Road Angel or Blackspot.com as they are often known seem to have a bit of a moral dilemma over the products use. It is officially termed a blackspot detector warning us of accident blackspot's, of course it just so happens that many of these have speed cameras next to them!

Whatever your moral position on speed camera detection systems you'll be pleased to hear that this one is 100% legal and not going to be outlawed under the forthcoming road traffic legislation that will ban radar based units. The Road Angel Compact uses global positioning satellites to accurately fix your position against a database of blackspot's in the devices memory. There are a few free databases out there that can be added to navigation systems like TomTom and Navman but the Road Angel is simply a warning device and solely concentrates on providing an accurate and clear warning to the driver, not getting you from A to B.

Installing the test unit into a car was simple enough, there are a range of mounting options provided in the kit including an adhesive pad, but we opted for the sucker system to clamp our Angel to the windscreen. Within a minute we had it all hooked up and the power lead plugged to the cars 12 volt supply, the actual connection is a USB socket and the lead has a nifty little connection to the cigarette power adaptor. Power up your Compact and the words "Road Angel" emanate from the unit and the bright blue backlight screen jumps into life, at first it shows a no satellite sign until it obtains lock on enough GPS satellites to gauge your location, this first TTF (Time To Fix) took about 10 minutes.

That's quite a long time but the instructions promise that this is only the first TTF and others will happen more quickly, with our screen showing zero MPH it was time to set off in search of GATSO, which in the UK doesn't take long as even the sleepiest village has a cash machine!  As you drive along your current speed is displayed in a large font on the Compacts screen, you can set it to alert you if you exceed a maximum speed but more likely you'll just leave it to warn you of impending prosecution. Approach a Gatso and the screen will change from it's cool blue to a more agitated orange and the audible warning will tell you the type of "blackspot" e.g. "fixed safety camera!" and the display will show the speed limit for the area your are in, you can suppress warning if you are actually under the posted limit.

The warning is good and loud with the spoken warning followed by a series of bleeps which get more frequent as you approach the blackspot, there is also an on screen gauge. We have a suspicion that the spoken  voice commands are by Tiff Needell but that's not too easy to prove. On starting up the unit a second time and then a third we found that the TTF time was consistently 3 - 4 minutes which did seem a bit too slow and either leaves you sat in a car park or unprotected for the first few minutes of your journey.

We managed to test the Road Angel Compact over a week and found the databases accuracy to be first class, comparing it to the "free" database it not only had temporary camera sites but more importantly had removed old sites that were no longer in use. That's the key with GPS based detection systems they are only as good as the data and the Road Angel system relies on a software application you download to your PC that will collect the latest database and install it using the supplied USB lead.

Road Angel supply the Compact with 6 months free database updates and then charge £3.99 a month (minimum 12 months) to continue to get the latest updated data. keeping your Angel up to date is a bit like having Anti Virus protection you need to keep up to date or else a new virus will catch you or in this case a new camera!

We have to admit to being very impressed with this smaller compact unit, it seems to do everything we expected from a GPS detector system, warnings are loud and accurate and the screen is bright and easy to read. Priced at £199 including the first 6 months updates it's even attractive to the wallet, however a 12 month cost of £48 to renew is something you shouldn't lose sight of. Overall this is welcome addition to the Road Angel range and it sets an affordable entry point, if you value your license and are looking for a legal way of keeping it the Road Angel Compact is a very good option.

Published - 28/09/2005

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