Joke books world over are full of jokes on ?backseat? drivers! Chapter after chapters are written on MILs (mothers in law) and wives nagging their sons in law or husbands, challenging their driving skills and road sense, shouting road directions and cursing the RTO inspector for issuing them the driving license. These unfortunate drivers gets so nervous that every approaching vehicle on a round about looks like a nightmare and an invitation to face the volley of thundering instructions and directions. For them the red lights at the intersections are not a signal to stop and wait but time for a minute long crash course on driving. These back seat drivers may vary in size and shape or the language they speak but the impact of their nagging on poor driver is the same world over ?NERVE WRECKING?. They forget the direction of the route they otherwise would have frequented several times and invariably land at the wrong destination inviting more flack. Imagin this scenario in conjuncture with the chaotic traffic on the roads, if you still remember the route and reach your destination, you definitely are a brave heart or you are using a GPS-based personal navigation device (PND).
The Global Positioning System (GPS) is the only fully functional Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). Utilising a constellation of at least 24 medium Earth orbit satellites that transmit precise microwave signals, the system enables a GPS receiver to determine its location, speed, direction and time.
?Voxtel Carrera X350? the one I got for review, is a light weight (just 0.13kg) and compact (101mm x 84.3 mm x 17.5mm) PND that can easily be carried any where.
The face and the back is soft black in rubberized finish enframed in metallic silver trimming on all four sides with rounded edges. The 9cm (3.5 inch) display touch screen on the face is non reflective and bright (though I found it a bit difficult to see in bright sunlight, but in side the car its very legible) and fills the whole surface leaving just enough space for the ?voxtel carrera X350 monogram and a small power LED.
The top has a sleep mode button and GPS marking indented in bold letters. The right side of the device has the ports for TMC, USB and headphone jacks, and a slot for SD card.
On the rear surface are the speaker, port for external GPS antenna, reset button, power on/off switch and a retractable stylus pen.
The PND can be mounted on the windscreen of the vehicle for easy viewing with the help of the provided mount. The lightweight mount is quite sturdy and well designed, and very easy to make minor adjustments while driving.
?X 350? is powered by a rechargeable Li-ion polymer battery. It can be charged with the provided car charger (while on move) or through the USB cable connected to the PC.
As you switch on the device a menu with bold icons greets you with three options ??Navigation?, ?GPS Receiver? and ?Settings?. Though the company offered to send an executive for live demonstration but I could find my way around with the easy to understand options in the very logically designed menu and configured the PND with ease. Entering information is better done with the stylus than fingers. The second step of connecting the device to the GPS satellites required patience, as it took more than 5 minutes to be detected by the satellites (you require minimum of four satellites for accurate navigation). Once the device is configured and detected by the orbiting satellites, its ready for the main job that is ?navigation?. Here I faced slight challenge as the names we use for the localities are different from the ones entered in the list ie. Patpar Ganj the residential society area is enlisted as Newpatparganj-with no space in between, and Indara Prastha extension wields no result (the company executive explained to me that this is due to the demo version data (map) and once the device is updated with the current version data these glitches will be ironed out. More over Delhi is also undergoing drastic changes due to Metro rail and flyover constructions and all these modification will take some time to be incorporated in the device data.
Despite of these glitches I could navigate on the Delhi roads comfortably. Once I entered the locality name, road names and other choices were narrowed down to that area, which made finding the exact destination easy. I was prompted by a very pleasant voice to ?drive carefully and turn left?, after turning left following the blue worm on the map, I observed that my movement on the display panel was shown as a moving arrow-head. The ?voice? again alert me to turn right and an arrow showed the direction at the next crossing 200 meters ahead (a data glitch), I ignored the direction and continued ahead, the voice pardoned me and recalculated the route (unlike the back seat drivers). Through out the journey voice prompts were clear and accurate and alerted me much in advance. Except for few glitches (as the maps were demo versions in this device) this GPS Personal Navigation Device proved to be quite helpful.
Another interesting feature in the device is the preinstalled POIs (Points of Interest) list, like Hotels, restaurants, petrol stations, cinemas?etc.
One can also use the X350 as a digital photo and document viewer and store photographs and documents in the external SD memory-card. The user-interface is Multi-lingual and will support more than nine India languages in very near future. Though the carrera X 350 is not the top end GPS-PND, and also not very feature rich but at the MRP of Rs. 14,995/- it can be a very useful devise (gizmo) to flaunt in your car and keep back seat drivers mum.