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Satellite navigation is an essential gadget for many, but it's not just useful on the road.
If you go hiking, camping, geocaching (see www.geocaching.com for more information), or even take to the water, a sat nav can be a very useful tool too.
But if you have to buy separate systems for each, costs can soon mount up.
Enter Magellan's Crossover GPS. It's a compact portable unit aimed primarily at the car user but with additional software for marine and off-road use. The main menu provides a choice of car, water and off-road navigation, together with an Mp3 player and photo viewer.
It's lightweight and if you have a coat with big pockets it'll fit in easily. The screen's bright and clear, setup is simple, and the built in SirfStar III chip obtained a fix quickly.
Maps for UK roads and European off-road use are included - though the latter is a basemap only; it shows most roads, but don't expect detailed topographical information.
Oddly, it seemed to think that all the waters around the UK are the Atlantic; we didn't have proper marine maps supplied, but trust they'll be more accurate on that front.
For most people, car navigation will be the most important thing, and as you'd expect from a company with Magellan's pedigree it works pretty well. The map display is clear and shows your route with a split screen when a junction is coming up.
You can also have street names and numbers spoken – this worked fairly well, other than pronouncing "Claps" as "Clarps". You can navigate to POIs (points of interest) easily, and take detours; the icons on screen are a reasonable size, and a simple tap will repeat the next instruction, or show a list of turns, for example.
But there are niggles. The built in speaker simply wasn't loud enough in the car - we had to turn the radio down to hear it properly - and you'd strain to hear if there was a window open. And rather than changing lanes, we were told to keep right at the fork in the road, which is confusing until you're used to it.
Furthermore, a couple of times at complicated junctions the reminder didn't come soon enough.
The other bugbear is that there's no traffic awareness, which you'd really hope to have included at this price. Instead it's around £50 extra for Magellan’s TrafficKit service, and around the same again for a lifetime subscription to detailed UK info from Trafficmaster (basic European info is free with the kit).
On the positive side, there's a good range of POIs, including some companies by name, and full support for UK postcodes, which speeds up finding addresses - as does a predictive-text like system where letters on the on-screen keyboard are disabled if they're not applicable.
Off road, the unit has more or less what you’d expect. You can plot a route with waypoints, save your track and search for locations via the POI database as well as entering their co-ordinates.
There's a compass view and a walking mode (or 'bow view' for boats), where the aim is to keep the path dead centre on the display so that you end up at your next waypoint, port or base-camp, plus a trip computer; you can also choose what's displayed in some parts of the screen. When you're walking, as well as the normal POIs, you can search for roads, waterways and parks.
The eight-hour battery life is reasonable - but serious off-roaders will need a way of charging, since you can't use standard batteries.
Despite some of the shortcomings, this is certainly a capable GPS. It's not perfect, but if you want something you can use off the road as well as on, it's definitely worth a look.
See also:
One of the most feature packed mid-range GPS systems around 03 May 2007
Boasting features such built-in GPS and Wifi Nokia's latest N-Series looks set to take the market by storm 11 Apr 2007
All Gadgets Tags: GPS
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