At 7.2cm wide by 12cm deep by 2cm high this is a bit bigger than your average PDA, yet it still sports a 3.5" TFT screen so we can only assume the extra dimension is to incorporate the fold out "flappy" style GPS antenna its is however quite lightweight at 165 grams.

Driving the Acer N32 GPS PDA is fairly standard the navigation pad is a square arrangement under the screen plus the left hand side of the device has a scroll wheel which is perhaps easier to use. Based around a 266 Mhz processor and 64mb of RAM the spec of the n35 isn't exactly cutting edge but seems to suffice for running pocket PC applications. After all the pre installed applications and the Destinator software is taken into account there is only 42mb of RAM left. There is 32mb of ROM to provide some non volatile memory for the pocket PC operating system meaning that a totally drained battery doesn't mean reloading windows, sadly this is almost entirely eaten by the operating system.

There is an SD card on the top edge of the device but this is used by the Destinator 3 software to access maps stored on SD card so its not really available to the PDA unless you are willing to switch cards all the time. The Destinator 3 software is supplied on a 256mb SD card which makes the install really quick and simple, just pop the card into the top on the N35 and the programme self installs with minimal input.

However every time we took the card out to use a different SD card for Mp3 files or another use the re insertion of the Destinator SD card caused the N35 to leap into life and think it was time to reinstall the software. You can cancel your way out of the install process and then you have to dismiss the warnings that say that Destinator was not fully installed and of course when you check its sitting there ready to go.

Destinator 3 has already been covered by Lordpercy.com so we'll just stick to its implementation on the Acer N35 and the overall performance.

Acer are fairly clear this is a GPS navigation tool that happens to sit on a PDA, we'd normally have called this a bundle, but when you see that it doesn't have either Bluetooth or WiFi you start to wonder what else this PDA could do except use its inbuilt GPS capability. It does have all the usual pocket PC applications allowing your to organise your life and you can load up your MP3's (if you want to swap cards) using the cut down windows media player.

On our test journeys with Destinator 3 the Acer N35 proved a reliable device with a quick and strong satellite lock despite our fears about the integral satellite receiver and the need to site the whole unit in clear view of the sky. As with the last test of the software we like the simple interface and it works well on the bright screen of the n35 making simple the task of entering your destination.

The time taken to plot the route is about average for a PDA based system and the route selection is still a little unusual, this time taking us around the A406 rather than use the faster M25 route that our TomTom unit selected. That said the user interface is clear and the birds eye view is one of the plus points of the Destinator software, we did note the map stalling on a number of occasions perhaps due to the under powered processor of the n35.

We once again suffered the Destinator 3 problems with re calculating when  you go off route and manfully insisting you go back to the original road even if its a 5 mile u turn, plus the spoken instructions are not as rich as some systems but then Destinator 3 is a good 12 months old now and due for an overhaul.

If the Acer N35 had been endowed with a better processor and some form of wireless connectivity your could forgive their selection of Destinator, but for a little more cash you can get any number of PDA's bundled with TomTom software and you get Bluetooth and a 400mhz processor. It's not as neat as the N35 in that you'll have an outboard GPS receiver but there is always the Mio 168 or Garmin 3600 which do an equally good job and are more convincing as an overall GPS / PDA combination.

Published - 23/03/2005

More Navigation System Reviews-

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