Posted in Gps Review, LG on October 26th, 2007 No Comments »
Reviewed by Matt —On May 22, 2007
I bought this unit when it first came out, because it has the TMC (FM traffic update) built in and a 4-inch screen for much less than the Garmin. Before this I bought the TOMTOM One.Overall, this unit has been good. It does what the box says it does… But here are my improvements…
1. The map is still 2006 even though it was released in 2007. (the TOMTOM had a newer map)
2. Points of Interest (POI) - lets you find spots by category, either near destination or current location. An option for along the route would be good. Also…sometimes it is hard to figure what category something is in. there is no general search by company name. (It does however have a nice feature that I can click on say Starbucks, and it shows all the Starbucks as I drive by them - kind of nice)
3. When in the menus, you have to keep backing out to get back to the map (sometimes several clicks while driving). It would be nice to have one button to go back to the map.
4. When it calculates routes… I am not sure the logic takes into account turns. It often has me making more lefts and rights than is needed.
5. Traffic updates… it automatically recalculates routes to advoid traffic, but I get the feeling it does not advoid traffic congestion until it is with 3-5 miles. On long routes where I could take two freeways… one is closed. It has me take the closed on then, I notice it changes the route when I approach the closed part of the freeway, instead of in the beginning.
So… I am not sure how this compares to other units. I only had the TOMTOM for a day, but it needed a wireless internet connection from a PDA or something to get traffic updates. If you have a wireless connection or don’t want the traffic feature, I like the TOMTOM better. Otherwise, this is a good unit for the price.
Reviewed by J. Kao —On October 21, 2007
After reading mixed reviews I decided to give this unit a try. Coming from a Lowrance Iway 500c, I was looking for the newer sirfstar III receiver as well as faster routing and quicker satellite acquisition. The LG excelled at all three.- Great satellite acquisition times, about 5 min for the first cold start and then almost instantaneous for subsequent reconnections. The unit has a sleep feature which seems to keeps the unit on similar to that of a laptop without having to reload maps, the OS, etc.
- Quick routing takes under 5 seconds for the initial destination. If you miss a turn, the unit reroute quick enough to make the next turn. Likewise, the logic of the system is pretty good, which will take to on a different route if optimal rather than trying to get you to U-turn back.
- Very accurate location plotting compared to my old GPS. I was impressed by the system mapping me on which lane direction i was traveling (North vs South, etc) and the maps included even the small police-only paths located in the medians.
- The display and speaker both seemed lacking at first in terms of brightness and sound quality, but upon actually use on a 2 day trip in the NY/NJ/PA area and over 300 miles of driving I found that everything worked well. The screen once located about 2-3 feet away on the windshield looks more than acceptable and the speaker works great once you get used to what it sounds like and to somewhat listen for it if you are blasting your music. The layout is simple yet effective, showing your distance to next turn, and the unit doesnt annoying repeat commands from too far away (go straight for 10 miles, 5 miles, then 2 miles etc).
For the price and the features you cant go wrong. No GPS is perfect — the garmins Nuvi’s dont have multistop routing and the TomTom One still uses Teleatlas maps. Both are more expensive and dont include text-to-speech which makes it a difficult comparison. Going to their next series with advanced features adds on another $200-300 or nearly double the cost. Give the LG a chance and I think you will be pleasantly surprised.
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