http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/handhelds/0,39030064,49293975,00.htm

RAC - Sat Nav 220 review

8 out of 10

The RAC Sat Nav 220 boasts a large touchscreen 127mm (5-inch) widescreen display with seamless European maps over Route 66's interface. Its girth is also joined by an equally impressive loudspeaker and a supplied Traffic Message Channel (TMC) aerial (with a life-time subscription attached). It can be bought now for around £290.

Strengths

The RAC 220's widescreen display will benefit drivers of larger vehicles and it's housed in a sleek black exterior with a large speaker at the back. It's all ready to go straight out of the box but you will need to unlock the TMC Pro subscription via a Web site.

Its welcome menu screen displays two simple options -- 'Navigation' and 'Entertainment' -- the latter takes you to a basic music player. A press of the AV-IN button to the side will allow you to attach the RAC 220 to a DVD player. It's a touch overkill, but works well none the less.

Inputting destinations or points of interest (POI) is made easier thanks to the Fuzzy search system. Simply enter parts of a POI/address -- for example, 'rest lond' -- and the unit will search/display the logical results. It's just a pity you don't have a Qwerty keyboard to complement this excellent feature.

When it comes to driving, the widescreen display coped well in direct sunlight and made it easier to view both the directional aides and maps. Performance from the SiRF-Star III is also top notch, with routes being calculated fast and efficiently, though its acquisition time is effected more so in built up areas and with overcast skies.

Voice guidance via the loudspeaker was extremely loud and could be heard above the noise of even the loudest of engines. The supplied TMC aerial picked up traffic spots pretty quickly and features a life-time subscription.

Its Bluetooth hands-free option finishes off the spec list by allowing you to attach a compatible Bluetooth phone for voice calls.

Weaknesses

The RAC 220 is a monster of a device weighing a staggering 520g. Its size does make it a distraction for those with smaller cars, so careful windscreen placement is key to preventing it from dwarfing your view of the road. Considering the RAC 220's size, the inclusion of a flip-out aerial is a surprise -- it's something you would expect to see in a model of yesteryear.

Even though there appears to be a route planner, there is no route simulation mode that we could find, so you are left to search through your planned routes manually.

As mentioned, voice directions are loud but still basic in nature, so don't expect to find a text-to-speech option -- it's only 'turn left in 400 yards' and not 'turn left onto Monmouth Drive', for example. This makes the device more map dependant, so roundabouts require more concentration to negotiate.

Conclusion

RAC have set out to provide one of the largest sat-nav devices on the market and they have succeeded hands down. It weighs a hefty amount and its AV-IN function could be classed as overkill, but it's a macho product with a display perfectly suited to larger vehicles.

http://www.itreviews.co.uk/hardware/h1312.htm

RAC - Sat Nav 220 review

If you have looked at satellite navigation kit and thought that the screens are a little small, then the RAC Sat Nav 220 has a big surprise for you: a screen that measures five inches corner-to-corner. At that size the merest glance gives plenty of information, but it goes without saying that the big display means big hardware. At 148mm x 85mm x 34mm you'll have to think carefully about where to put the thing so that it doesn't obscure your view through the windscreen.

Also the glove compartment - or wherever it is you hide your sat nav when it is not in use - is going to need to be pretty roomy. If you intend to carry the device around with you, its drawstring carry pouch might be handy, but its 520g of weight will be a bind.

The Sat Nav 220 is the top-end device of a trio recently launched by the RAC, and like the other two it incorporates something called Fuzzy Search. This is a joy to use. Enter a few letters from the name of whatever place you want to go to and a few letters from its town or city and the device searches its database for matches and offers all possibilities. Every time we tried it our chosen place was there. One screen tap and the device starts to navigate to it. Coupled with full seven-digit postcode navigation, this Fuzzy Search makes the Sat Nav 220 supremely easy to use.

The Sat Nav 220 comes with maps of the UK, Eire, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, Luxemburg, Denmark, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Finland, Sweden and Norway. The first ten are 100 percent mapped, while the remainder are not fully mapped though coverage is 80-100 percent and it is the more sparsely populated areas that are less well mapped. There is also some coverage of the Baltic area and Greece (except the Athens region), though there is no street level data in these regions. The RAC relies on Navteq for its GPS mapping data.

Spoken instructions are loud and clear and you get TMC data as part of the deal. That means you get an FM antenna and can receive live traffic data updates through it. This is invaluable, as it shows traffic issues on screen and, if any are in your path, the system will route you round them.

There are some other features too. Bluetooth is built in, and if you pair the Sat Nav 220 with your mobile you can use it as a hands-free device. Audio files in MP3 format can be played and an SD card slot on the edge of the hardware is where you store the files. But the provided card is already almost full of map data, so you'll need a second card. Problem: when you remove the map data card from the device the navigation software no longer runs. Solution: it is either MP3 playing or navigation, not both.

A third 'extra' is the ability to play data fed in from an AV source such as a DVD player or set-top box. You get a cable for this purpose, although we aren't sure quite when or how this would come in handy.

http://www.crowdedbrain.co.uk/gps/rac-220-gps-review.html

8 out of 10

RAC will be better known for their breakdown recovery service rather than for a GPS Sat Nav provider, but we review their top of the range 220 version which - putting it politely - is pretty huge and has an impressive 5" widescreen display to boot.

