NaviGadget

Lowrance iWay 250C review

Nov 8, 2006 gps navigation, lowrance, reviews

The Lowrance iWay 250C measures 3 x 4 x 1 inches and it costs only $350 while still managing to be loaded with features. The iWay 250C comes with a 2GB SD card for maps and you can expect to get turn-by-turn directions on its 3.5″ touchscreen from this highly portable device. The review at PC Mag gave the Lowrance 250C a 3.5 out of 5 which means “good” on their scale.

What we really think as a major dissappointment with the 250C is that it doesn’t use a GPS receiver that support WAAS which has the potential to provide down to 3 meters of accuracy.

The iWay 250C uses an older-generation 12-channel GPS receiver, which doesn’t support WAAS. Other products I’ve recently reviewed have included the latest-generation SiRF Star III GPS module, which boasts rapid satellite-acquisition time and a more sensitive receiver. I did notice that initial acquisition time was longer on the Lowrance from a cold start (out of the box), but once the GPS had an initial fix on my location, subsequent acquisition times were acceptable. Also, during navigation, I never lost the satellite track.

However this was not the main area that needed improvement for the reviewers. Here is what they had to say about route generation times…

My biggest disappointment with the iWay 250C, though, came from a totally unexpected quarter—lengthy route-generation times. I took the iWay 250C with me on two road trips. One trek was from New Jersey to Cincinnati, and the other from New Jersey to Bartlett, New Hampshire. The route to Cincinnati took nearly three minutes to generate, and the one to Bartlett took over 2 minutes. Other competitive units generated the same routes in under 30 seconds. That is a huge difference.

Now we’re not sure what kind of processor or algorithm they use for route generation but it sounds like they could do a lot better.