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Rating: 
Summary: Fantastic!
Review: After researching different GPS navigation options (laptop with adapter, built in car unit, PDA with adapter, handhelp GPS etc) I decided to get the Navman PiN. (its the same as the Mitac, which has been out for a while and plenty of product reviews available)
It arrived 2 days before my cross-coutry drive. I unpacked it and started the installation and set up. It took a bit longer than I expected, their web site is horrible, and since the product needs to be registered before you casn use it, you better hope their server is up and runing otherwise install may fail. After sweating the install I got it working. (2 hours later) Its been working perfectly ever since. Very easy to use for the most part very accurate. During the whole cross country trip, we experience no problems. Sometimes, the device thinks you are driving next to but not on the road, and shows you travelling parallel to the highway. (i think this may be more of a map issue) I found this really annoying because it starts telling you to make turns to get you 'back' on the highway even though you are on it already. Also sometimes it would suggest an obviously ill advised manuever. So you can't be a vegetable about the navigating, you gotta think and I would definitely carry a map to compare some of the suggested routes vs reality. I wish the deivce would allow more control about sepcific preffered routes. (i.e. I want it to show me my favorite route instead of just Shortest or Quickest)
Let me just say, the device is really amazing. I am nit picking in order to lay out some of the things I found annoying about the device, but all things considered there is nothing even close to this on the market right now (except for the Garmin iQue, which I do not like because of the Palm OS and the lack of SDIO port (you gotta have the SDIO option for wireless networking)
I highly reccomend this device to everyone, fantastic screen, small unit, amazing functionality.
I want to give it 4.5 stars.
I found that a 128MB SD card holds enough maps for a full days driving (about 1000miles in most directions) therefore my 3000 mile trip required little over three and a half 128MB cards) I am considering buying the new 256MB SD/811g wireless networking card)
I wish it came bundled with cradle, mini-headphone jack adapter, built in WiFi antenna and card and an extra SD card.....but for about 400 bucks, its a fantastic bargain at this time.
Rating: 
Summary: Great value, some showstopper bugs in the software though
Review: After seeing the terrible review at InfoSyncWorld, I became very worried that I was going to regret having just purchased the Navman PiN 100. There is very little in the way of reviews for this product so I will try to be as thorough as I can.
As a Pocket PC, I am completely satisfied with the Navman PiN 100. It is actually just a Mio DigiWalker (it even has the Mio DigiWalker logo on the back of it) so if you have seen reviews for that, then this is the same thing. It runs Windos Mobile 2003, has one expansion slot (an SDIO slot), and a suitably fast CPU and on-device storage & memory. I have used it as a Pocket PC for many things now and have not once felt the hardware specs to be lacking. Handwriting recognition is still awful but that is something to mention in a review of Windows Mobile 2003 operating system itself, not the Navman.
You WILL need a 256 or 512MB SD card to hold maps. The included 32MB card is basically worthless, I left it in the box and never used it. Many if not most states are over 30MB and that means you would not even be able to load them onto the card. I suggest getting one of those 256MB cards with wifi ability built-in, then you can kill two birds with one stone. Wifi is a neat thing to have.
As an in-car GPS solution, the Navman is hands-down absolutely the best value on the market. For under $500 (which is including the absolutely necessary additional purchase of a memory card) you get a Pocket PC, all necessary cables, an unobtrusive GPS receiver, a windshield mount, a car charger/adapter, and of course the Smart ST v2 GPS software. The Garmin iQue 3600 is its closest competitor -- I tried it too and decided the Navman PiN was both the better value and the superior product (bigger, brighter screen among many other things). Unfortunately the Navman PiN package feels exactly like what it is -- not one well-integrated product but a box of products sold as a bundle. When you open the box you are confronted with several envelopes, nearly a half dozen CD-ROMs, three different user manuals, and a confusing pile of cords and accessories. They burden you with actually loading the Smart ST v2 software on the Pocket PC, before you load it on your PC, register it and activate it, then install ActiveSync from another CD, and a bunch of other hassles like configuring the GPS COM port and baud rate -- TOO many hassles -- before you are finally ready to use the product. There was so much paperwork in the box that I spent several confused minutes wondering where the serial number was that the software wanted in order to install it. I would like to see the software pre-loaded on the handheld and all of the necessary stuff for your PC come on one single DVD ROM. I just plunked down 5 benjamins for a GPS toy, do you think I have not found myself a DVD drive for my computer yet? Get with the 21st century people.