The 5" widescreen display sports Route 66's software with maps provided by NAVTEQ, its external design is something you have to get used to, as most manufactures tend to head down the 'small is best' route the 220 goes in completely the opposite direction with a device weighing 550g and measuring approx 160mm wide by 90mm tall.

At the back of the unit you get a large speaker which comes into play during your navigational experience and when listening to music.

More surprising is the use of an old fashioned flip-up antenna, you would think that with such a large device the could find a way to integrate this with in the unit.

With a press of the front mounted phone button you can pair the 220 with a compatible Bluetooth mobile, but though it has a pair option it did not seem to detect our test mobile. We found out that you have to initiate the pair procedure from your mobile instead and then it works a treat.

Interestingly there is the inclusion of an AV-IN socket to the side, which compensates for the lack of video playback we feel (you still have the music player but there is only basic play controls on offer). When used with the supplied AV cable it allows you to plug in an external DVD/video player and view the contents on the screen. We tested this by rigging up our DVD player and watched the Matrix to good effect, the screen and sound quality was great. However we can't see many people dragging portable DVD players around but none the less it's a feature that is good to have.

Inside the box you get a large cradle to fit the girth of the 220, a mains adaptor, car charger, cradle, a 30% voucher to redeem against RAC breakdown recovery, 2GB SD card with full European maps installed, TMC aerial, TMC Pro Subscription, AV-IN Cable and a pouch for your 220 that looks like a giant sleeping bag - but it works to protect your investment so its all good.

The size and weight may put a few people off whilst driving due to its size becoming more a distraction, so careful placement of the RAC in your windscreen is paramount, but for those who drive larger vehicles, such as 4 x 4 which place you further back from the windscreen the larger 220 comes into its own and offers an easier way of viewing the screen directions whilst driving.

The Route 66 software on offer is pretty easy to use for newcomers, as it tries to go down the TomTom route by providing screen with large icons, but unlike TomTom the menu options are kept down to two menus, for various settings and adjustments.

Entering navigation destinations is simplified to some degree by allowing you to enter postcodes, partial/complete addresses or fuzzy search from one screen. The latter is the best feature as it allows you to input parts of the address to speed up the search process or think if it like an SMS text message when you want to shorten the word great you use gr8, same sort of thing here. Though this sounds fine on paper its one screen input method can produce a long list of search results, meaning it could take you longer to pick the correct address from the list.

There is also more work needed for setting up the unit, mainly with adding POI speed cameras and the like as these are not enabled as standard and though there appears to be planning options you can not run through demos of your route before hand.

During testing we could not fault its accuracy or its ability to re-calculate routes, we normally drive the wrong way for about 20 minutes to test its performance and it coped fine.

The device could pick up our location relatively quickly but it's intermittent like most devices, outdoors with clear skies its times varied from over a minute to within around 20 seconds.

The 5" display did pick up the direct sunlight a touch whilst driving but was still viewable and did not cause any problems. Voice directions sounded great through the speaker and each destination was spoken clearly, though you will only find basic directions spoken such as turn left - no text to speech function unfortunately.

Map detail was a touch sparse, more so in the 3D maps which looked a bit crayoney but the standard directional aids compensated for this.

With the 220 you get a TMC Pro subscription which offers a life time subscription and this worked well and acquired information quickly about any traffic hot spots or accidents within our location and was useful addition.

Speed cameras were detected but are displayed in a speed circle sign and we felt that at times they could have been more pre-warning when they were coming up.

http://www.trustedreviews.com/mobile-devices/review/2007/08/03/RAC-Satnav-220/p3

9 out of 10

If I ask you to think of companies making sat nav equipment I doubt you'd offer the RAC. Odd, that, considering it is a motoring organisation with a vast membership and has been offering door to door route planning from its Web site] for ages.

Then again, maybe it isn't so odd, because the RAC's new range of three sat nav devices is its first real foray into this area. Yes, there was a single device launched last year, but it was more of a quiet toe in the water than a big launch.

So, I said there were three devices launched recently. Needless to say I got my hands on the top of the range model, but you can see info about the other two here.

I always say that a good sat nav device is one which does not require you to look at its screen. The spoken instructions should be good enough to get you across junctions and through the traffic all of the time. It is a simple matter of driver safety that anything which means you take your eyes off the road ahead is not a good thing.

Still, if you do need to look at your sat nav screen it has to be clear. There's no problem in that department here. The RAC Sat Nav 220 has a screen measuring a massive 5in corner to corner. It is wide format, and the actual dimensions are 110mm wide and 62mm tall. A column down the right hand edge of the screen delivers information like distance to the next turn, direction of the next turn, distance to destination, estimated arrival time and so on. But the bulk of the screen area is given over to the map display.

