Opening the package and first holding the Globalsat GV-101 is a rather mixed experience. It measures 140x 92 x 35mm it's also rather utilitarian and lacks the style of some of the mainstream SatNav units Like TomTom and Navman, yet all the bells and whistles are present and it has a nice large 3.6" screen. Our first task was to get the required maps onto the GV-101, these are supplied on a series of CD's and the first disc opens a loader application which guides you through the process.

The 256mb card provided should be enough to hold all of the UK maps however we found it reluctant to show enough memory to load all of the required data and had to settle to eliminating Scotland from the download for the purposes of the review. The process was also not trouble free and we got numerous read / write errors from the first map disc the application asked us to load, finally after 4 attempts the maps loaded onto the SD card and as long as we stayed away from Scotland we were ready to test.

Time to fit the Globalsat GPS unit into our car for a week long series of journeys. The main method of mounting is a very long gooseneck with a sucker attachment for the windscreen, we managed to locate this without too much trouble but the unit did seem to wobble a lot as a combination of it's weight and the goosenecks length kicked in. The power can be provided from the GV-10's own internal battery or via a USB power connection lead that plugs into a 12 volt socket, again this lead although perfect in operation was a bit short to reach to the end of the very long mount resulting in a cable pinned tightly to the dashboard of our car.

The last act is to attach the GPS antenna, this is an outboard unit which mates with a magnetic plate which can be stuck to the dash. Having located the antenna we had to attach the lead to the rear of the GPS unit, this is a fiddly operation with a small connector which needs to be screwed into the socket, any visions of this being a quick release unit had long since vanished.

Time for some good news, the GV101 quickly loaded and needed some screen calibration before we were presented with a main menu from where you can access some of the extra features we'll cover later, but for now it was straight to navigation. Once past the obligatory safety warning the map screen appears with a menu button, pressing this gets you to a choice set-up options and how to lay in a destination.

The destinations tab allows to navigate to a favourite, intersection, city centre, POI or recent destination, if you opt for the address option (most likely) you can enter either street first or city first, sadly there is no postcode option. Having set our first route the calculation was speedy and our on screen instructions sprang to life, moving off the screen gave both a map view and the next turn information alongside a distance to turn counter. The voice instructions are very precise with 2 warnings of the upcoming turn and then a rather annoying yet accurate bong sound effect at the point of turn. The accuracy is a strong point for the GV101, using the very latest SiRF Star III chipset it achieve a positioning that is more sensitive than our TomTom Go unit and copes much better in built up areas.

Driving at motorway speeds or with the radio on at a reasonable level the voice instructions do become a bit difficult to hear, this is not helped by the fact that the speaker is mounted in the rear of the unit on the left hand side furthest from the driver. Route selection was similar to the multitude of other devices we've tested although it does seem to prefer A roads over the shortest and often quickest route, there are a few settings that may vary it's route choice, for example you can choose select more or less turns, presumably useful if you drive an American car?

Our second route test threw up a very weird situation, as we approach a roundabout at which we needed the 4th exit (a right turn) the voice kept telling us to bear left even when the on screen arrows and map route clearly showed the correct right turn. We managed to repeat this on a few roundabouts with particularly sharp right had exits (normally 4 or more exits). This was the biggest fault we found in our weeks worth of being guided by the Globalsat GV-101, subsequent journeys were un eventful even when we deliberately went off track.

The unit simply tries to turn you round for around half a mile until it gives up and re routes, this isn't perhaps as intelligent as a TomTom or Navman unit but is still much better than the systems fitted to BMW's and Mercedes for thousands of pounds.

Living with the GV101 for a week was a mixed and somewhat frustrating experience, on one hand there are nice touches like the screen automatically switching between day and night  mode and extras like MP3 and even video playback. However every time we started to think this isn't too bad another fault would crop up, the last one was on our final day and we accidentally left the unit powered on in the morning and returned to find the battery dead. No big deal but as the unit is Windows CE based it required a re config of the screen alignment before it would start-up.

Overall we can't strongly recommend this offering from Globalsat, although we can see past it's less than glamorous exterior the messy cable set-up, wobbly mounting system and occasional routing / guidance errors mean that it comes a distinct second to the offerings from more familiar names. Priced at £299 in the UK it's not even undercutting the competition, which it clearly needs to do if one was to accept the shortcoming and use the GV-101 on a daily basis.

Published - 03/12/2005

More GPS Navigation Reviews -

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