Battery life is certainly better than the iQue 3600. It is at least 3 or 4 hours but I haven't done any real tests so I don't have an actual figure to give.
The GPS receiver takes some time to pick up satellites. Anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes on your first use, and 2 to 5 minutes from a cold start after that. It seems like definitely longer if you are moving. This is too long in my opinion, I don't know if other receivers are better, or not. As an in-car device I generally want to take it out of my pocket, put it on the dash, and have it ready to go. Instead I have to sort of sit there in the car for a few minutes or just wait until the first stoplight to check on where I am or where I am going.
The car charger is just that -- nothing to say about it. It gets the job done and is nice to have. The windshield mount is a suction cup mount and secures excellently to the windshield. I wish I could say the same for how well it secures the handheld. It barely does at all. It sort of just cradles it lightly. If you put your Navman in it without the utmost care, it is liable to fall right out. That is NOT good. I recommend angling it back some so that gravity holds it in a little. This seems to work for me. I would have rather it clipped in or snapped in, but no.
The rest of this review is going to sound pretty harsh because I don't really like the GPS software that the Navman PiN comes with (Smart ST v2 2.00.0036 SP2). It is promising, but fatally flawed. I want to say up front though, that I would not give up using this device just because I think the software sucks. I just deal with the frustrations and hope there will be an update to iron them out later.
First off, the map view. The map view is gorgeous, in full 16-bit color, with color coded roads to show your route, the current road you're on, roads that pass under/over your road, and little arrows indicating direction of traffic. Major and minor roads are different colors, and the roadnames are displayed very clearly and legibly. Geography like lakes and forest is marked with blue and green. The view switches to a 3D angled view whenever you are on a route to a destination, and rotates so that up is always your heading and you can see more in front of you than behind. The graphics are state-of-the-art for this market and nothing in its price range with the exception of TomTom Navigator can touch it. Your friends will be impressed.
The voice navigation is well-timed and intelligible, with the exception of "make a legal u-turn" which to most people sounds like "make illegal u-turn" (worth a few laughs). Voice only says when to turn and which direction, it doesn't say the street name or even highway number, which is too bad but that's typical for a PocketPC program.
The two big disasters of this software are its address input for destinations and routing, and the routing algorithm itself. These are the fatally flawed features which keep me from recommending this device to anyone who would get frustrated easily.
When inputting an address, you are allowed to select from your contacts (a Windows Mobile 2003 feature), however if you do this, you will 100% of the time be told that you have selected an invalid address. Sometimes this is because the map data is 18 months old and doesn't know this address exists, but most of the time it will accept the address if you re-enter it by hand. This is unacceptable. Also, when you start entering it by hand, it will suggest a drop down list of possible locations, and they will all seem pretty much like the same place. There is no way to tell if the address you are entering should be in Richmond VA, Richmond MCD VA, or one of several other entries for what is obviously the same place. Then you will enter a street, for instance Lotus Lane, but it will not be found because you didn't type Lotus La. This is asinine. Entering the address for a destination takes 5 mintues because of this nonsense, when it should take 5 seconds. And you will have to do this every time you enter the address, unless you pick destinations off of your "Recent" list. Once, I loaded a destination off of my contact list and ignored the "invalid address" warning and Smart ST2 routed me to some completely non-related location of the same town. From now on I make sure I do the address input in the way it wants it.
As for routing, it has a lot of quirks. I will describe some of the ones I have experienced. To put it blunty, it can recommend some DUMB routes -- I mean really out of your way sometimes. I use "quickest" navigation and "shortest distance" is even worse. Once it took me to what appeared to be a complete dead end, and the map said I could keep going -- not without a machete I couldn't. I drew an "avoid area" and the route put me back on the course I should have stayed on in the first place. Other times, it takes you pretty close to where you have to go and says you have reached your destination, but you could be anywhere from one to eight blocks away from where you need to be. This can be frustrating if you fight hard for a parking spot in the city and get out and realize you still have to walk 8 blocks. It might have to do with the way the software estimates street addresses. It uses ranges of addresses and estimation to guess where a particular street address is. Sometimes this works reasonably well and other times (when ranges are large) it doesn't work at all. You might be better off never giving it a street address. Instead only give it street intersections and take yourself from there. Autorouting works fairly well, but Smart ST2 is slow to route anything, and so it will display a question mark for a minute or two until it suggests a new route. Sometimes when you know better and have a better route in mind, it will stubbornly insist you make a u-turn at every cross street until finally re-routing and "seeing the light" of what route you had in mind. I have seen other PocketPC software be smarter and faster at re-routing.
