Well its only been on special @ $59.99 from Aldi for 24 hrs but in that time
I haveaquired, evaluated and returned this 4.3" road navigator.
And that included wasting time on there customer service call line and spending 3 hours at this mornings Vic Exploroz coffee club meeting.
Not that this device is all that bad and in fact features for dollars its pretty good.
This is a road navigator but does have the ability to input a co-ordinate and plot a direct line of sight path with a small compass heading and speed indication on it.
So as a secondary device it could help out in cross country navigation.
Pity it didn't have the ability to use UTM format which is much easier to use in such work.
It also does not have the ability to record you path so that you can back track which I consider another vital feature for any GPS even it the city limits.
I was evaluating this things on road performance and had 3 GPS system running together on the dash.
My still unbeaten 276c , a new high end Garmin Nuvi , and the Aldi Go-Cruise.
With all 3 set to auto navigate to the Coffee Club venue (5km away) at one point they all indicated a different auto-route.
My ancient 276c was the only one that agreed with my long established optimum path.
All of these things seemed to have a different deficiency and one may annoy you more than the other so its worth checking any unit out to see how its fits within your way of doing things.
This GPS for instance is quite good at entering a specific address and leading you there.
If you wish to edit your path or get a good visual on the screen of where your going then forget it.
The high end Nuvi gives you good visuals and a good overview but fails to allow any way to have the small streets you pass named.
At least it has UTM and records your track.
I then tested them all by planning a route from
Melbourne to
Port Augusta which I will shortly be driving.
2 came up with the best path as straight through
Adelaide whilst the Aldi unit came up with the slightly longer but time shorter back path thru
Morgan.
Fair enoughbut closer inspection of this revealed that the Adli unit plotted an 1114km path in 9:54 hours.
Interesting - by its own calculation this would require an average speed above the speed limit.
I couldn't find any form in the package to transfer any speeding fines to Aldi so I figured it was time to return it.
As a last effort to hold onto it I rang the help line.
After waiting for about ten minutes, during which time I was repeatedly told to hold for the next available operator an automated message was heard which said - There is no one here to help you (5 times) and then it said sorry and hung up.
I said , I'm sorry to and back it went.