In the Box

Inside the box you get a car holder with suction cup, car charger, USB Synchronisation cable, User Manual/CD and a TMC aerial.

Design

The new E3410 measures 99 x 85 x 21mm and weighs 160g, it features a hi-res 3.5" screen, housed inside a small compact frame.

To the side of the device are some useful shortcut buttons for controlling various functions, such as volume control and a button for fast access to the destination input screen.

Its touch sensitive 3.5” screen display can be used without the aid of the supplied stylus pen and on the whole its interface has been kept as simple as possible whilst trying to cram as much content into its small screen as humanly possible.

Software/Features

Medion uses its own GoPal 3.0 PE software and NAVTEQ for the maps.

They have also managed to throw in additional software that can be accessed from the front welcome screen, which includes a city guide, an alarm clock and some multimedia functions, which allows you to play mp3 files, watch videos and view pictures.

However you also get a contact manager for browsing contacts - which can even be imported from outlook - and then navigate to them at a touch of a button.

Plus you even have Bluetooth hands free which can be used to link up the Medion to a compatible Bluetooth phone, for making calls or dialling POI.

You will find all the standard options for planning your trips are here, including a handy route simulator.

For inputting destination Medion again have done a good job of maximising the smaller screen space, there is no Qwerty keyboard option but you can enable a mobile phone style keypad for keying in destinations.

What's more you can even speak your address via the voice recognition system if you prefer. We have to admit that this option worked better for addresses than postcodes but with practice it should prove useful.

Driving Tests

The E3410 performed well overall and it could lock onto our position pretty quickly - even indoors.

its route calculations and efficiency was fairly quick - which is what we would expect from a SiRF-Star III chip - but if we were being picky we could say that its route-recalculation could be a touch quicker, but it’s only something you would notice unless you were looking for it.

During driving the map detail on both 2D and 3D maps was on par with similar priced products and you also get different colours to differentiate between the optimal route and normal roads.

Surprisingly the Medion have even added a text-to-speech option for pronouncing road names, it does not speak every road it comes across and at times the pronunciations were hilarious, but it general worked out to be a very useful addition none the less and something we did not expect to see on a product in this price range.

The unit also comes with a FM TMC receiver built in and it also performed well. It was able to pick up traffic info pretty quickly - via a touch of a button accessed from the map screen.

You also have some basic safety camera alerts included and during tests the device could pick up approaching cameras in good time. However it could only display a small speed warning sign and produced a tinny bleep noise to make you aware of their existence.

Updates for the above will set you back £7.50 per year, so it’s not going to break the bank.

Battery

We could get an average journeys worth (2-3hours) out of the device before having to use the car adaptor.