Hewlett-Packard iPAQ 310 Bluetooth 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator by hp
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Digital camera reviews of Hewlett-Packard iPAQ 310 Bluetooth 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator
Digital camera Review: Great product but has run time errors
Summary: 3 Stars
Very well designed product with nice features and well laid out. However, the windows program (5.0 ce) that the gps runs on occasionally gets run time errors and completely freezes the screen. A hard reset must be performed followed by a long boot process. When program is running fine the gps is a great unit. Also, route recalculations suck-it generally wants the driver to make a u-turn and follow the original route rather than actually performing a recalculation.Digital camera Review: HP gps
Summary: 5 Stars
A wonderful product. Easy to use and great picures. Top of the line in all GPS systems we looked at.Digital camera Review: HP iPAQ 310
Summary: 5 Stars
Have had this product for two days and so far am very happy with it. Little trouble linking to my Moto Razr, but today it decided it was OK, and linked up with no problem. Love the graphics. Some of the screens are not intuitive, but I have never seen a device with this many features that was. One little quirk reported by a reviewer, it route me off the freeway on an exit ramp and right back on to the on ramp. Beings I had read this, I only found it amusing and not irritating. The map features are outstanding. Features versus price make this a good value in my opinion. I highly recommend it if you don't want to spend the extra money for the high end Garmin. After reading the reviews on Tom Tom and Navigon, I decided against them.Digital camera Review: HP iPAQ 310 - Best In Class Graphics And Good Navigation
Summary: 5 Stars
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
QUICK REVIEW: This is a great GPS unit. It has outstanding graphics on 3D maps with good routing capabilities. The sound could be a little better, but it is good enough for me. It comes with additional features for Bluetooth, media, and utilities as the cherry on the sundae. Detailed review based with usage comments follows.
SETUP: There are a couple of things to do to set up your iPAQ GPS. First is charging. I used the wall adapter and the USB charging cable to charge my unit. It was fully charged in about 90 minutes. Once you power on the device, the on screen instructions are simple. There will be a couple of things you will want to change. Under Settings -> Time click on the double clock icon in the lower left portion of the screen. The "Use Auto Time Zone" setting was not working properly for me so I unchecked it and set my timezone manually. At this point my unit began to show the correct time. Then under Navigation -> Settings -> Regional you will want to choose a voice. The ones with (TTS) in the name are the only ones that support text-to-speech during navigation that speak full street names. I have been able to work with the default settings for essentially everything else.
As for in the car usage, it comes with a windshield mount that works well. In addition it has a disc that you can affix to your dash and attach the windshield mount. I am not using the dash disc as it is not removable/reusable once you put it in place. The USB charging cable is plenty long to reach from the windshield in our van to the power port on the console.
NAVIGATION: There are two main ways to navigate that most people will use if you are trying to find a specific address. For the simple cases I recommend going into Navigation -> Route -> Edit Route and clicking the turn sign with the "+" sign. From there you can either enter a new address by selection "Address" or you can selection a previous address from History. From there use the back navigation to get back to the Navigation menu and select "Go to".
For more complex trips, you can use HP's web site dedicated to the iPAQ Travel Companion to plan trips over multiple days with 1 or more stops per day. I used this to plan a trip for Christmas Eve that went looked like this: my house -> church -> my house -> my brother's house -> my house. The site allows you to specific the time of day for each stop along with a duration of stay. The target use for this is business travel as you can share your itinerary with others and optionally allow them to edit it. Once your itinerary is complete, you can sync the trip to your iPAQ using a download that is available from the HP web site. You also need this software to sync contacts to your device. Once you transfer the trip to your device, your trip is available under Navigation -> Nav Extras. Simply select your trip to begin navigation. I actually found that you want to begin with your first stop rather than your starting point when planning a trip. If you begin at a different starting point than planned, the unit will try to send you back to your planned starting point. This may seem obvious, but I thought it was worth mentioning since I made this mistake.
