- Average user rating: 2.5 stars out of 33 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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0.5 stars
"Extremely Confusing to get going"
Pros: APPEARS to be the all in one PDA and GPS
Cons: The Smarts GPS software setup is the most non-intuitive piece of garbage I have ever used. Being a software coder, I am familiar with PCs and devices, and it is very clear that this product was not made very robust, nor was quality assurance excercised b
- 2 replies to this review
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I concur the GPS software is a very much less than user friendly install. I tried using the map install software to a 512 MB SD card in the Navman. It crashed everytime but on a different map and sometimes on the same map. Never got it to work this way. It would totally corrupt the SD card such that chkdsk could not recover data and I had to reformat the SD card using my desktop PC
Instead I installed the maps to my SD card while the SD card was installed in a multicard read/write USB device connected to my desktop PC. This worked fine and I got all the Western USA plus BC Canada installed on my 512 MB SD card. This method worked fine and the SmartST software recognized the states fine
Entering destinations is a pain but if you know where you want to go and just want routing, then you can navigate on the map (zoom out then drag the map to the area you want to go to, zoom back in to where you want to go and then hold the stylus on the destination - up pops a menu to set that as the destination for the software. None of this is in the terrible SmartST quick install guide and the help file is nearly useless.
Navman support was totally useless at solving the map down load issue and kep giving idiot responses to emails to them. They never even suggested trying loading the maps to the SD card while SD card is connected to a desktop PC via a USB reader.
Once I finally got the software installed and played around enough to get it to help route me to a destination, it worked OK but sometimes picked strange routes around the town I live in. However, when you ignore it's bad directions, it does quickly recalculate the route from the street you actually took.
At the price, it is a decent value compared to other units but you must be willing to spend 2 or 3 days just to get it working and finding out how to get the routing software to do what you want
Like others, I have had time when it fails to find the necessary satellites - especially while moving in a car. If you switch to the GPS status display and place the unit on your dash (clear view of the sky) then it seems to work, Once locked onto satellites, you can put the unit almost anywhere else in your car and it seems to keep working OK.
The nice thing about it being a Pocket PC, you can load anybody's Pocket PC GPS software and trash the quirky SmartST if you want to (Of course paying over $100 for other software) -
I concur the GPS software is a very much less than user friendly install. I tried using the map install software to a 512 MB SD card in the Navman. It crashed everytime but on a different map and sometimes on the same map. Never got it to work this way.
Instead I installed the maps to my SD card while the SD card was installed in a multicard read/write USB device connected to my desktop PC. This worked fine and I got all the Western USA plus BC Canada installed on my 512 MB SD card. This method worked fine and the SmartST software recognized the states fine
Entering destinations is a pain but if you know where you want to go and just want routing, then you can navigate on the map to where you want to go and then hold the stylus on the destination - up pops a menu to set that as the destination. NOne of this is in the terrible SmartST manual I could find
Navman support was useless at solving the map down load issue and never even suggested trying loading the maps to the SD card while connected to a desktop via a USB reader.
Onec I finally got the software installed and played around enough to get it to help route me toa destination, it worked OK but sometimes picked strange routes around the town I live in. However, when you ignore it's ba directions, it does quickly recalculate the route from the street you actually took.
The nice thing about it being a Pocket PC, you can load anybody's Pocket PC GPS software and trash the quirky SmartST if you want to (Of course paying over $100 for other software)
