New Player In GPS OS Mapping Market

We're just back from the Lake District where we had the chance to get hands-on experience of the latest player in the OS mapping-enabled GPS market in the shape of the new Lowrance Endura range due to be unleashed in July 2009.


Lowrance is a big name in the marine market with huge resources - it's owned by the company behind Helly Hansen - but had little interest in the outdoors market. A year ago though, Lowrance decided to make a new start and build an outdoors-orientated GPS from the ground upwards.

What's Different?

The end result is the 'multi-recreational', three-model Endura range of GPS units. What makes them stand out? First, research showed that 56 per-cent of GPS users would prefer to have both a touch screen interface and buttons - touch screens can be fiddly used with gloves for example, or on the move on a bike, when buttons work better, so Lowrance decided to give users the choice.


Next, the company looked at its main rivals and Garmin in particular and decided to simplify the menu, so there are only four main menu headings. Finally, and this is a crucial one for UK users, a microSD slot allows you to load extra mapping easily including OS maps of UK national parks at 1:25,000 and 1:50,000 scale.

That last puts the new devices into the same category as the Garmin Oregon, Satmap Active 10 and ViewRanger software running on Smartphones as one of the small number of GPS devices capable of running Ordnance Survey mapping.

The unit is recognised by both Macs and PCs as a standard mass storage device and Lowrance has chosen to make it fully compatible with Open GPX to make route transfer as easy as possible.

User Impressions

To give us - the assembled European outdoors press - a firsthand idea of how the Endura devices work on the ground, Lowrance bravely handed out some pre-production Sierra units and set us loose on a coordinate-based treasure hunt on water, feet and two wheels.

The Sierra has a nicely chunky, solid feel to it with rubber armour giving shock resistance and certified water-proofing. It's quite weighty at 206 grammes including two lithium AA cells, but not ridiculously so. And as promised it has both a touch screen interface and a familiar-looking button set.


GPS menus are always slightly quirky until you get the hang of them, there's just so much to cover,  but the Sierra's seemed quietly effective with a programmable 'Pages' button allowing you to scroll sequentially through the most commonly used sub-menus like map, trip computer and so on.

Out units were pre-loaded with Lake District OS mapping and the first positive impression is that even in bright sunlight, the screen is relatively easy to read. The mapping looks good and zooms in and out reasonably smoothly albeit with some weird double steps. You can control it either with buttons or touch, your choice.

The downside to the combined interface is that the screen is slightly smaller than we'd like, even smaller than the Garmin Oregon in fact, which we find too small. For our treasure hunt purposes this didn't really matter, but in mountain areas, it makes it harder to get an overall picture of your surroundings from the map. We'd prefer a bigger screen, even at the expense of a slightly bulkier, wider unit.


Because the units were pre-production, we had to enter grid references as Northings and Westings, but once entered using a combination of touch screen and buttons, the waypoints were easy to see and to navigate to. The OS mapping displays clearly and, rather neatly, once you zoom in past a certain point, the display morphs into aerial photography of the area, which is strangely neat and also surprisingly useful in certain situations.

We did find it annoying easy to accidentally brush the touchscreen if, say the unit was pocketed, but there's an easy two-key lock to stop this happening. This also disables the buttons, though some users thought a screen lock only option was a good idea.

We also had the odd lock-up, but bear in mind these are pre-production units and Lowrance is working hard to perfect them before general release.

Overall, we liked the screen, the interface and the menu, plus the solid feel, though as usual there were still a few quirks to adjust to. It took us a while to find out how to switch on tracking for example. OS mapping coverage initially is limited to UK national parks, but that may change in time.

Specs

You can find full specs on the Lowrance web site but some basics are dimensions of 130mm x 60mm x 31mm. A Micro SD card slot takes cards up to 32 GB. There's a mini USB port for chatting to computers. Waterproof to IPx7 standard, submersible. It has a colour touch screen. Finally, like the Garmin Oregon, the Sierra uses vector mapping with Points of Interest and turn by turn navigation, so can be used to reach the trailhead before being switched to off-road mode. Battery life with AA rechargeables is reckoned to be around ten hours.

Prices are 199 euros, 318 euros and 469 euros for the different models in the range, not including VAT. The most expensive version, the Sierra, differs from the next one down Safair in having a big bundle of pre-loaded regional software.

Initial Verdict

We have a pre-production Sierra to play with here in the Peak with relevant OS mapping on the way, but so far we're impressed. Screen, mapping rendering and interface are all, in our opinion, better than the Garmin Oregon and the unit feels tough and well made with decent battery life.

We do like the option of using either touch screen or buttons, different options work better in different scenarios and uses, though the pay-off is a small screen. And as usual, we reckon the ability to use OS mapping makes the difference between a fully useable navigational device and something with more limited use.


Our main reservation is over the size of the screen and its potentially longevity in wet and muddy environments, particularly when used for mountain biking, where we reckon Satmap's Active 10 with its larger screen, button interface, polycarbonate screen protector and wider choice of OS mapping may have a significant edge.

More details once we've had a chance to use it for real world navigation.

More information at www.lowrance.com