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Pros

• Portrait / Landscape twist assisted
• Loud speaker
• Easy Bluetooth pairing
• GPS antenna works on GPS software
• Works with most skins and case while on iPhone
• Mount should work on iPhone 4

Cons

• Mount is awkward and difficult
• Footprint a big large
• Mount blocks camera
• Mic quality issue

The Bottom Line
The Magellan Premium Car Kit secures your iPhone in a grip-type fashion which requires two hands to safely attach and remove your iPhone from the mount. Most may not even find this a concern and outside of the back plate blocking your cameras view, really this is one strong mount for your iPhone or iPod touch. With compatibility for skins and cases, a good sounding speaker and the easy twist orientation, this may be your mount for your car, if you can find it under three figures.

Recommended
Yes

Full Review
Magellan is well known for its car all-in-one units and thus has had some experience with mounting these units. Magellan has taken that engineering thinking and know how and come up with a mount for the iPhone 3G/S and iPod touch. Enhancing GPS with a built-in antenna and placing a loud speaker into the car kit, Magellan hopes you’ll over look, um, Tom’s mount for the Premium Car Kit. But should you?

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• Compact with small footprint
• Easy to mount and dismount iPhone
• Holds iPhone steady while driving

Cons

• Built-in antenna seems non-effective
• Built-in speaker insufficient for phone calls
• Pairing requires phone to be mounted
• Lack of Bluetooth calls through line-out

The Bottom Line
TomTom has made a mighty fine car kit that mounts easily and securely. The iPhone never bobs or bounces while driving and the mounting method is the easiest of all mounts we’ve seen. Sadly, the speaker is weak and useless and the built-in antenna does not seem to boast your reception in any way. Yet even with its faults and bit high price tag, the small footprint and easy mount makes it a winner.

Recommended
Yes

Full Review
The iPhone has brought GPS to millions of phones with a simple and easy download from the App Store. Not so simple has been finding a way to mount that phone for viewing the GPS while driving. With many options for a mount, how does one decide which is the best? TomTom hopes that its car kit mount will be a choice that ends up on your windshield.

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Pros

• Best map interface we’ve seen
• Info Bar wealthy on information
• User configurable Voice prompting at turns
• Contact search for addressing
• iPod pausing during voice instructions
• Facebook integration

Cons

• Lackluster iPod interface and controls
• Generic highway badges
• Limited POI database
• No Internet look-up for POIs

The Bottom Line
With a slew of GPS offerings for the iPhone it is becoming difficult to find the right navigation software for your Apple device. CoPilot’s expertise and years of experience is evident in its mobile app version. While odd routing issues crept up during the review, CoPilot Live proved itself to be a nice offering with some rough edges. With a free 30-day fully functioning version to try before you buy, CoPilot is something every traveler should download to their iPhone.
Recommended
Yes

Full Review
CoPilot has been around for years and it’s version 8 number boldly indicates this. I still remember the first version it released for laptops almost a decade ago and now, it’s been shrunk down to the little iPhone screen. CoPilot Live handles the reduced screen real estate quite well placing important information in clear and easy to read parts of the screen while never cluttering it up. Of all the navigation applications I have reviewed, iPhone or stand-alone, I would say CoPilots map interface is the best. But does it get you to your destination the best?

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• Pleasant looking interface
• Excellent iPod player
• Google Maps integration for POIs
• On-screen speed limit indicator
• Logo-based POIs for easy identification
• Superb traffic alerts and up-to-date information

Cons

• Pop-up notifications takes GPS off-line
• No Google or Internet search integration
• Lack of podcast support in Music Player
• Does not support suite numbers in Contacts and mis-routes

The Bottom Line
Magellan RoadMate ignores the iPhones sleek user interface in favor of its own look-and-feel which will help owners of Magellan’s dash mount PNDs jump right into the iPhone application. For first time Magellan users, the simply layout will be a quick learn for any experienced GPS user. Once on the road, RoadMate wraps up its well defined experience into a tightly knit package that will get your to your destination quickly, easily, and accurately.

Recommended
Yes

Full Review
Magellan went a, um excuse the pun, different route with its iPhone navigation application. Instead of using many of the familiar iPhone menu items and other common iPhone attributes, Magellan stuck with its interface from its Personal Navigation Device (PND) units found on the windshields of thousands of vehicles across America. This twist helps those going from the PND to the iPhone to minimize the learning curve while keeping the user experience satisfying.
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Pros

• Best interface we’ve seen
• Excellent iPod player
• Google Maps integration for POIs
• On-screen speed limit indicator
• Logo-based POIs for easy identification
• Superb traffic alerts and up-to-date information

Cons

• Worse routing we’ve seen
• POI and highway icons too small to easily view
• Limited internal POI database
• End-point address not display
• Does not support suite numbers in Contacts and mis-routes

The Bottom Line
Navigon MobileNavigator has everything going for it from a beautiful interface, to a well integrated iPod player, to top notch traffic information, down to Google Local Search. The irony is its failure, routing! Time after time, MobileNavigator failed to route us to our destination in the quickest manner. Until Navigon can correct this, for $90, we can’t even begin to recommend this for your iPhone.

