First impressions of the Indago are very good. The unit is dominated by the 3.5" TFT screen and feels chunky and well built despite not being that big a unit. The unit has a flat base which means it can sit comfortably on a table top and the stubby GPS antenna sits on the left hand upper edge which affords a good GPS lock but more on that later.

Unpacking the Indago from its case and setting it up in the test car was simple enough, the supplied mounting cradle is a suction mount with a flat hinged base plate which makes fixing the unit to the mount easy enough, although it does not feel overly secure compared to the new Garmin mounting system. Power is provided either from the internal rechargeable battery or via the supplied 12 volt adaptor and leads. Power up and you soon see that the screen is very bright and also colourful plus it manages to deal with reflections through the cars side window too.

With the Indago firmly in the cradle and power applied we sat in the car park for a good 3 minutes before getting the first fix, later power ups took anywhere between 20 and 45 seconds which is about par for the course for a SatNav system. Next time to enter a destination, this can be achieved by a full address entry, city lookup or a full 7 digit UK postcode, which we guess will be the chosen option of most users.

In order to get to our chosen location (a London tube station) the best route would take in some motorway, A road and then some local roads. Initially the Snooper looked to have chosen the exact route we'd have opted for and for that matter the one the TomTom Go 500 clamped to our dash also selected. As we left the car park the first audio instruction was issued by the female voice, it was good and loud too something that is normally only achieved by the TomTom Go range.

The start of our test route gave us a chance to look over the user interface which is quite clear and clean and remarkably similar to the TomTom UI and significantly better than Garmin and Navman's current offering which is often too cluttered with spurious info. The 2D and 3D maps scroll cleanly and have a choice of colours to make different lighting conditions more comfortable. The screen reacts to both speed and also distance to the next instruction zooming into junctions and providing simple arrows to reinforce the vocal instructions.

All seemed to be going well and the Snooper Indago held onto the satellite signal like a small yappy type dog, even in heavily built up streets with tall buildings either side and wooded sections of A road we still had 3 bars of signal which provided a high degree of location accuracy. Then just as we were smiling impressed with the Snooper it instructed us to leave the motorway 2 junctions earlier than we'd have normally gone for. Bemused we decided to follow the instruction which brought us down to the roundabout below the junction, past one exit and then "take the second exit" back onto the motorway!

While it's possible that using the slip road is 50 meters shorter we were not on "as the crow flies" mode and it was a good 2 minutes slower due to the traffic lights and other influences. The rest of this journey passed without further incident but over the course of a week the Snooper made a few questionable decisions opting to take us off of fast motorway for a short section of dual carriageway and then back onto the same motorway! Clearly the routing algorithm has a few blind spots, fine when you know where you are going as you can ignore them, but if you were totally reliant it'd have you on a merry old dance.

Please don't take this as being a showstopper more of an annoyance that may be tweaked in later firmware revisions, on the whole the navigation is reliable and the guidance is first class a good screen and clear voice. However that is just one side to the Snooper and the Indago is equipped with the latest version of the Enigma database that features in all Snoopers GPS speed camera products.

This database claims to be the most up to date on the market with new cameras added in under 48hrs, this database is then checked against your position and even while in navigation mode you are warned both audibly and visually of a camera. Unlike systems that rely on POI (points of information) this is a warning system fully integrated and designed from the ground up, it knows if a camera is facing your way of not, it knows if you are under the speed limit and adjusts its warning accordingly and it also adjusts the warning according to your speed so you get more notice on faster roads.

The Indago warns of most camera types including Gatso, Specs, Truvelo and frequent mobile trap locations, its database accuracy proved excellent on our test runs and it never missed a camera and knew of all the mobile hidey holes that we see the police using in the local area. The real proof was when the unit had taken us off down a bit of dual carriageway (wrongly we might add) and alerted us to a camera that was so new there were still signs of the excavation and a few barriers left behind around the area where the camera had been placed.

To get these updates you Indago needs to be connected to your PC and download the latest database (we'd suggest weekly) the updates are free for the first month but are then either a payment of £4.95 a month or a 5 year (lifetime?) subscription of £99. The unit does continue to work without a subscription but the database updates will not be available to you.

The main mapping data is supplied by NAVTEQ and appears to be their latest maps, the unit comes with UK and Ireland on a 256mb SD card but you can also upgrade to a maps of western Europe version should you need to. For truck drivers this SatNav system also has an option that knows about low bridges and you can plot routes that exclude them based on the height of your rig and you can also programme it with different speed limits for dual carriageways and motorways.

A week with the Snooper Indago SatNav system proved a fruitful one. It is highly accurate with a strong GPS lock, navigation instructions are good and general menus are easy to use. The touch screen data entry and full postcode support make input of designations easy and despite some occasionally weird route planning it is an effective A to B planner. Add in the excellent speed camera database and the Indago becomes what Road Angel have failed to deliver in the Navigator 6000 product, a true joining of SatNav and speed camera detection.

It comes at a price though, £399 is a lot to pay for a GPS system even one as complete as this, especially when you consider the post 6 month subscription for the database. Had the price been lower then we'd have strongly recommended the product but for this kind of money you could buy a TomTom Go 510 and a Talex unit and get the same function albeit from 2 boxes.

Published - 11/12/2006

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