ROUTING/REROUTING: The device performs well in both areas. Despite what I've read in other reviews on both Amazon and CNET, I have been please with the routing capabilities and accuracy of the device. It does a good job of quickly generating an accurate route to your destination/stop, and it reasonably handles the situations when you go off course. It initially tries to send you back to the original route, but if you go far enough off the original route, it will give you a completely new route. I tested this while going between my house and church. Due to traffic flow patterns, it is faster to come home a different way than we used going to church. The route selected our route that we use going from home to church. Coming back, it eventually locked on to our alternate route after trying to get us to go back to the original route. I found this to work in a similar manner to other navigation software that I have used.
GRAPHICS: This is an area where the iPAQ is amazing. The generous 4.3 inch screen is very crisp. The 3D maps allow you to choose different perspectives. The overhead view essentially gives you a 2D map that allows you to keep the heading up at all times. This is mysteriously missing in 2D mode where you are stuck with North up. I don't like this setting so the 2D map is essentially useless. However with the 3D maps and all of their features, I don't know why anyone would ever use 2D anyway. In driving around downtown Dallas, I saw many buildings rendered quite lifelike such as the American Airlines Center and Reunion Tower. This seems like a potentially useful feature for additional visual queues in unfamiliar cities. You can also select different orientations with various depth of field ratios. These are available by tapping on the map during navigation in the center of the screen. This is also how you select the zoom features.
While navigating the street of your next turn along with the direction and distance are giving along the top of the screen. In addition there is an icon on the left side that gives you the direction of the turn along with the distance. In the center along the bottom are two times: the top is the time remaining on trip while the bottom is your absolute arrival time. The only drawback that I noticed on the graphics is that the direction of your heading is mysteriously missing. While this is relatively minor, it does seem like an odd omission.
SOUND: The speaker on the device is not the best. Given the lack of bass that it has, I found that the "Susan" voice gave much better TTS directions than the "Dave" voice. This is probably the one area in the device that could stand some improvement. If I concentrate, I can understand the directions ok. However my wife thinks it is difficult to hear/understand.
BLUETOOTH: In addition to standard GPS features, this device will pair with your cell phone and act as a hands free device. The one thing that is missing in this area is a way to initiate voice commands on your cell phone. The Motorola T305 (see my review) has a "multi-function" button for interacting with your phone. So you will have to initiate calls from your phone. This limits the usefulness to receiving incoming calls which can still be done truly hands free as long as your phone has auto answer features.
MEDIA: This device also comes with an MP3 player, movie viewer, and photo viewer that all work with SD cards. The speaker on the device does not really lend itself to being a multimedia player for use in the car. However it works well with headphones so it can be handy while killing time at the airport or elsewhere. The photo viewer can play slideshows of photos. The general picture viewing experience is pleasant, but I would consider all of these media applications to be nice to have features.
GAMES: The iPAQ comes with 5 games preloaded on it. The graphics are pretty good, and they work will with stylus navigation. I liked Jewel Master the best. These are also a nice to have that are useful for killing time, but are not a real selling point of the device.
EXTRAS: If the above is not enough, the device also comes with a calculator, clock, and phone utilities. These do about what you would expect. The phone utility is integrated with your contacts.
OVERALL: This is a great device. While the price tag seems steep, the 4.3 inch screen and 800 x 480 screen really make a difference. I have not seen comparable graphics in other units. While the sound could be better, it is acceptable to me. I would highly recommend going to a store where they have a live device to test the sound prior to purchasing. All of the other extras are gravy in my opinion.
Digital camera Review: HP new revolution
Summary: 5 Stars
It's one month & i don't found any drawbacks for this product. I have spend less than $250 & it has everything like Music, Video, Games, Blue tooth conectivity etc. Product is very user friendly. Route reclculation is very fast. Once you start GPS, it's connect with satelite in couple of seconds. The great 3d view of the buildings in metro area like New York City. There are similar products like Garmin & Magellan are there in the market @ $400 to $600 average. You don't need to spend more money, since Ipaq available at great price. I am 100 % satisfied for this products.