Personally we love playing around with Google Maps or Google Earth, primarily because of the Satellite imagery that allows you to view destinations in a much more realistic manner. Which is why the NDrive appealed to us so much, with its Photo mapping technology on board, you have a similar look and feel when navigating around major cities, but does it work?
Box Contents
Inside the box you get a mains charger, a small getting started guide, USB cable, car cradle and car charger.
Spec
- Operating System: Windows CE 5.0
- Software: NDrive Propriety
- Map coverage: UK & Ireland
- Installation: Pre-installed on internal 8GB SD Card
- Additional storage: SD Cards (approx 1.3GB free)
- Dimensions: (W/H/D) 121 mm x 83 mm x 20 mm
- Weight: 210g
- Display Size: 4.3 inches (480 x 272 pixels)
- Additional features: Multimedia, FM Receiver
Design
In all honesty when we first witnessed the NDrive we were in two minds as to whether it looked stylish or not, eventually we decided that its rubberised coating was an attribute to its robustness, rather than its finesse.
Apart from the 3.5mm headphone and USB port to the side, the only other visible button is on the top of the device (on/off switch) and if we were being picky the SD card supplied does not sit comfortably in its slot - it tends to stick a touch when removing or re-inserting.
The car cradle as well looks a bit old fashioned and bulky, but in operation it does the job.
Upon boot-up the NDrive provides a start-menu with various options available to you, including Navigation, Multimedia (MP3, Video, Pictures), Games (Arknoid style game, Bubble Breaker), Bluetooth and a settings option, which allows you to setup your FM receiver.
We would have preferred that the FM and Bluetooth setup options were placed in the same screen as the main navigation software, as it does become a pain when having to switch backwards and forwards in order to disable one of these features, especially as the Navigation software takes a little bit of time to boot.
After you have entered the navigation software you are greeted with the basic default map, with a couple of icons dotted around the screen for Zoom control, setting your destination on the map and the main menu option, which is located at the bottom right hand corner.
The menu options themselves are kept to a minimum, but are well presented and work fast.
In Operation
When it comes to inputting destinations you won’t find any voice recognition commands, so instead you are left with a choice of several keyboard types, ABC (mobile style double tap) and a Qwerty keyboard.
The device prefers you to key in locations in a specific order (town, street and house number), but you can simply type in a destination and navigate straight away via a shortcut button.
However it did not seem to allow full postcode entry, limiting us to four digits and more worryingly one of our test routes streets could not be found when searching.
POI are available to search via the main menu, but even though the Bluetooth option is useful as a hands free kit you can't seem to dial POI phone numbers from its interface.
We could not find any dedicated route planners either, but using the ‘Find’ option will allow you to view a destination on the map before hand, however we don’t know why this was happening, but with the GPS receiver turned on every time we tried to find a place it would dump us back to our current destination.
So this option only seemed to work with the GPS turned off and we also discovered that route simulations can be performed if reception is low or the above receiver is in its off state, though it’s an option that does not jump out at you and in practice the whole procedure is fiddly.
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