Advantages: An idea if you really don't know the area.
Disadvantages: Limited, outdated mapping, not so easy to use

...In our brand new Fiesta, delivered this month, the Blaupunkt TravelPilot comes fitted in a unit combined with the radio. To try this system out, over a period of three weeks, and a total of about 600 miles, entirely within my home county of West Yorkshire, i ran the TravelPilot alongside my own local knowledge of the area built up over 17 years of driving around the area. To enter a destination it is necessary to go through a menu and a series of entries not wholly unlike entering a text message on a mobile phone. There is a form of predictive texting, which can be quite useful. The problem I found, though, was that before I could find the way to, say, Huddersfield Police Station I needed to know what road it is in. There seems to be no provision for places like hospitals or police stations as destinations. Back to the Ato... Read review

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Advantages: A solid GPS receiver
Disadvantages: Maybe a little outdated now

...The Street Pilot III is one of Garmin's earlier in-car satellite navigation units. Since this they have given us the Street Pilot 2610, 2620, 2550 and 2650 - all with a few advantages. The SP3 Deluxe gives us the benefit of having all the European maps at street level come with it in the box! So it's great for people wanting to travel Europe. The Street Pilot offers all the usual features, voice prompts, automatic re-calculation of route, post code and point of interest look up. Although it is a little bulky compared to newer units such as the TomTom Go. Unfortunately it's not that easy to set up for some people. The maps have to be loaded on the 128Mb Garmin Memory card that comes with the unit using your home computer. This is done using the MapSource software included in the box. The areas of the map you want to install... Read review

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Advantages: Very Easy to install, use and great value for money
Disadvantages: If zoomed in & are on a roundabout arrow can be a little hard to read

...come up telling me exactly what the speed of the car was travelling at. Bearing in mind that this wasn’t attached to the car in anyway i was amazed. There a range of different view of maps that you view them in for example there’s Hawk eye- looking straight down, there is a 3D view which in my view was the best. You could zoom into the maps quite well. The only problem i had with the software was that at first when fully zoomed in the arrow was a little large and I took a few wrong turnings but i got to read the arrow better the more i used it. Upon start up there is an option for the maps to update themselves which is very helpful. A very important feature of the co-pilot is the live update feature that can be enabled, this means that if there has been an accident or roadworks then it will connect via GRPS and re-route you to the quickest... Read review

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Advantages: Move Between Cars
Disadvantages: Can't really think of any

...Ok now this is a great unit. You’ll never get lost again with the Street Pilot III (SP3). You can type in a house number and road name and it’ll take you right to the door with visual and audio navigation. GPS navigation has never been so easy. Ok now there are two versions available the SP3 and the SP3 Deluxe package. I’ll only cover the Deluxe as that’s the one I know. This comes complete with a 128mb data card and the mapsource data cd rom with all the road level detail and unlock code for the whole of Europe (worth about £200 between them). You can get the unit for around the £650 mark at the moment, so it’s worth shopping round to get the right price. But make sure you get the Deluxe is my advice, that data card is very useful, London at full detail is about 8mb!! Ok so what do you get? The SP3 gps unit USB data card... Read review

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