Product Reviews

The design of most standalone GPS systems can best be described as functional, but Shinco's Voyager GPS 400's white finish adds a bit of variety to an already crowded market. Its colour aside, the design is similar to Navman's iCN 520 or Mio's 269+. There is a fold-up aerial attached to the back, a touch screen and short cut buttons for the main menu and to zoom in and out.

The GPS 400's 4" display is larger than that of most standalone GPS devices, so there's plenty of room for the map display. Unfortunately, the Destinator mapping software doesn't take advantage of the extra space and the icons to go to the menu screen and switch between 2D and 3D maps are too small to operate with a finger. Using a GPS system when driving is dangerous, anyway, so you should always stop and use the stylus.

The mapping software is simple but has all the functions you'd expect from GPS navigation. You can navigate

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to an address, one of a number of Points of Interest, such as airports, cinemas or tourist attractions, or plot a route with several waypoints. You can specify a city and street, or enter the first five characters of a postcode to narrow down the search to a particular area before choosing the street and house number. Your destination is shown on a map before you start navigating, so you can check you have the right place.

The Voyager took around four minutes to get a GPS fix from startup. Route calculation is fast, taking four seconds to plot a journey from the Shopper offices to South London, and just 10 seconds to plan a route to Edinburgh. Once you are driving, you have the choice of 2D and 3D views, as well as a simple turn-by-turn display. The map views are clear and uncluttered, but the screen is not particularly bright and is hard to use in sunlight.

A Night Mode option helps reduce glare at night and is clearer in the sunshine. Many GPS systems aren't loud enough to hear with the window down or the stereo on, but the Voyager has a very loud and clear built-in speaker. The Destinator software isn't quite as fast as the navigation package in TomTom's range, but it is one of Shopper's favourites with its accurate mapping and unambiguous voice prompts.

Shinco's Voyager GPS is a simple GPS system, which is easy to use and fairly fast. It does without extras such as real-time traffic information, but at £70 less than the TomTom Go 300, it is excellent value.