iPAQ rx1950 - A better PDA than a GPS Navigator?

Rather than sell you a full blown GPS device, like the TomTom Go 700, HP prefers to appeal to the entry-level GPS crowd by taking one of their normal PDAs and tricking it out to be an in-car navigation device as well.

It's not a bad business model, and as a basic PDA the iPAQ rx1950 is worthy of consideration in its own right, as Bruce Gain will tell you later on in this review. The navigation bundle, which costs £245 (excluding VAT) versus the £165 of the basic PDA, comes with a car cradle which also acts as the GPS receiver and speaker system to deliver instructions to you as you drive.

This means that the rx1950 has to be in the car cradle in order to work as a navigator, which isn't too much of a sticking point but it is worthy of note. Ironically enough the bundled ViaMichelin mapping software allows you to choose to take a pedestrian route to your destination. We do not advise mixing your vehicle, a pedestrian route and Soviet fighter pilot levels of initiative.

The ViaMichelin mapping software couldn't be easier to install - you simply insert the SD card, which will take up the PDAs only expansion slot, and it installs itself automatically. It has the standard features, including 2D and 3D map views, but isn't nearly as advanced as the software you'll see on a more dedicated package such as the TomTom Go 700. For the price however it'll have to do.

As is becoming all too regular a thing for me to encounter, the car cradle doesn't like sticking to the windscreen. It takes an acrobatic feat of ingenuity to get it to stick properly, but this is something we've been collectively seeing at Tom's Hardware Guide for quite a while now, and even the most lavish of navigation packages seem to be suffering the same vice. They can engineer software to communicate with satellites to get you from Point A to Point B in the smartest way possible, but ask for a suction cup...

The ViaMichelin package comes with maps for Britain and Northern Ireland, and Irish users can get a map for the Republic. However we're told that the ViaMichelin maps only have around 40% coverage of Ireland, which gives you the main roads and not much else. Considering that it's when you're lost down the Bally Back End of Nowhere that you'll really be needing the GPS software we'd recommend something a little better covered for Ireland as a whole.

On UK roads the situation is much better, though we found that at times the GPS receiver and the GPS satellites could refuse to communicate with one another. However in the majority of cases we found that they could link up without too much hassle.

The mapping software is smart in how it finds routes, but while you're driving it's not quite as quick as you might want. We often found that the speaker would blurt out an instruction far too late for us to follow through without causing a pile up. On more than one occasion it told us to turn left or right while we were driving past said turn.

The ViaMichelin software leaves a lot to be desired, so if you're looking for a decent navigator package we'd say look elsewhere. However as a PDA the rx1950 is an excellent choice, as we'll explain if you read on.