Budget navigation with turn by turn voice routing.

I bought the Lowrance iWay 250c about a month ago for an upcoming West Coast vacation, and have been using it nearly every day to familiarize myself with its use. It works very well, and I'm confident that it's going to be a welcome companion on vacation.

I've used other GPS units in the past, but they only did routing when when connected to a host computer. The iWay 250C does routing independently, and for the most part, does it well, giving turn by turn voice instructions that are clear, and usually accurate. It's a major advance over the the GPS units I've used previously! The voice instructions warn you of upcoming maneuvers well in advance. On Interstate highways, it usually warns you starting two miles ahead of route changes, so you have plenty of times to prepare and make lane changes. Furthermore, the GPS intelligently changes the scale of the map with impending course changes based on your speed and distance from the next location. It works well because you can just glance at the map and have a good idea of your location. At a stop, you will see the name of the cross streets, and nearby roads, but while moving at 60 mph, you just see major route numbers. Smart!

As other authors have noted, the iWay 250C isn't very fast to determine one's starting position, but once it's figured out where it's at, it stays locked on well. With its street level mapping, you can enter the address of your destination, and can usually determine the location. The maps seem to be about three years old, so some newer addresses aren't available, it will usually determine the correct location within a couple of hundred yards. That's pretty good in my opinion.

One of the biggest concerns I had when I bought the iWay 250C was how it would handle the situation when I got off route. I was afraid that the machine might flip out, and start spouting dire warnings that I was lost. Fortunately, the device takes it in stride, determines that you're off route, and recalculates your route. It usually suggests ways of getting back on your original route, but once it's clear that you've changed your route in a major way, it will just figure out a new route to your destination. This pleases me. If you get off the highway to stop at a gas station, it will get you back on the route, but if for some reason you need to take a detour, it will calmly just figure out a new route. The amount of time the recalculation takes seems to be related to how long and complicated your route is.

The iWay 250C does a competent job of routing. It may not know all the shortcuts a local would know, but the suggested routes are reasonable. You can enter your preferences for using major highways or avoiding them, and also for avoiding toll roads. The preference do make a difference in the suggested routes, and if you choose to add an intermediate destination, it's not hard to do. The GPS maintains a list of destinations, and you can change the order in which it routes you to them.

Here are a couple of suggestions I have for new owners of the iWay 250C.

1. Take time learn how to it use it! Use it on short trips where you know the area well and try taking the wrong routes. You'll gain confidence in it's ability to get you to your destination and might learn a few back roads you haven't used before. The menus can be a bit difficult to get used to so the time taken to learn it's use will be time well spent.

2. Don't try to route too much at one time. If you put in a destination that's a couple hundred miles away, it will recalculate routes fairly quickly, but if you try to enter a coast to coast trip all at once, the time it takes to reroute you will be too slow to be usable. Instead, select destinations about half a day away from your current location, and once there, select your next intermediate destination.

3. The iWay 250C comes with a suction cup mounting bracket. It works, but I found that I like using a eGrip adhesive friction strip to hold the GPS in place. It doesn't slide around, and lets your easily pick it up for hand held use.

4. Reread point one. Take the time to get familiar with the GPS!

There are a couple of things I don't like about the operation of the iWay 250C. The default setting doesn't let you change anything on the GPS while you're moving, and this is sensible to prevent you from being distracted while driving. But there are a couple of simple settings that I think would be sensible to able to change while in motion. There are three ways you can view the map, North up, forward direction up, and 3D view. I think it would be good if you could change the view while in motion, and also mute the volume.

The iWay 250C only comes with a 12 Volt adapter for your car, and the battery isn't changeable. A 120V A/C adapter, and the ability to change the battery would be a nice addition.

The stylus for the touch screen is holstered on the left side of the unit. As a right hander, it makes it a two handed operation getting the stylus from the holder and is a slight inconvenience.

By the way, the iWay 250C lets you change the language that the turn by turn directions are given in. For laughs, you can change them to French, German, Spanish, Dutch, or UK English. The narrator in Spanish sounds like Ricardo Montalban describing "rich Corinthian leather", and UK English will teach you phrases such as "slip road".

The iWay 250C also has an MP3 player and picture viewer built into it, but I think they are of limited use. Buy an iPod if you want an MP3 player.

Update, June 10, 2007:

I got back from vacation on the West Coast, and drove from San Francisco to Seattle by way of U.S. 101, and then back to San Jose on the interstate highways. The iWay 250C worked at least as well as I expected. The only place the device gets annoying is when you've reached the vicinity of your destination (Safeco Field) and are looking for a parking space.

The iWay 250C proved useful when we were looking for motel in the San Jose area. We had tried three motels and all were full. I let the GPS find a list of nearby motels, and as you scroll through the list, you see the address and phone number. Two phone calls later, we had a room at a nearby motel. Very cool.