So in conclusion, I highly recommend this product to geeks willing to deal with some quirks (and hope for fixes), but not to the general public who would probably be hopelessly frustrated by the routing and input problems, despite the pretty interface and good value.
P.S. my review of the software is of the version after you apply the currently available patch on Navman's site. Before I did this, all of the routing problems I mentioned above were like twice as bad, and I would have given two stars instead of three. When reading any poor reviews of the Navman PiN, try to check if they are using the software before or after the patch.
Rating:
Summary: Good hardware device but poor software and support
Review: As many of the reviewers have alluded to, this is a cobbled together device. The unit is made by a Chinese company called Mio. The hardware is a Mio Mitek 168. The reason why this is important is that you will have to end up contacting them for any hardware issues and their tech support is awful.
I also found that my unit does not work with the SANDISK Wifi+256M card and was frustrated in my attempts to get help from either San Disk or the unit manufacturer.
The Software is Windows Mobile 2003 from Windows, comes with Pocket Word, Pocket Excel, MS Explorer, Messenger, Mail, Pocket MSN, and the usual things like notepad, calender etc.
The only thing from Navman is their software called SmartST V2. You can also provide intersection, points of interest (which are very out of date, it could not find many of the restaurents in Sacramento that have been open for 3 years).
We were driving from Las Vegas to Sacramento and at one point we were on our way to Bakersfield, it did not even recognize the highway and was showing as if we were way off the road. Also it kept trying to route us through I-5 which is the long way. It also does not keep what you entered...and if you hit the wrong key you have to start entering the address all over again. It's also not smart enough to at least prefill the City.
The voice option lets you choose 1 male or 1 female voice. No other choices are available.
There are other small quirks with it as well. I also wished it would show you the direction you are going since thats possible with other GPS software like Ostia from Pocketgear (which I may get to replace SmartST).
They provide accessories that let you hook your device to your car windshield or any other smooth surface, its surprisingly strong and holds very well, its based on suction.
All in all I have mixed feelings about this device. I like having the versatility of a Pocket PC since its not a dedicated GPS device. But I would have liked to deal with a company that supported all of the pieces as one. If anything goes wrong its hard to get help it seems from my experience at least.
All in all its quite a good value, and its a lot cheaper than the other units in the marketplace. It seems to have no problem picking up GPS signals wherever I went.
Pros: Good Value, Versatility, Easy to Install in Car and remove
Cons: GPS software could be better, hardware device manufacturer provides poor tech support. Does not work with Sandisk wifi+256M card
Rating: 
Summary: A must have for outside sales & women traveling solo
Review: First of all, I just have to say that this is not one of those "handy" gadgets that are more trouble than they are worth and end up in the "junk drawer". The price is more than reasonable and you do not have to spend a lot of time prepping it or programming it. It is more of a grab and go product. This product works for YOU....not the other way around like with some PDA's!!!!
My company purchased these GPS/PDA's for all of our outside sales reps. I can't begin to say how much it has helped me out. Both the PC and the navigation are very simple to use. My business trips are more organized, more efficient, and much more enjoyable. I spend a lot less time being lost, reading maps, and searching through tons of notes for customer info, hotel location or scheduling information. Not to mention, I use it regularly on my own time as I live in a large metro area and normally carried a Thomas Guide... which I have since, retired!!! No more torn or missing pages, tiny, tiny print, and bulkiness. More importantly, no more "near misses" trying to read a map and drive! The PiN tells me right out loud exactly what to do and when to do it!!! I don't even have to look at the unit it after placing it in the holder!
Being that I travel a good deal on business, I am often in a new city every other week calling on new or potential accounts that I have not yet visited. If you are a businessperson, I do not have to tell you how unsettling it can be to be late for an appointment all because you didn't know where you were going. With the Navman PiN, I just pop in my destination and start my engine! The Navman does the rest of the work. And because it is transferable, I am never without it...no more hoping my rental car comes equipped with navigation/GPS ....Amen!!! Not to mention, as a woman traveling alone, I feel much safer knowing I won't miss a turn and end up in a dark alley!! And if I do have to detour, the Navman Back on Track features gets me right back on the road!
