Navman S90i Satellite Navigation Unit With European Mapping

I bought the S90i to replace an old "AA Navigator" PDA sat nav as a Christmas present for my wife. Over the Christmas period, we travelled about 500 miles on a break to Cornwall and used the journey as a test & familiarization for the S90i. I also took my VDO Dayton sat nav (Navteq maps) and we completed the whole break using the S90i with the VDO Dayton as a comparison.

Dave Matthews has already given a good review of the S90i and I support pretty much all of his analysis, so I will just add a few additional thoughts. I will look at two aspects (i) does it do a good job at getting you from A to B and (ii) how usable is it, including the additional software such as TMC, TTS, POI & Bluetooth.

Point (i) does it do the job? - the answer is yes. Directions are very clear and timely which, coupled with the great display, makes for stress free navigation.........but there are a few niggles that detract from an otherwise great performance:

When compared with the accuracy of the Navteq maps, the S90i Tele Atlas maps do not seem to be as accurate. 500 miles around the South West is not a definitive test, but a couple of incidences of incorrectly identifying the number of exits at roundabouts and an attempt to direct me across a field to join the A30 in Devon had me worried. As a comparison, the Navteq VDO unit (map date early 2006) gave me all the correct data for the roundabouts and A30 junction. To see an example of the poor information, take a look at Bondhouse Lane (Devon) on Google Maps in Satellite View - this is also Tele Atlas based - and you will note that Tele Atlas thinks the road goes straight into a farmer's field! At least the map data stops the road in the field - The S90i compounds the problem by thinking the road actually joins the A30. Luckily, the VDO Dayton (with 2-year older maps) got me back on track and onto the real A30 junction 5 miles away. This particular map error has been submitted to Tele Atlas for resolution.

Another small niggle is that the S90i seems to regard dual carriageways as Motorways - so joining a main carriageway such as the A30 is accompanied by an instruction to "join the motorway". Surely, the Navman programmers could use "Motorway" for motorways and something like "Main Carriageway" for other arterial roads?

The route calculation is fast enough but I consistently found that the estimated time of arrival was over optimistic - unless, of course, you are the Stig or Lewis Hamilton. This is the opposite of the VDO unit which is highly pessimistic. Splitting the two ETA's at the start of the journey actually came close to the real outcome!

My final comment on the "getting from A to B side is the address search facility which requires the selection of the country you wish to drive to before entering an address. This is fine if you are travelling around Europe, but if you spend most of your time in the UK it would be considerably more convenient if a "Home" country could be nominated as default address base but with an option to select a different country if travelling abroad. Removing all but the UK map (via the Navdesk software provided) significantly reduces boot-up time and makes UK the default map for address input. The euro maps can be added again later when travelling abroad.

Now for point (ii) - the additional functions:

I noticed (as Dave Matthews did) that the Text To Speech (TTS) function was not working on the S90i. I could not find any ON/OFF setting for TTS and so left it until my return home to find out why. The answer came from an Australian website - which told me that only some of the Navman voices have TTS capability. The English female voice does not provide TTS whereas the English Emily voice does. Switching voices to English Emily gave me full TTS functionality. The TTS service now works really well, with good pronunciation of upcoming streets - but WHY do Navman not include this useful snippet of information in their instruction manual??. I guess there may be a number of "out of the box" users of the S90i that are using a non-TTS voice and just resigned to the TTS service not operating!

The TMC service also worked well and provided traffic information faster than the VDO unit. The setting that worked best (for me) was to limit warnings just to events occurring on my programmed route.

Similarly, the Bluetooth telephone function worked well. Pairing with a Nokia 6111 was quick and the S90i automatically pulled in the address book from the phone as soon as it paired. This function worked as well as any dedicated Bluetooth hands free unit.

The NavPix camera also "does what it says on the box" but I found the wide-angle (non-adjustable) lens just a bit too wide angle. I think that maybe the NavPix concept just does not work for me - I am happy, in hindsight, to store addresses in my favourites rather than pictures. However, if you like the concept, then yes - it works.

The inbuilt safety camera warnings only operate when travelling at a speed above 80% of the legal road speed. Travelling at 55mph along a 70mph dual carriageway will result in no safety camera warnings. This initially made me think that the notification system had an intermittent fault. As with the Text To Speech service, Navman has decided that it is not worth telling anyone about this in the instruction manual; however you can find this out if you dig around in the support section of the Navman website. Personally, I would like to be informed of ALL upcoming cameras irrespective of the speed at which I am driving, but I guess that Navman has undertaken considerable user opinion on this and concluded otherwise.

A follow on from this is that even when the safety camera warning is provided, the sound is much like the gentle tinkle of a fairy wand and not particularly attention grabbing. Driving along at 70mph with wind noise, tyre noise and passengers in the car, the warning sound can easily be missed. The on-screen warning is similarly missable being a small speed indicator in the bottom left hand side of the screen. The AA Navigator (which had many faults) at least had a full-screen visual warning which quickly alerted the driver even when the sat nav screen was positioned well away from the driver line of sight.

