Lowrance Iway 100m Review

[kreat]

So - the unit arrived last night - I didn't get a lot of time to play with it but I did get it up and working. I am a relative GPSr newbie so bear that in mind:)

 

First off - what's in teh box -

 

The unit itself

suction cup mount

wrist strap

128 MB MMC card

LEI Card Reader

Manuals

The MapCreate Turn by Turn software

 

The unit itself seems pretty sturdy - I'm sure I could drop this and feel pretty good that it would survive the fall. Buttons seem a good size to me. The screen also seems to be a good size.

 

Suction cup mount: it gets a rough ride in my miata - a little bouncy - I had it pop off once while I was driving in to work this morning - but it was also very cold so that may have had something to do with it. No directions on how to assemble the mount however - it came 5 peices with 4 screws.

 

Wrist strap - I'm not sure where I'm supposed to attach it - there is only one obvious place and looping the strap through there prevents me from plugging in the DC power adapter in the car correctly.

 

128 MB MMC card - bigger than I thought I'd get honestly. I'm still figuring out how the software puts data on the card - in addition to your maps it is writting out other files as well - one of which is huge - I was only able to put about a 60mb map on the disk but I need to look into this more. LEI card reader seems to work but all of the software utilities are not working for me. I forget the name of the utility now but when I run it it tells me the driver is not loaded. But I had no problem creating map and waypoint file - putting them on the card and using them in the unit.

 

Manuals seem ok so far - one for the unit one for the MapCreate software.

 

Mapcreate softweare seemed relativly easy to use - I created a map file for the GPSr of Colorado without too many problems. The estimate size button always seems to estimate low so far. I also had the issue - I created a 83mb map (via the estiamte size tooll) but there wasn't enough room on the disk after the software put some additional files there. I'll have to look when I get home to tell you what those files were.

 

 

Drive in this morning:

 

The unit got me to work perfectly - it took a little longer to calculate the route than my friends iQUE but nothing too terrible. Screen was relativly easy to read - the only problem being the unit was vibrating around pretty good. The speak button is nice - it will make the unit give you information about the next turn if you missed whatit said or forgot. I don't like how it auto-zooms. It would be nice if when I changed the zoom level it would stay that way - at least until the next turn but it will revert to whatever zoom level if prefers after a few seconds.

 

Anyway - these are just some quick impressions. Feel free to post questions about the unit and I'll try to answer them and I'll also post some more impressions later. Hopefully I'll tackle my first cache with this unit over the weekend and let you know how that goes!

[ebinfl]

Yours looks very much like my Ifinder H2O.

 

I'll be interested to see what you think of the software and the location of the SD card. On mine, it's under the batteries and I have to remove them whenever I want to add waypoints from the map.

 

I really like the unit itself, but I'm a newbie too, and don't have any experience with anything else. BUT, they sure make the software and transfer more difficult than it has to be. I also don't like the "copy protection" feature of having to have the CD in the drive to start the map program.

 

I had asked about converting the LOC files from the cache pages and the only thing I seem to be able to use is gpsbabel to export to the Mapcreate program. I got a nice response about how to use GSAK but I understand nothing about script writing so I'm sticking with gpsbabel.

[kreat]

The card slot is located in the same place - under the batteries. I am still a little torn on that - I think I'd rather have the card internal like that than in an external slot and maybe being under the batteries will offer some protection if the unit is dropped.

 

I did forget to mention - the unit is very easy to see with sunglasses on. I've used my friends iQUE and when driving with sunglasses I sometimes had a hard time seeing anything on its screen.

 

We are going to try and find a cache this weekend - me with teh iWAY - him with his iQUE - should be interesting:)

 

The Mapcreate software also had streets in some newer neighborhoods around here so that impressed me as well. The most recent software on my friends iQUE doesn't have those streets yet.

 

I haven't had too many issues with the file transfer yet other than these additional files ending up on my card and I don't know what they are - something ending in a .at5 is a large file and eats up alot of space.

[Hoary]

Thanks for good review! I'm shure I'll have some questions, just need time to figure them out (trying to work at the moment )

 

As for .at file - it's a map. If you go to Lowrance web site and download Free Enhanced Lake Maps (they have one for Colorado) - it's .at5 files.

Edited March 2, 2005 by Hoary

[+IVxIV]

Congrats on getting the iWay!

 

It always takes a bit of time to familiarize with a new GPS, and if this is your "first ever GPS" then you'll definitely want to read the owners manual a couple times lol

 

GPS technology is quite amazing if you've never before experienced it, but the learning curve can be fun & quick. I'm really curious how well the voice-prompting autorouting works on that unit. Yes the memory card being stuck under the batteries might seem weird, but it's the best location as far as keeping the memory card safe, and is better than having a seperate opening for the card & the batteries (less places for water to leak in)

 

If you're looking for software to transferr Geocaching .loc/.gpx files from here to the GPSr try Expert GPS as well as the stuff you've tried already.

[+JohnnyVegas]

Thanks for the review. I am looking forward to a field report after you find a few caches with your new GPS.

 

My guess is that the card slot is under the batteries may make for a more secure location. If they had to provide a sperate location it would mean a more complicated design which would cost more and another place for something to break. The magellan meridians have the card stored in the battery compartment also. As many times as I have droped my Meridian gold I gota think it is a good place for the card.

Edited March 2, 2005 by JohnnyVegas

[kreat]

So I drove aroune with it a little yesterday - my thoughts on autorouting:

 

The unit seemed pretty accurate most of the time with regards to distance to turns. It was a little confusising at times - it would tell me to veer right or left and I'm not sure why. I'm driving straight downa 6 lane road and it wants me to veer left before I turn left at a light.

 

It also seems to prefer highway names over street names. i.e. one of the main roads through town - Academy Blvd is also CO-83 for a ways. The unit will refer to the road as CO-83 - this results in directions like "Merge onto N Academy Blvd" at the intersection where CO-83 and Academy seperate - yet the whole time you are simply going straight on the same road and you never merge with anything. Thankfully the turn arrow actually tells you to go straight or it might get a little confusing.

 

I've also noticed it takes a couple of minutes for the unit to get a good accuracy - if you start driving before that it might be as much as 500ft off resulting in bad directions.

 

 

Some complaints about the display - mainly how it chooses to display information. You can customize what information is displayed on your screen during autoroating. Yesterday I was playing with Distance to Turn, Time to Turn, ETA, Road currently on. Some things they could improve on - each field centers the information. Thats fine until either the information doesn't fit or you have too many fields displayed - in which case all you see is the center of something. So instead of seeing something like 6:45:55 for your eta you might only see 45:5, or instead of N. Academy Blvd - you see cademy for your street name. I think it would be nive if they left justified - the first part of the data is prolly more usefull - at least to me.

 

The unit works great however - definitely worth the money so far and has been easy to figure out.