Labs

The X-960 is the lightest satnav on test at only 136g. It has a bright 3.5in touchscreen TFT with a non-reflective coating. UK and Ireland maps are bundled, and a European version is available for around £30 more.

Menus are intuitive and the main menu has three simple buttons: Navigate, Plan your journey and My ViaMichelin. Plan your journey allows you to plan a route, display a map and search for a POI without a GPS fix. You can plan multidestination routes, too. The guidance display can be set to a full-screen 3D or 2D view, or a schematic of the next turn, complete with no-entry signs showing illegal turns.

But rather than add unnecessary frills like a music player, ViaMichelin includes genuinely useful

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extras such as POI categories for hotels and restaurants in the Michelin guide. Tourist information from the Green guide is also included, with major event locations, too. You get permanent free updates of fixed safety cameras and map updates for three months, while a two-year map subscription with at least four updates costs £70. Plus, using the My ViaMichelin area on the firm's website allows you to synchronise favourite routes, addresses and POIs.

Entering an address is easy as there's a QWERTY layout with numbers, and keys are greyed out if there are no matching city names or postcodes. Plus, you can click on the map and tap the D or A buttons to immediately set that point as the departure or arrival address. The 300MHz CPU might not be the fastest, but the X-960 is responsive, even on battery power.

Although no mains adapter is bundled, you can charge the unit via USB or the car charger. The windscreen mount is solid, but you have to twist an awkwardly placed slippery dome to create suction. Another gripe is the inability to avoid specific roads in the planned route, or calculate a route around a roadblock or traffic jam.

But despite this, and the lack of a full user manual, the X-960 is great value. If you don't need live traffic updates, it's one to add to your shortlist.