So, I’m moving from New York City to Seattle (Actually, I’m moving from Muskegon Michigan, spending a couple of days back in my hometown of New York City, and then moving to Seattle). I decided that since this is a damn long trip and I’m not entirely familiar with the Seattle area that an investment in a GPS device would be well worth it.

I looked around and compared several GPS units. I drooled over the high-end TomTom and Garmin models, as well as cringed at the high price of the low-end models. Eventually, I stumbled upon a GPS device called the Intellinav 2 GPS Unit.

As I looked over the feature list and compared it to several other models, I decided that this cheaper GPS unit would service me well. I’d also end up saving a couple of hundred dollars by going with his rather off-brand name.

Of course, buying a cheaper, not-so-popular brand often means you’re risking buying a really spiffy pile of crap. So, I used this device a lot. When you compare this device to its other similarly priced GPS brethren you realize you’re actually getting a pretty good deal.

So, here are the things I took note of while using this unit.

Hardware

  • The Intellinav 2 comes with:
  • The Intellinav 2 GPS Unit (duh)
  • A windshield stand that works on suction
  • Two mini-USB power adapters: one AC and one DC (car charger)
  • 1 GB SD card pre-loaded with map and Point of Interest data
  • 1 SD card protective case

An interesting note: this device is charged via USB, however, I was unable to access the device fro my computer. Apparently, the USB port is disabled. What’s even more interesting is that you can’t charge this unit while it’s off: the unit must be turned on in order to work.

Satellite Acquisition

The manual states that the initial GPS satellite acquisition period may take up to 15 minutes and after initial lock it should only take 15 seconds to 2 minutes; however, I’ve noticed that initial GPS lock takes only 30 seconds to a minute, while subsequent reacquisition only takes a few seconds – I’m sure this will be longer in areas with taller buildings or many trees, but it’s not as bad as the manual states.

Route calculation

Route calculation is damn accurate. I did notice, however, that if “quickest route” is selected in the settings menu you’ll get some really weird turns every now and again while the unit tries to optimize the route (I think this is optimized for street speed, but I’m not entirely sure).

The route calculator does seem to take an exponentially longer time when it has to calculate longer routes: a trip to the local Wal*Mart (about 20 miles away) took only seconds to calculate while a trip to Seattle, WA took almost a whole minute to calculate.

If you are going to head on a long road trip, you probably want to enter in the trip information and itinerary ahead of time anyway, so it’s really not that big of a deal.

Route Recalculation

Route recalculation is surprisingly fast and accurate. One of the nice features of this unit is that unlike others in its price range, it doesn’t try to recalculate your route so you can get on the original route it plotted for you. This is a great feature for a GPS unit because it means you won’t be taking some weird turns just to get back on the original route.

I did notice that on some slight turns (slight-right, slight-left) that the unit would think I went off course, and it had to recalculate my route, it then thought I went off course again, and did a second recalculation. I ran into this only once, though, and was unable to reproduce this by taking the same route a second time.

Dead reckoning

From what I can tell, this unit does not have any dead reckoning abilities. If it loses its satellite signal, it does not assume that you are still going in a straight line on your current route: the map will lock up and wait until it finds a GPS signal again.

I tested a couple of GPS units before making my purchase, and I found dead reckoning to be more of a hassle than anything – they were inaccurate at best, and downright wrong as worst. So, the lack of any dead reckoning features in this unit does not bother me in the slightest.

Points of Interest

The unit comes loaded with 1.6 million points of interest. While that sounds like a lot, its older brothers – the Intellinav 3, 4 and 5 – as well as other high-end models all come with 16 million points of interest.

The points of interest are good if you only need the basics: food, gas, and the occasional hotel. Don’t expect to find anything interesting like a good local deli or an out of the way restaurant.

Navigation

Voice navigation is excellent with the Intellinav 2: the pre-recorded voice tells you what your next maneuver is and how far away it is while the digitized voice tells you the street name.

The only complaint I have is that there is no warning tone when voices are about to become active. For whatever reason, I always got surprised when the voice navigation started to talk, but this worse off after I got used to driving with the unit.

Map Display

The map can be displayed in four ways: 2D, 3D high, 3D medium, 3D low. There are also nine levels of zoom, with individual streets and their names being visible as zoom levels 1, 2 and 3. At zoom level 4 street names are still visible, but the smaller side roads are lost. Zoom levels 5 and above show mainly the highways and interstates and should probably only be used if you’re going on a long road trip and don’t intend to leave the interstate for a while.

The screen itself is gorgeous, and the colors are bright and vibrant. There are only four color selections you can make from the display options menu (yellow, grey, white, and fuchsia). Colors can also be adjusted by changing the daylight setting between auto, day, and night.

Speed Alert

The speed alert option is pretty good, although it’s not a replacement for actually glancing down at your speedometer every once in a while. It apparently calculates speeds based on your GPS location (just like every one of the GPS units on the market), and it’s accurate, for the most part.

You can have the option of an automatic alert (where the unit automatically determines the speed limit of the current road you’re on), manual alert (where you enter in a speed limit), or have it totally disabled.

If you’re just driving locally, chances are you’ll want to keep this disabled; however, on longer trips that involve a freeway (where you can easily lose track of the speed you’re going) this little alarm can be very helpful in avoiding a moving violation.

Trip Computer

The trip computer is like the trip information found in some premium and luxury vehicles. It tells you when the trip started, ended, the time elapsed, total distance, average speed, and top speed. It also stores up to three trips.

Itinerary

This is one of those gems you don’t often come across. I was unable to find this particular feature on similarly priced GPS units. As the name implies, it’s a trip itinerary where you can add multiple destinations to your trip.

This is particularly helpful if you have already planned out a longer trip, and you need to make several stops at hotels, or if you have several things to do for that day and you don’t know where every spot is.

Other options

The Intellinav 2 comes with an MP3 player and photo viewer, but you cannot use these when you’re using the map. I have not tried these yet, because this unit only come with a 1GB SD card, and that isn’t nearly enough space to store map data, pictures, and music.

Missing Features

I would love to be able to update this thing via the Internet. One of the features I wish this – and every GPS unit – had was the ability to wirelessly connect to the Internet, grab the latest map data and construction information, and build your routes around that. This complaint isn’t specifically geared towards the Intellinav unit, but it would’ve been a nice feature

Final Thoughts

Overall this is an excellent unit. While it is small (3.5″ diagonally), it has a ton of features packed into it, slips out of its cradle easily, and fits into your pocket. Route calculations are generally fast, and recalculations are much faster than I had expected.

If you don’t want to spend an extra $200 on a Garmin or Magellan unit, then consider the Intellinav series – I’m damn happy with it.

Do you have a GPS unit? How do you like it?

[tags]intellinav, intellinav 2, GPS[/tags]