12. Reliability

Reliability of a navigation system boils down to the question: Does it get me safely to where I want to go? In general, both systems mastered this task most of the time and routed us to requested destinations, out of less-friendly neighborhoods, to our favorite restaurants, gas stations as well as hotels nearby. A critical element of the reliability for both devices are map data software updates, which are offered from both manufacturers for an extra charge ($99 for the Magellan Roadmate and North America; price not yet determined for the Lowrance iWay).

Both installed Navteq map versions (Roadmate: Q1 2004, iWay: Q3 2004) were somewhat current, but revealed several errors in their entries over the test period. These errors ranged from slight flaws such as street sections with wrong street numbers to serious mistakes in the records of pre-installed points of interest. Hospitals were mixed up with churches in Illinois, hotels were placed in the middle of trailer parks in central Florida and pharmacies were indicated in very strange places in Tennessee. Interestingly, the address of THG's HQ is registered correctly in Westlake Village, California, in the Roadmate unit. Using the iWay, you have to be lucky to find our office, as the street is listed not in Westlake Village but assigned to the neighboring Thousand Oaks.

On the other hand, points of interest can be the single most important feature that serves as a true added value of such an automated navigation system. No matter where we traveled, both systems were able to identify restaurants, hotels or even drug stores. The data is provided complete with address and phone numbers. In one case, we were impressed by how a pharmacy could be found on a route in the middle of Georgia: In an emergency, we contacted our family doctor to call in a prescription at a pharmacy in a department store on our route and picked up the antibiotics when we arrived 15 minutes later. We valued the same functionality for making reservations at restaurants and hotels.

Certainly, we were not able to check all two million waypoints installed on the navigation devices, but throughout our test period it appeared that about one out of 10 points of interest either did not exist or was outdated. It can be frustrating finding targeted destinations abandoned or simply non-existent. If the point-of-interest functionality, however, worked, as it did in most cases with both units, then it was one of the most lauded and appreciated features.

An exception of reliability is downtown navigation. In downtown Chicago and Los Angeles and the financial district of San Francisco, both units were pretty much useless. The Roadmate's automatically displayed list of upcoming turns provides some help for the driver to hold on to. The iWay offers a similar list, but the user has to navigate to the main menu of the device to find it, which is hardly advisable when driving in hectic downtown traffic.

Lost in downtown Chicago: Both units were not able to keep a satellite connection in downtown areas. Loss of signal is indicated by a rotating satellite symbol on the Roadmate screen and a simple "Searching for position" announcement on the iWay screen.

In essence, both systems usually guided us safely to our destination, but sometimes and unexpectedly surprised us with hiccups that either delayed our trip or even would have made navigation impossible. We learned quickly that it is always a good idea to have a map available of the area we were driving in. This is the case for the oversized Rand McNally map for the big family vacation as well as the local map of the area visited for business.