Something that I am still checking is that the S90i does not appear to filter safety cameras on the opposite carriageway. Travelling on the A30/A303 there were many instances where the camera warning was picking up opposite carriageway cameras and not just the ones on the direction of travel. Maybe this is just a POI accuracy issue.

POI accuracy also came to my attention when driving to a POI Petrol Station. Even though the unit is equipped with data only a few months old, the petrol station had long since been demolished and the site was overgrown with weeds and waiting redevelopment.

I have now abandoned the Navman safety camera database and disabled all the Navman built in camera POI's. Instead, I have a subscription to a third-party camera database and have installed this camera data as additional POI's. This is quite straightforward but does require connecting the S90i to a PC with internet access. Using the Navman Navdesk software, the option is also provided to install your own warning sounds. This has enabled me to abandon the standard Navman "tinkling fairy wand" sound with a decent voice warning along the lines ("Warning, Speed camera 500 yards ahead!"). Anyone wishing to do the same can record their own WAV warning files with a microphone directly on their PC.

Conclusion - the S90i is good at its main job of providing voice & screen based navigation within the limitations of the Tele Atlas map accuracy. The TTS, TMC and Bluetooth additions all work well and make this a good all-round machine. Abandoning the inbuilt camera POI's in favour of third party ones with better (home made) warning messages considerably improves the safety camera warning ability. As with other reviewer comments, the overall feeling is that this has been rushed to market with poor supporting user documentation. Assuming that Navman release "Service Pack 1" based on feedback then this has the potential to be a really good navigator, shifting from 3 stars to 5 stars. If Navman would only change to Navteq maps then all would be perfect.

I have sent a copy of this review to Navman and suggested that they might like to add their comments.

My hardy Garmin StreetPilot packed in after a few years, it was bottom range and my introduction to satnav. It worked reasonably well but was sometimes slow picking up a signal and the voice was a bit harsh plus the screen was effective but small - a good very basic model. How things have moved on since I bought the Garmin in the world of satnav.

Moving from the Garmin Streetpilot to the Navman S90i is like changing the portable tv for a LCD HDTV - The change is highly impressive.

I don't like window mounted satnavs so had the old Garmin dashboard disk on the car and thinking this would be no good was looking for a independent dashboard bracket, however tried the Navman S90i on the disk and it holds superbly, far better than the old Garmin ever did, so problem solved.

The screen is awesome to look at night and day and is all touch-screen controlled, this works really well and even with my chubby fingers and driving (tut-tut) I have had no problem getting the right button first time even using the keyboard function. There is so much information on the screen available if you want it at a touch of the screen and setting up the device was kids stuff.

I use the english female voice and it is loud enough but not offensively loud or a voice that would drive you mad, it says the road at roundabouts etc which is excellent.

The satellite pickup is far better than my old Garmin, so much quicker, virtually straight away, even inside the house on the settee near the window, the old Garmin would never pick up there.

With the larger widescreen it makes seeing where you are going far easier and means you can keep your eyes on the road a lot more. Programming addresses is simple but I have to agree that having to scroll down to the country (takes 1/4 second) is irritating but I got used to that with the Garmin anyway.

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Well just updating as promised regarding the Hands Free Phone function.
It works perfectly, picking up my Sony Erricson K810i immediately. Transferring the phone book was very simple indeed.

Contrary to a previous review!
- YOU DO NOT HAVE TO TRANSFER/MANUALLY RECONNECT YOUR PHONE TO THE NAVMAN EVERY TIME YOU GET IN THE CAR - IT CAN BE SET TO AUTOMATIC -
I am nearly sick of saying it and readers might be sick of hearing it but it really is very simple to make sure your phone will connect itself to the Navman every time you turn it on. Just go into the functions 'HandsFree' and 'Phonebook' and put the settings to do so - SIMPLE.

I have a loud old Previa with a noisy exhaust and even with both front windows open and doing 70mph on a sunny day the HandsFree works very well, I can hear the callers no probs and they can hear me no probs.

Also, I love the way Texts come on to the screen in Handsfree mode and you can quickly read them whilst going along.

All in all I am so very pleased I got this bit of kit.

It gets you there - they all do that more or less. But this is Navmans Top of the Range model so I expected all the bells and whistles. What don't I like:-

As far as I can find, no GPS coordinate input option - WHAT!!!!???

Cannot pre-plan routes from anywhere except where you are now, and if you are in your house with no signal, no chance even to do that. I want to plan several routes on a multi-stage holiday before I go - you just can't do it.

Very hard to pre-plan detours you want to make - I like to use known or obvious short cuts - in France for example some C-roads are straight as a die, but all Nav's avoid them, costing you miles. Its very hard to make many of these changes before you get fed up bothering.

Re-route is marginally slower than Tom-Tom. In a busy town you might miss the re-route before it tells you meaning you need to pull over for 15 seconds while it catches up - not a disaster and usually not necessary but it happens.

Traffic option relies on a crappy 1.5metre long wire you have to dangle along your dash. Its VERY untidy and totally uncool. You won't use it.

If you want a basic unit which gets you there and yo can't customise, its fine, but why pay for the top of the range model if that's all you want?

Navpix is a gimmic IMHO - I doubt you will use it.