HP iPAQ rx1950 Navigator

Our second journey tested this to the limit, being a trip through central London. The outward journey went smoothly, although the lack of voice directions meant we did over-rely on the screen. We found the auto zoom at junctions to be generally good, but sometimes it zoomed in too far, making it unclear where the next turn actually was. We had to give up on the Navigator for the return trip, as it took almost two minutes to get a fix, despite the fact that the car hadn't moved - our passengers quickly grew mutinous.

But what destroyed our trust in the ViaMichelin software was our third outing. This was in Buckinghamshire, where the underlying mapping proved so imprecise it frequently told us to 'bear left' despite the fact we were approaching a T-junction, and on one occasion managed to take us to the wrong town entirely. The final straw came when travelling down a rural road: the voice instructions told us to 'go straight ahead' when passing a turn, only for it to emerge that actually, now it came to think about it, it really did want us to take the turn.

As a wireless PDA, the rx1950 is great and, partnered with the right software, would be a superb foundation of a GPS PDA system. But the ViaMichelin GPS software didn't win our confidence and we were left wanting to throw the car connector kit out of the window. If money is tight, buy the substantially cheaper Acer n35. And if you can afford the extra, choose an rx1950 with a TomTom software bundle - GPS specialists like www.totalpda.com are the places to visit.

Author: Tim Danton