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Tarfumes.com - Hewlett-Packard iPAQ 310 Bluetooth 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator
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List Price: $449.00
Our Price: $217.98
Your Save: $ 231.02 ( 51% )
Availability: N/A
Manufacturer: Hewlett Packard
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Average Customer Rating:   
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Batteries Included: 1
Binding: Electronics
Brand: Hewlett-Packard
Color: Black
Display Size: 4.3
EAN: 0883585309559
Feature: High Definition 4.3 Inch WVGA Display Screen/ 800 x 480 3X to 5X Higher Resolution
Includes Mp3 Player: 1
Is Autographed: 0
Is Memorabilia: 0
Label: Hewlett Packard
Manufacturer: Hewlett Packard
Model: 310
Native Resolution: 800 x 480
Publisher: Hewlett Packard
Studio: Hewlett Packard
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Features
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High Definition 4.3 Inch WVGA Display Screen/ 800 x 480 3X to 5X Higher Resolution
128MB Fast DDR Memory with 2GB Flash Storage
Centrality/ SiRF/ Titan Dual Core 600 MHz Processor with 3D Graphics
Centrality 40 Channel with Autonomy TTFF Acceleration GPS
0.41 Lbs (WxLxH) 4.30" x 3.40" x 0.70"
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Editorial Reviews:
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Whether you're on the road for business or pleasure, this advanced, high-definition 3-D navigation system will upgrade your trip to first class.Before you go, you can customize your itinerary on your PC and download it to your iPAQ 310 Travel Companion; then it will guide you turn by turn to your destinations. On the way, you can use it as a hands-free answering system for your Bluetooth-enabled mobile phone, as well as enjoy premium digital entertainment.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Good GPS, But Needs Improvements
Comment: It has a bright huge 4.3" screen. And it is the most important reason that I have bought this unit. However, sometime the system will halt during turning on, and I have to restart it. In Atlanta area, the map is not accurate and sometime misleading.
Customer Rating:
Summary: One major flaw
Comment: The device has a raised ON/OFF button. You can easily turn on and drain the battery by accident.
The case is tight-fitting. If you put the device in the case, and then apply some pressure to the case, you can turn the power on.
This is a major flaw to me, as I like to carry the device with me. I find myself turning on the power by accident too often.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Could've been alot better
Comment: I have extensively used Garmin, Tom Tom, Magellen and Mio before buying this product. The Mio stood out of all, partly due to iGo6 used for UI and mapping. I had been a big fan ever since I bought it. Mio had some shortcomings, bluetooth, time taken to acquire signal etc, therefore I decided to give that to a friend and buy the ipaq. While this product betters the Mio on its shortcomings and is based on modified version of iGo6, I think HP didn't spend enough time in perfecting it. Otherwise this unit would have got full marks from me.
Plus:
-Excellent screen
-Bluetooth
-3d buildings (marketing feature, not that extensively used)
-Games
-Ability to play video
-Excellent mods to improve the unit
-Pro routing features
-Vivid screen resolution
-Extensive POI database
-Ability to speed alerts (More suited to EU)
Minus:
-Bluetooth doesn't syncs phonebook
-Slightly slow to respond
-UI could have been more intiutive
-Unit hangs while searching for POIs in navigation mode
Customer Rating:
Summary: iPaq 310 GPS
Comment: I have used the GPS two times since i bought it and it preformed just as it was supposed to. Was very easy to set up and was easy to put the directions in the unit. The only thing that I have a gripe about is the sound on the unit it is very low.I bought a set of small speakers for use with it but I still can't turn the volume up loud enought to hear. It is just not me my wife can't hear it either. Also if you want to look up some information about the unit from the literature that was sent with it when purchased lots of luck its useless.[[ASIN:B001B0DCQC (Price/EA)iPAQ 310 TRAVEL COMPANION
Customer Rating:
Summary: So much potential but ultimately a disappointment
Comment: I wavered back and forth between this and the Garmin Nuvi 255w and eventually settled on this because it was different and had a number of great features. However, after using it on a 2000 mile trip around the southwest I decided this is a product still in the works. If HP can ever address some of the serious UI issues I wouldn't hesitate to buy this. However, I ended up returning mine. Below are my observations of the basic function of the device - navigating. I didn't spend any time with the photo, music, bluetooth, etc features.
PROS:
First, the positives. I chose this device largely because of the nice screen and fast CPU. The screen is very attractive and easy to see even in bright sun, but the top and bottom blue bars are kind of annoying. You can switch to full screen mode but then you can't see miles to go or ETA which is one thing I like to know while driving. Switching back and forth is not hard but is a distraction while driving. There are fan sites out there (for example, http://www.gpspassion.com/FORUMSEN/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=101001) that will show you how to do a number of hacks to fix things that HP should have done from the start. If you like hacking your hardware this may be the device for you.
The unit also recalculates very fast. My only other reference is a Garmin Street Pilot from several years ago. It had an annoying habit of telling me to make a u-turn to put me back on the original route instead of recalculating a new route. The ipaq handles deviations with aplomb. Seconds after missing a turn it will recalculate a new route to your destination. Sometimes I didn't like the new route (taking me to a left turn across a busy street without a light for example) so I just went the way I wanted to and it would keep recalculating. Eventually, it would take me where I wanted to go. In the end I learned to just trust it in most cases.
