14. Chicago To Chicago Downtown: Better Bring A Map

Back on the toll way, we now relied on the iWay to get to the Sears Tower, a popular tourist attraction and office building in the heart of Chicago downtown. The route found by the iWay was 7.8 miles long; the Roadmate again selected a marginally shorter route (7.6 miles). Travel time was estimated at 23 and 21 minutes, respectively.

Interstate 90 leads into downtown Chicago through a number of short tunnels which caused the Roadmate to lose the satellite connection instantly and forced the unit to reconnect when exiting the toll way. The iWay kept a reliable connection during that time, but told us to make a right turn off the toll way when the display showed a left turn. After this little hiccup, it was matter of seconds until both units lost satellite reception when 30-story high-rises began to grow into the sky on both sides of the street.

Lots of restaurants, but no satellite reception. But the Roadmate offers at least a partial solution, when the signal is lost.

... the device displays automatically a maneuver list for the remainder of the route.

The iWay 500c left us pretty much alone in this situation. A turn list is provided that is a few clicks away in the main menu, but a driver cannot be expected to navigate to such a menu in heavy downtown traffic. The only reason we were able to find the Sears Tower was since the building is easily visible from many locations. In contrast, the Roadmate automatically displays a turn list as soon as the device fails to connect to satellites. The loss of signal, however, left no doubt that navigation systems cannot replace a map in such a situation.

The iWay lost its signal equally fast and was confused when the signal was regained occasionally. A maneuver list is not displayed automatically.

Our travel time for this leg was 29 minutes with the delay caused by the loss of sufficient satellite signals.