mobile and their battery usage is much better than PDA's, giving you around 15 hours usage. This makes Handheld GPS Receivers very practical and good for walking/hiking, but not so good on their own for mapping when compared with Pocket PC GPS maps. |
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Secure Digital |
SD GPS Receivers are great for both in-car usage for street routing applications, or for out of car use like for walking or hiking. The GlobalSat SD502 SD GPS Receivers also come with on-board memory for storage of map data.
These systems are usually compact, but do run on the power provided by your Pocket PC or Palm, so if you know that your average battery power for your PDA is say 5 hours, in most cases you will only see around 2-3 hours use with GPS Receiver. There are ways of getting around power problems by taking a battery extender with you on walks, and we have reviewed some in our GPS Accessories section of our reviews. |
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Sleeve |
PDA GPS Sleeves are great for both in-car usage for street routing applications, or for out of car use like for walking or hiking.
These systems are usually compact, but do run on the power provided by your Pocket PC or Palm, so if you know that your average battery power for your PDA is say 5 hours, in most cases you will only see around 2-3 hours use with GPS Receiver. There are ways of getting around power problems by taking a battery extender with you on walks, and we have reviewed some in our GPS Accessories section of our reviews. |
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Wired |
Wired GPS Receivers basically consist of a GPS Receiver, which looks similar to a PC mouse, which is powered by the car battery via a car accessory plug. This plug will not only power the GPS Receiver, but the PDA too using a Y-Splitter that is sold with the GPS Receiver.
Wired GPS Receivers are great if you have a Pocket PC or Palm and primarily want to have a GPS in-car. However if you want to take a receiver out of the car and use for walking or hiking, the wired GPS Receivers are not really practical, and you should look at a PDA GPS Sleeve/CF Card GPS Receiver, or a Handheld GPS Receiver |
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GPS Mounts |
GPS Mounts are starting to become more popular. We saw quite a few at CeBIT this year and they are now just starting to hit the streets. |
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Uncovered |
Ever wondered what the inside of a GPS looks like?
Well our GPS Uncovered articles delve inside the cases of a number of SatNav receivers to show you the internal workings of these devices. |
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Comparisons |
Sometimes it's hard to determine what Handheld GPS Receivers have what features. They all look alike and have very similar features, the only thing sometimes to tie them apart is one or two features.
With this in mind we've pulled together a huge comparison of GPS Receivers showing the full specifications of each receiver making it easy to tell which receiver has which features in a single resource. |
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Other |
This section covers hardware items that do not fall into any of the other groups. Typically we have reviewed hardware that is related to GPS but not actually GPS equipment such as PDAs or Bluetooth dongles.
In fact if it is needed for GPS and it does not appear in the groups above or the SatNav accessories then it should be in here. IF it isn't then drop us a line and we will see if we can get it for review. |
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Archive |
As with all things in life GPS equipment becomes outdated over time. My first Bluetooth GPS was one of the first ones made by Emtac, the receiver is still available, and still a good GPS, but sadly Emtac have pulled out of the GPS market.
This section is for nostalgia amongst other things, but also to keep a record of how things have evolved, and the trials and tribulations of early GPS adopters. |
