Previously our only experience of the Garmin range has been the bulky and dare we say ugly street pilot range one of which was responsible for getting LP lost in Devon after he borrowed it and set off without a map backup, in terms of style the ique 3600 is a much more pleasing sight and we'll find out if it gets you lost!

Unusually for a PDA device the processor is a Motorola 200MHz, the Dragon Ball MXL ARM 9 which runs the Palm OS 5.2.1, there is 32mb of RAM to run the route finding and guidance applications and an SD card for the mapping data. The thing that marks out the Garmin ique 3600 as a different PDA is the flip up GPS receiver mounted on the upper rear of the device, this is a 12 channel satellite receiver which managed to keep good lock on at least 4 birds during our tests.

The 3600 has a 320 by 480-pixel transflective screen which proved plenty bright enough perhaps a tad too bright on night time journeys, images look crisp and colourful on the 65K screen and a real surprise was the volume from the small inbuilt speaker, not sure if it was our hearing or imagination but it seemed louder than our normal Ipaq.

The Palm OS does a good job of running efficiently on the 3600 PDA, of course its primary function is to allow the GPS navigation software to run but you also get a plethora of Palm applications such as Palm Address Book, Audio, Calc, Card Info, Clock, Date Book, Documents, Find, Graffiti 2, Hot Sync, Memo Pad, Power One Personal, Sheet ToGo, To Do List, and Word ToGo.

Onto the actual testing, after getting that first fix we found the Ique's receiver very quick to lock up from a cold / warm start the TTF was approx 40 seconds meaning we could get the route planned before leaving the car park. Entering a destination is easy from the Find menu, this screen allows you to enter town / city, street, number, postcode or any combination of the details and then you can pick from a list of addresses that narrows as you enter more data, simply tap the one you want and select navigate to.

The route selection of the Garmin Ique 3600 PDA was acceptable, it seemed to pick a good balance of fast roads versus shortest distance, we did find a very strange occurrence on our first route where the Ique asked us to leave the motorway only to have us rejoin via the on slip road, not sure how it did this but over the past week it chooses this route every morning.

En Route the screen acts as a backup to the voice instructions which are clear if a little artificial, as you approach a junction you get a "junction preview" which is a pop up window which shows the layout of the turn approaching, to get the most of this you need to zoom using keypad or stylus both of which are difficult if not technically illegal. A nigh time trip followed the next evening and the Ique 3600 picked a good route around north London which avoided some traffic (more luck than judgement) no strange routing this time round but a chance to see the auto night mode in action, having set the 3600 to GMT and indicated we were not in daylight saving mode the unit decided to slowly dim the display and switch to nigh time colours as things started to get dark outside.

This seemed almost magical the first time but the next night it was foul weather and the screen dimmed about an hour after it had already got quite dark, perhaps a sensor to pickup the light levels would be a nice touch after all and GCSE electronics student can fashion one of these from some resistors and an acid dip.

We had run the Ique from mains for all but our last journey and as Garmin rave about its true portability we thought the battery should get an outing before we returned the unit, just as well it was a short trip to take it back as we managed a very poor 1 hour 20 mins on a full charge before the PDA shutdown and refused to liven up without an inject of juice.

Other points to note are the wide variety of mapping software available for the Garmin series that facilitate the loading of custom maps and POI's and even pre plotting of routes on a PC before uploading them to the SD card, we'd recommend at least a 128mb card for UK driving to fit the whole map on and leave some room for POI's.

Unlike the Navman iCN510 the Garmin ique 3600 PDA did plot sensible routes and cope with us taking a few wrong turns, its not quite as a polished a product as the Navman but in pure routing a navigation terms it does a good job. priced at £389 its considerably cheaper than the Navman and even undercuts our current favourite the tom tom go unit by £20, but that £20 is not enough for us, the design is simple yet the screen is small ish for a navigation system and the mounting options leave a lot to be desired as the kit is little better than a PDA mount.

The Garmin Ique 3600 PDA is stuck in no mans land between being a PDA based system (which makes it seem expensive) and being an all in one device in which case its PDA shell and cabling requirements count against it, Garmin have done a good job improving on the street pilot but there is still away to go before the Ique 3600 gets a distinct identity of its own.

More Garmin GPS Reviews

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