Over the past few years GPS units have been getting more and more
affordable and another low price mark looks like being set with the
arrival of the new Lowrance iFinder Go, which is being brought
into the UK by Swedish navigation specialists Silva.
The
iFinder Go has a suggested retail price of £89.95, which, if
other GPS units are anything to go by, means you may well be able to
find it for less and is produced by established US company Lorance
Electronics.
So what are you getting for your 90-odd quid? It's a compact unit
that weighs almost exactly the same as a Garmin eTrex at 164 grammes
with two AA batteries, although it's about an inch longer. Specs
include a 16 parallel channel GPS and WAAS receiver, built-in 32 MB
of memory, rather uselessly preloaded with a background map of the
US. It also has the capacity to store up to 1000 waypoints and 100
routes and up to 100 retraceable plot trails.
The unit is waterproof up to IPX7 standard, whatever that is, and
battery life from the two AAs is claimed to be over 48 hours. Oh, and
it's bright yellow.
The unit comes in 'Easy Mode', but it's straightforward to set it
to 'Advanced Mode' which includes to ability to plot positions using
the British grid, enables com ports, so you can communicate with your
PC and allows you to use 'Advanced Waypoints' whatever they are. You
can find the full
specs on the Lowrance web site.
Initial impressions are that the unit seems a little less
intuitive in use than, say, an eTrex, but that like all GPS units, to
achieve anything like their full potential, they need to be used in
conjunction with a computer and some form of mapping software.
Right now we're unsure of whether the iFinder Go is compatible
with Tracklogs, Memory Map or Anquet systems, however we'll get the
unit properly tested and let you know.
J G
