Binatone Carrera A350

...lovely though than my new Binatone A350 Sat Nav. I used to have a Navman PiN 570, which was also a PDA. The connector on the bottom of this broke free from the main board and from then on I was unable to charge it. From my short experience of the A350 I cannot see this being a problem on this unit. The charging connecting is that of the small USB type, for both charging from the USB port of my PC and from the cigarette lighter socket in the car.
...My initial impression was that it was quite heavy, and from past experience I have generally found that something with a bit of weight usually is pretty robust and last a while………….I do hope this is the case. The A350 is menu driven from the touch screen. A small stylus is supplied and it has its on little slot in the back of the unit for storage. The stylus is the weakest part of the unit, and indeed would probably have been so anyway, it is quite ... more

Well Santa was very good to me this year, in my stocking he left lots of lovely gifts, none more lovely though than my new Binatone A350 Sat Nav. I used to have a Navman PiN 570, which was also a PDA. The connector on the bottom of this broke free from the main board and from then on I was unable to charge it. From my short experience of the A350 I cannot see this being a problem on this unit. The charging connecting is that of the small USB type, for both charging from the USB port of my PC and from the cigarette lighter socket in the car.

My initial impression was that it was quite heavy, and from past experience I have generally found that something with a bit of weight usually is pretty robust and last a while………….I do hope this is the case. The A350 is menu driven from the touch screen. A small stylus is supplied and it has its on little slot in the back of the unit for storage. The stylus is the weakest part of the unit, and indeed would probably have been so anyway, it is quite thin and doesn't have the same safe feeling as the rest of the unit. It works great but then so does my finger provided I'm not trying to type in a Postcode from the pop up onscreen keyboard.. Well actually that isn't strictly true since the keyboard is large enough to accommodate my rather short stumpy fingers.

The screen is 3.5 inch TFT colour screen with an anti reflective feature. It although not the largest is very sharp and crystal clear. The system as I said is menu driven with the initial screen giving to option of going straight to navigation of settings. Each menu item is pictorial and self explicit, and many lead to further menus many also of which are pictorial. The unit has an SD card slot to facilitate the use of the picture and document viewer, which is part of the system. The picture viewer enables you to store your favourite pictures n the SD card in either .bmp or .jpg format. It is expressed in the manual that it is better if the files are no larger than 2MB each. The document reader is a simply .txt reader which displays in a reasonable sized font and is quite easy to read. Since many use.doc format the transition to .txt is easy just load the document you wish to transfer and save to the SD card as a .txt file, and you are in business.

Unlike some Sat Nav's the A350 accept input of a 7 digit postcode, which is pretty handy since the UK and Ireland maps installed use said number of digits. You of course do not need to have the postcode to have the unit direct you to a particular place. You do though need an address or town which is input using the stylus and touchscreen. Once you have entered a destination you need to select your mode of transport, since the A350 will direst you whether you are on foot, walking, or in a car. This option is easily chosen from the menu system and selecting Route Options. The whole menu driven system is pretty clever and pretty much idiot proof………..and I do mean idiot. If you can read this little beauty will be of enormous benefit to the frequent traveller.

Like most Sat Nav's it is designed for use in a car or outdoors, but I have been able to getting a GPS signal indoors and have the route simulation option working. The unit has voice guidance, which is performed by a sexy sounding female, and although I've only been practicing she is pretty good at her job. The speed of updating is also pretty fast since I tried to fool it but it responded very well indeed. On initial start up when starting a journey it does take a minute or so to get a signal, but that's pretty standard on this type of unit. Some unit can take ages if you are a fair bit away from the last place you powered up the unit. Speed camera alerts are also part of the system, but as of yet I don't know how good that is since there are very few speed cameras around this area, which is peculiar considering there are plenty of signs proclaiming their existence. I know Santa didn't have tons of cash to spare this year so I am aware that this is a budget priced unit, but for all that it is still excellent at what it does and speedy which is just as important.

It is definitely better that my Navman which used to get confused regularly, and was sometimes pretty unresponsive. There is an option to save you navigation points as favourites to facilitate speedier access to navigation. There are also hundreds of points of interest in the database, which come up on screen during navigation to give you the option of navigating to them. The mapping is perhaps not as graphical as some units but it is fairly comprehensive, but more to the point it is easy to interpret, which is probably more important than having some extra graphical info, which is only really cosmetic. It is however the accuracy and the extremely easy interface that make this unit most appealing, as I previously mentioned it really is idiot proof. The battery life seems to be pretty good, but this obviously depends on how much time you spend viewing docs and photos. Charging time is also quite quick with it being about 2 hours from the car charger and about 4 from the USB of your PC.

Overall I'm very impressed with the A350 and shall have to write Santa a special thank you letter for giving me such a lovely present. 

...less