The HP ipaq website is kind of nice too. I selected my stops and uploaded them to the ipaq. Then when you are ready to navigate to one you select map - trip extras (or something) and then the points you uploaded will show. If you make one route for your whole trip it will route the whole trip which is sometimes not what you want. I elected to create separate points for each planned stop and then I could select the one I wanted to go to next. It worked out fairly well and better than doing it all from the small touchscreen. Planning out all your POIs this way might help with some of the usability issues.
CONS:
Unfortunately, that is the extent of the positives. The user interface is horrible, many POIs are incorrect, and there are still stability issues. To its credit, HP released a new major update a few months ago that addressed some of the stability issues and I never once had to reboot the device due to lock ups. However, it will freeze up if you try to move through menus too quickly. When it does, wait 5-10 seconds and it will unfreeze. Better than a crash but still annoying. Perhaps a Windows based OS is not really the best choice.
The sound is okay but not great. The text to speech voices sound a bit robotic and are sometimes hard to understand without looking at the street name on the screen anyway. I spent more than half the trip with a basic (i.e. non-TTS) voice that was okay. There are also a lot of languages available which is nice if you live in Europe, but I think very few people in the US will use these so it would be nice to include better English and Spanish options. Many of the languages are quite uncommon in the US and there is a Europe model on which they would be more appropriate. Since the unit is hackable, it wouldn't be hard to add in a language if the one you wanted wasn't included.
The maps are very nice but frustrating to use. For example, if you choose a closer 3D view it will stay that way the whole trip. Great for in town but when driving 400 miles on a freeway I'd rather see an overview than the 200 feet in front of me. If you want to do that you have to touch the screen to activate the view choices, chose 2D and then pick a zoom level. Not really something you should be doing while driving. Then when you get close to a point where you have to navigate it will stay zoomed out and you will have to touch it again to change to 3D and zoomed in. Some reviews mentioned auto switching but I never once saw this happen. Maybe it's another of the buried menu options but I looked pretty hard.
The real frustrations come in when trying to find a POI. For example, if you need to find a hotel or coffee shop near an upcoming city/town and you are not yet there it is an exercise in frustration. You can choose a POI around the GPS, any address you want to enter, along the route, point on map, etc but none of these produces very friendly results. Choosing along the route will find POIs that are well off your route. I don't consider a 30 mile detour (one way) acceptable especially when there are choices further along but on my route that would be better. Picking a point on the map is hard because the map does not scroll well. You can touch and drag but often it won't move or it will move only a bit. More often than not it just clicks to add a point on the map but not at all where you want since you just trying to scroll.
When you do manage to get to a point where you can search for a POI it will present you a menu of choices. If you want a coffee shop for example you will choose restaurant - other area restaurant - and then cafe. Why do you need the "other" option? That was just a needless extra menu. Once you select cafe then it will present you a list of shops. You can also spell out a name and have it list only those (starbucks for example).
Actually driving to the POI is another issue altogether. More than half of the POIs I tried to find were non-existent. The device would say "you have reached your destination" but you are in the middle of the road with little to nothing around you. Sometimes I would find the POI a mile or so away by luck and other times I just gave up and chose a different one. This happened a lot and was very frustrating.
The menus for other POIs are also annoying. If you want a gas station, the first menu sorts them by folders with the name first and then you have to choose a folder before seeing if there is one nearby. When traveling, I could care less what brand gas I buy. I just want the closest one. Often when you would choose one folder, the next page opens and there isn't any gas stations listed so you have to keep going back up a level, chose a different folder and then see if that company had a gas station near you. There is a little, rather un-obvious button that will pull up POIs around you but not around a distant location - at least I never discovered a way.
There is also no way to simply stop navigating. You have to actually delete the route. You can add it back but you have to go through the horrible menus again to do so. If you don't delete the route when you stop for lunch or a break, the unit will sometimes turn back on again and drain the battery. If you put it in your pocket and it turns on it will get very hot. The case is also too tight and presses on the power button so it's not really usable.
The unit also gets VERY hot hanging from the windshield. It never caused a problem but sometimes it was almost too hot to touch. Also, when it's hot, you can't run it on battery. If you want to hand it to someone so they can mess with the menus while you drive it will have to stay plugged in if it's hot.
Finally, many of the reviews I read said to spend some time with the manual before trying to use it. However, the manual is a joke. It's about 15 pages long and only covers the most basic uses and not even very well at that. At times it will tell you to click a menu choice that doesn't even exist. HP support is also horrible - well actually I never managed to get a real person so hard to say for sure. On three separate tries I navigated the annoyingly long support menu only to end up with an endlessly ringing line and no answer even after 30 or more rings. In the end I gave up trying to get help from HP.
CONCLUSION:
The device does have a lot of features and if you are willing to hunt and peck your way through the menus you may find some of them. The opportunities to customize it are also appealing, and the fast recalculations is nice as is the screen. In the end, however, if you want a device you can use with minimal issues and a clean and simple UI this is not the device for you. I really hope HP is paying attention to all the comments about this device and does something to fix it. It would be a great GPS if it wasn't for the horrible software.
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