Touch-screen controls let you zoom in and out easily, and you can use the Zoom Box control to draw a box around a specific area by dragging your finger across the screen. Zoom Box shows detailed street-level information, a handy feature if you want to focus on a small area of detail without losing an overall wide map view. Tapping a POI or waypoint icon brings up specific information about the location, such as the street address, the phone number, and the coordinates.
Written directions and other information such as heading, speed, and distance to your location are also displayed on the screen. While this may seem like an awful lot of information to cram on a five-inch display, you can adjust the transparency level of most of this information to keep the map visible beneath the text, or you can choose not to display certain data.
Like most high-end GPS navigators, the Lowrance iWay 500c lets you avoid certain maneuvers and roadways, and the autorerouting feature will calculate a new route if you wander off course. The use of touch-screen slider bars makes it easy to customize the map screen to your specific needs.
The Lowrance iWay 500c drove away with great performance. We attached the iWay 500c to our windshield, plugged in the power adapter, and hit the roads of New York. Within 45 seconds, we acquired a 3D fix (four satellites) and marked our position as our home location. Throughout our travels in the suburbs, we never once lost satellite reception, even when driving through heavily wooded areas of a local state park. While cruising through lower Manhattan, the iWay 500c succumbed to the concrete canyons, losing its signal briefly but reestablishing it almost immediately within a city block. Turn-by-turn directions were precise and correct, as were the routes we created, and our position on the map was accurate. The automatic routing function quickly calculated a new route whenever we strayed from the original course. And while you can play MP3 files through the power adapter's speaker, which is used for turning directions and audible alerts, the sound quality is what you'd expect from a single speaker: subpar.- See more CNET content tagged:
- iWay Software,
- Lowrance,
- satellite,
- adapter
Where to buy
Lowrance iWay 500c:
$849.99
| store | price | in stock? | rating |
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Amazon.com Marketplace
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$849.99 | See Site |
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