Navman S300T GPS Unit Review
The first thing you’ll notice with the Navman S300T GPS unit is the design. Boy is it nice! Sporting a metallic-looking design made using plastic, a thin 13.5 millimetres thickness and a generous 4.3-inch widescreen display, the Navman S300T GPS unit win a place usually reserved for Apple’s products.
Navman S300T S-Series GPS Unit
The windscreen mount is the same as other Navman GPS unit in the S-Series, a nicely designed cradle to which the GPS unit slides into and once stuck to the windscreen, it doesn’t feel like it will fall off easily. The S300T’s crisp, bright screen is easy to see even on a bright sunny day and the built-in speaker is loud enough to hear over the engine and background noise.
With a size of 78mm x 130mm x 13.5mm and weighing only 150grams, this GPS unit can easily slips into your pocketinstead of being left in your car once you’ve arrive at your destination.
Hardware wise, the Navman S300T include an FM transmitter so you can tune in with your car radio. The built-in Bluetooth feature turns this unit into a hands-free car kit, allowing you to safely make and receive calls without interrupting navigation and there’s a microSD slot for storing music. Charging is done using a USB port and a like other Navman S-Series GPS units, a car power adaptor is supplied but you’ll have to pay extra for an AC mains charger.
Software wise, it’s a mixed bag with some new features and some old features from previous S-Series GPS units. The instructions for each turn are easy to and the display zooms in on the map as you approach an intersection and zoom out on long straight roads.
For the S-Series Platinum range, Navman has completely redesigned the user interface, and the result is a scrollable “glide” touch screen. No longer are there pages click to, instead you simply press the touch screen with your finger then drag up or down to reveal the rest of the menu. However this feature appeared to be in its infant stage as it is not that responsive and something can be frustrating to use.
An area for improvement inherited from the S-Series software is searching for an address. The software attempts to predict your intended destination but offers only one suggestion rather than a drop-down list. As a result, you usually end up typing the entire address anyway.
Once on the road, the S300T did a fine job of tracking our location and offered user-friendly phases such as “continue straight at roundabout” rather than “take the second exit”. It also warns of safety cameras, school zones, accident blackspots and railway crossings.
The Navman’s S300T is the top of the S-series range model, but you can save money by buying other lesser models from the same range.