Recommended
No

Full Review
SvenOnTech first came across Navigon about three years ago with its stylus — yes stylus! — based PND unit and gave it a try after seeing its pleasing interface with POI icons that were logo of the place of business. What we found after a week of use was some odd routing behavior. Most of the issues were in the country and we wrote it off to that fact. Improvement would surely come in the coming years. So when SvenOnTech receive MobileNavigator for the iPhone, I was curious to see how it would take me home, literally. Was Navigon able to fix its PND deficiency or would I roll my eyes and ask, “Why?”

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Pros

• Best routing we’ve seen
• Great menus system
• Fast start-up
• Wealth of information on navigation screen
• iPod pausing during voice instructions

Cons

• Horrible iPod interface
• Dated map interface
• Limited POI database
• No Internet-connectivity for POIs

The Bottom Line
TomTom has a strong history of being one of the best in the GPS industry and as the first to the iPhone, it took the market lead. But with a dated interface and lack of Internet look-up of POIs that the other guys have, TomTom may have a tough sale at $60. It’s saving grace may be the fact that it routed us better than any other GPS app we have tested.
Recommended
Yes

Full Review
I’ve been a fan of TomTom navigation products way back to the start of the millennium dating to our first review of its Palm OS navigator in 2002. Yes, this isn’t the first time TomTom has brought GPS to a “PDA”. (Remember that acronym?) We all first learned of TomTom’s navigator when the second generation iPhone, the 3G, came to the world with the ability to run third-party applications. Unfortunately, it would take over a year before one was able to download it from the App Store. Now that we have it, is it as good as a TomTom dedicated device or is just a little better than the nearly decade old Palm OS version? Truthfully, there is no short answer as to how good TomTom for the iPhone is. Like all the other GPS applications for the iPhone, it has it’s lacking and it has its strengths. Take a ride with me as we make a turn-by-turn review of TomTom’s navigation for the iPhone.

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Recommended
No (Too Expensive)

Full Review
In-car navigation systems are nice to have due to giving you a large screen and keeping that dash clean. In-dash systems also are free of inviting thieves into your car. Full integration into your audio system is another nice feature as well. But how do they stack up and compare to dash-mount devices? Specifically, how does the Alpine NVE-M300 compare? Read on and be sure to see our video reviews below, too.

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Yes (Conditional)

Full Review
When I first heard about the Dash Express and it’s ability to communicate to the Internet and other Dash Express GPS devices for a more accurate look at traffic, I was fascinated with it. GPS devices for the most part have lacked any leaps in features and this was the jump I had been wanting to see for some time. You can imagine how excited I was when the unit arrived a week later at SvenOnTech headquarters. After registering the Dash online, would it rise to the heights I had been waiting for or would it be just another well crafted marketing campaign?

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Yes (Strong)

Full Review
SvenOnTech has tested many TomTom’s all the way back to its Palm offering nearly six years ago. We’ve always loved its easy to read interface and have been impressed with the features offered by the Holland-based navigation company. Always trying to do something different than the other guys, TomTom has continued to improve its devices from integration to Eclipse radios to including hands-free Bluetooth speakerphone. So what did the Dutch come up with for the GO 930? Address voice input. Oh ya, now we’re talking…literally.

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Recommended
Yes*

Full Review
SvenOnTech has seen many GPS units and for the most part, GPS is GPS. What separates the boys from the men is interface, accuracy, and volume. Yes, men speak much louder. Accuracy has been pretty spot on for many manufacturers we’ve tested with only poor address placement being the real major problem in this area. When it’s time to turn in a complex intersection, Harman Kardon, like most others, do this well. For the most part, addresses on the GPS-310 were pretty much spot on with the actual location.

The only dismal aspect to accuracy we found was that Harman Kardon thought it not prudent to tell us if our end point was going to be on the left or right side. When you’re in a large busy city and you’re in the left lane of four, and then you notice when it’s too late that you need to be in the right lane, well, that sucks. In one instance when this happened to us, it took us ten minutes to get back to where we had to be due to the no u-turn signs everywhere. What a frustrating thing when the whole idea of a GPS is to get you to your destination without worry. This is why you see an astrek next to our recommendation. If you can live with this limitation, then yes, we recommend it. If not, move onto another brand. (According to our contact at Harman Kardon, all three models do not give street position of your destination.)

We took the GPS-310 all over the Bay Area and Central Valley of California. We put in over 40 hours of testing into this unit, and did so side-by-side with a competitor we’ve tested (and reviewed here on SvenOnTech.) We found the GPS-310 to be more accurate and quicker, when we missed a turn, to re-route us than the other unit. In all fairness, the other unit was about a year old and a lot can happen in this industry in just twelve short months. From San Francisco, to San Jose, to Fresno, to Stockton, to Manteca, to Elk Grove, to Sacramento, to Oakland, to Pittsburgh (CA), to Walnut Creek, and beyond, the GPS-310 just did an excellent job of getting us to our destination. Again, outside of the lack of telling us, “Hey, it’s going to be on your left side,” we couldn’t have been any happier with the GPS-310.

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