When out making calls, I am able to use the PC portion of the unit to make notes or write email regarding my sales calls, look up information, etc.; then I am on my way to the next appointment and not juggling local maps or pages upon pages of map quest directions. And just as good, no dealing with handwritten notes throughout the day to enter into my laptop later. I just input everything into the unit and sync up when I get back to my room! The rest of the evening is mine. This has made a huge difference in my travels, as now I am often able to actually enjoy the city I am visiting instead of caving up in my hotel room sorting through the day's paper trail or dreading the next day's adventure.
My favorite features are the Points of Interest and the portability. With the points of interest I never have to wonder where my favorite establishments are when in a strange city because the Navman tells me!! Plus, since this device is not hardwired to a vehicle, you can use it when you are on foot say in a downtown area, or in any vehicle.
I have had nothing but good experiences with this product and plan on purchasing at least one as a Christmas gift. Talk about the gift that keeps on giving!!!!
Rating:
Summary: Overall great product! Some flaws, but well worth the money!
Review: First off, let me tell you that this is a great PDA, especially for the money. For under $400, you can get a quality PDA with a GPS Navigation system (hard to beat the price). As with previous reviews, definately invest in at least a 128mb SD card. I purchased a 512mb SD card. This allows me to upload all of Florida and have plenty of room for music and other states if needed.
The actual device is small, lightweight and compact with a very sturdy antenna mounted on the back of the device that you can flip open when using the Navigation. The only flaw I have seen with the outside design of the PiN is the shortcut buttons on the face and on the side of the unit. These buttons are very sensitive, and can very easily be pushed on accident while in your pocket (quite often), turning the unit on (thus draining the battery). I found a way to set the shortcuts to "none" where they are not a shortcut to any application, but they turn on the unit to the main menu screen when pressed (a little frustrating).
The Navman PiN is equipped with Windows Mobile which comes with the standard Word, Excel, Calendar and MP3 player. This is pretty much standard with all PDA's. The SmartST software for the Navigation that you have to load is a pain, it would be nice if it was pre-loaded. The battery life is excellent! Also, the mounting kit for the car is great as well and it is very sturdy.
Finally, the Navigation system is second to none compared to others in it's class, and some of those twice as expensive. I have not had really any problems with the SmartST software as of yet that some people have been having. The maps are a little out of date, but living in the metro Orlando area, I have not run into many problems. The signal is great once you get it. It usually takes about a minute on a cold boot in the morning to aquire signal. I would suggest remaining stationary in the car while attempting to acquire signal as you will get it much faster. One thing that would be nice for future updates of the software is to let the user select the 3D view even if they are not entering a destination (as it currently does not prohibit the 3D mode when just cruising).
All in all, this is a great product well worth the money. Remember to get a bigger SD card and maybe even a screen protector.
Rating:
Summary: Great value for money but beware
Review: I've used mine now for 3 weeks. To store all the maps you will need at least a 1GB SD Card - I have a 512MB Card and managed to load the entire east coast (from Florida to Ohio and to Maine). The installation is easy to follow but the address input is incredibly dumb - it's illogical for one - as many others have reviewed previously. I use it in Greater NY/Tri-State area and the directions can be slightly off but when it works it works great - many a times though i could have thrown it out the window duing data input - the link to outlook/contacts is useless.
I have bougth MS Streets & Trips 2005 and will see if it works with the NAVMAN - it may make for a fine addition.
