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we were within say, 10 to 15 Km away we changed the destination to the following
way point (C). This guided us around the intermediate point. We
followed this principle for 3 days as we travelled from Calais to St Jean de Luz
and with the exception of missing a turn in Rouen it was perfect. Even the
missed turn presented no problem as Navman rerouted me back onto the correct
road.
The standard of mapping through France was excellent. Not quite the same
story in Spain.
The transfer into Spain was seamless and we headed off in a direct route down
the E5 towards Burgos, Madrid and the South of Spain. This presented the
only major difficulty of the journey. The E5 is a major dual carriageway
and occasionally, for quite long periods, the two carriageways can be some
distance apart. Navman, for quite long periods, showed us as travelling off
road. The impression I got was that only one carriageway was shown on the
map and it was not the one we were on. The message “Go to nearest road”
was displayed. This may sound more of an irritation than a major problem
the exception though is when a side road runs close enough for Navman to think
it’s the road we were on. Navman then reroutes using that side road and
all sorts of silly things happen. I know it’s been mentioned before but
there should be some form of software “lock on to nearest road” option.
With the exception of this problem there were no other occasions while we were
in Spain that the mapping detail proved inadequate in fact we were pleasantly
surprised, as we had understood the mapping to be inferior.
Positives
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Morning fixes, refixing after tunnels etc. were all OK. We used to put the
unit in the car about 5 minutes before we wanted to depart and a) it was not
stolen! b) it was always ready to go when we set off.
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The routing was excellent. Did it always take the best route? I have no idea
but it always took me to the destination.
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When we digressed off into a town or village and wanted to get back to the
main road the rerouting was constantly putting us back onto the original
route. This is one of the great benefits of GPS navigation systems.
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Country borders were seamless.
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The mapping detail was excellent
Negatives
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It’s really an IPAQ issue but the voice commands would be better if they were
louder.
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We would have liked to have the option of locking onto a particular level of
zoom.
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It would be useful to understand how the map searches work on the non-UK maps.
Entering French or Spanish street names produced poor results.
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No postcode search facility
Overall Impression
Personally I think the Navman 3400 is an excellent product and I would recommend
it to anyone. The negatives that I encountered made little difference to
the overall usability of the product and I had the added bonus of being able to
manage my e-mail and other tasks on the same piece of hardware. When we stopped
travelling a change of expansion pack gave me the CD collection. What else
matches it for versatility.
Click above to read review
Click above to read review
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