Rating:
Summary: Incredibly useful device
Review: I've wanted an in-car navigation system for a long time, but was put off by their high cost and non-portability. I was pretty excited to see this Navman unit - at last a totally portable driving navigation gps, that I could use hiking, driving or boating at a reasonable price.The unit is well constructed and does not 'feel cheap'. It is very small/thin, but has a beautiful bright display. The screen really is nice. The maps (Australia in my case) come pre-loaded on a 128mb SD Card. They also come on CD if you want to use the SD Card for other things. It comes with a sturdy windscreen suction attachment, car charger, wall charger, slip cover and USB cable. The small flip-out antenna can lock onto satellites when I'm inside my house! I was concerned I would need an external antenna for the car, but I've yet to encounter any difficulty with getting sattelite locks. The Navman unit is actually a rebadged Mitac Mio 168 (first Pocket PC to include a built-in GPS receiver), which has received very good reviews. The primary difference is that the Navman comes with SmartST mapping software. Unfortunately, this may not be a such good thing. The SmartST software is great to use - the 3D street maps are fabulous, and it's very easy & intuitive to enter in addresses or search for location 'types'. However, it is *NOT* possible to enter waypoints or GPS coordinates, so it is not suitable for geocaching out-of-the-box (what a shame). There are 3rd party PocketPC programs that you can use for geocaching. The voice prompting is loud and clear, and location accuracy seems to be quite good. I've been driving around the city of Brisbane for the last few days, and only had one 'error' with the directions (I was on a service road a few metres away from a highway - it thought I was on the highway). Roundabouts are handled well (ie. it will say "On the roundabout, take the second exit"). If you make a wrong turn, it auto-calculates a new route very quickly. As it is a PocketPC, it comes with "Office" type software, such as PocketExcel, PocketWord, an MP3 player, games etc. Since I've never used a PDA before, I didn't realise how versatile they were. It's amazing how many 3rd party software packages are available. It now seems crazy to buy a dedicated GPS or car navigator when integrated gps PDA's like the Navman are available. If you've put off buying a GPS, take a look at the Navman PiN - highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Hardware A+, Software C-
Review: The Good
The Navman is a handy device. I owned a Palm V before this and a PocketPC device is just better, in my opinion. The color screen is great. The integration with Windows is great. I really like the device.
The Bad
The SmartST map and nav software is close but still sucks. I live in Alabama and none of the city names are right. I live in Huntsville but the SmartST app says I live in Hueytown. The maps are accurate at the street level but most of the city names are wrong. The routing view is pretty cool especially if you are map challenged. It gives a view from the perspective of the car instead of a birdseye view. Programming the route is a pain. The address lookup is annoying to use. The main application that runs on the laptop/desktop computer will only load maps. It sure would be nice to construct routes on the big computer and download them to the PocketPC.
All in all I think the Navman is a good value. Just be prepared to spend a little extra and get a big SD memory card and some new software, maybe Delorme Mapping Street Atlas 2005 for Handhelds.
Software Update
I purchased Microsoft Streets and Trips 2005 and it works nicely with the Navman. No GPS problems. The S&T maps are superior to the SmartST maps. HOWEVER, the SmartST maps are much smaller. The entire state of Alabama can be loaded onto the Navman using the SmartST application but only the city of Huntsville can be loaded (as a single map) using Pocket Streets and Trips. So if you are planning a long trip on Streets and Trips, be prepared to load a bunch of small maps. I guess I will use SmartST for city to city navigations and the Microsoft products once I get there.
Rating:
Summary: Good product, but the software still lacks.
Review: This product is great. The software still lacks some features. The maps aren't that detailed. Microsoft streets and trips 2003 work great with it. I agree with the previous reviews about entering an address. It takes some time, nothing like Microsoft. The 3d imaging are awesome. Overall, it's a good product and hope to see more software enhancements in the future.
Rating:
Summary: Works well but not as shipped!
Review: WARNING - The US version ships with a 32M card not the 128M card cited in the Australian review posted here. A hastily added sticker on the box says a 128M card is "recommended" In fact, unless you live in a rural area, you can't load the map for your home area until you buy an additional card. Amazon should note this in its listing. The manufacturer has decided that its worth shipping a product that can't be used as shipped to save a few bucks.
The only other problem is a poorly documented setup. Basically they're shipping a kit. First you load the PC software on your desktop, then load the map software from the included (too small) card. Finally you load the map setup software on your desktop and activate your Navman over the internet . That's when I discovered I couldn't load the map for Northern California until I got an additional 128M card. As it happens I could steal one from my Treo 600, so I managed to get it functioning.
Once working, it works well. Entering addresses is strange if you don't have a zip code because they've made up sub regions that are parts of a town. Once the destination is in, however, the 3D maps are beautiful and (so far) seem accurate. Voice prompts are useful but not overly verbose. It's easy to use and read as well as being a nice small, light package
If the maker hadn't made a last minute decision to ship it without the required card, I'd have raised it to 4 stars.
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