The RAC has tweaked its core software, provided by Route66, to deliver a few interesting and user friendly goodies for those times when you do look at the screen. During motorway driving I noticed that junction numbers are overlaid onto the map, and that when taking an exit a box appears on screen showing a close representation of the physical road sign. If sat nav systems are meant to reassure drivers about following the suggested route, then these are great examples of how to do that.

Of course the big screen makes for chunky kit, and the overall size is not helped by the column of buttons that sit down the left hand side of the screen. You are going to need a big pocket to carry the 148 x 85 x 35mm (WxHxD) device, and the 520g of weight is off putting too. Maybe rather than carry it around you'll need to stow this sat nav safely in the glove compartment when it is not in use.

For this purpose you get a drawstring pouch that should protect the screen from scratches, but it isn't large enough to accommodate the windshield mount or any of the other gubbins that comes in the box. This includes both vehicle and mains power adaptors, FM antenna for the TMC data that comes with the system, mini-USB PC cable and AV-in cable - yes really. I'll get to that later.

Inputting locations is a real bugbear for some sat nav devices. Any device that requires you to enter information in a set way - starting with a town or city for example, is asking for trouble. Any that don't have full seven digit postcode searching are way behind the times.

The good news is that the RAC Sat Nav 220 has full postcode searching. It adds something else too - Fuzzy Search. This is simply the best location entry system I've ever seen in a sat nav device. You enter bits of your destination and the system offers you its best fit options. It could be a street, a town, anything.

For example if you live in Acacia Avenue, give it ‘aca ave' and it'll list all possibilities for you to select from. If you want to go to Richmond Park just south of London ‘richm par' is all you need. It works with POIs too. ‘Hosp Manc' gets you the hospitals in Manchester.

The only problem is that if you aren't specific enough you get a lot of places to sift through, because the RAC Sat Nav 220 includes European mapping.

Spoken instructions were so loud that I actually had to turn the volume down from its full setting. I like that. Too often they can disappear in the roar of other in-car noise. Just tapping the screen repeats the last spoken instruction, and when you have a long way to go to the next turn, it tells you to follow the course of the road till further instructions are given. More good stuff for driver confidence there.

The RAC has decided to include Bluetooth in the Sat Nav 220 so you can use it as a handsfree kit with your mobile. There is also a music player and that already noted AV-in capability.

The Bluetooth is reasonably well implemented, and if you need handsfree, it functions well enough. A hardware button in the column to the left of the screen jumps immediately to the phone screen so you can take and make calls. The music player only copes with MP3 files. You can use the provided cable to connect the RAC Sat Nav 220 to your PC for file transfer, but you'll also need to install a driver. The alternative is to pop MP3s onto an SD card using a card reader then put it into the card slot on the left edge of the hardware.

There is a real problem here in terms of storage capacity. The device comes with an SDcard which contains the maps the kit needs. Remove the card and the device can't navigate. And the card is almost full. So it is a challenge, to say the least, to play music while driving.

I guess the idea is that you can use the music player when you are not navigating. But a dinky and stylish little iPod the RAC Sat Nav 220 isn't. Don't even think about hanging it round your neck. It is more useful to give to the kids to keep them quiet for a bit.

What about the AV-in system? If you have a DVD player or set top box without a TV attached, then use the provided cables to attach it to the Sat Nav 220 and use its screen for viewing. Hmmm. Not sure about that one.

Verdict

The fuzzy searching alone is enough to make me want the RAC Sat Nav 220 in my car. Add in the wide screen, superbly loud and precise spoken directions, TMC information and European maps and I'm hooked. If the RAC wants to offer added, non sat nav features, though, it needs to think carefully about what to offer and how they should be implemented.

Although new to the market, the RAC seems to have hit hard at customers who want absolute value for money. The range has this entry-level model, a mid-priced version (210) for £180 and the big 5in screen 220, at £299.99. We've chosen the entry level unit for this guide simply because we feel a lot of customers who just want a more basic unit and don't have a clue about technology will go for a trusted household name like RAC. But take that out of the equation and ask how hard this unit is to ignore with full postcode searching with SMS-style Fuzzy Search for when you have an inkling where you want to go but can't be specific - the 200 will throw up suggestions. Not only that, it comes pre-loaded with safety camera locations as well as a decent selection of POIs. OK so you're not getting TMC or a media player but really the customer who will buy this unit won't be demanding them. We tip our hats to the RAC, they really have come to the rescue for bargain hunting customers.

http://www.pocket-lint.co.uk/news/news.phtml/7825/8849/RAC-launches-range-sat-nav.phtml

The RAC has launched a range of three new sat navs with mapping info provided by Route 66, including a first to market 5-inch widescreen model.

All three models claim to be user-friendly and boast full postcode search, pre-loaded safety camera info with free updates, thousands of points of interest and SMS-style "Fuzzy Search" to help narrow down vague search terms.

That about covers the feature list for the affordable 200, priced at £139.99 that has a 3.5-inch touchscreen.

In addition the £189.99 210 has a 4-inch touchscreen and a built-in MP3 player.

The top of the range 220 boasts that impressive 5-inch touchscreen as well as wireless Bluetooth handsfree and MP3 music player, a traffic information function to alert you to problems ahead such as accidents or traffic jams and includes a number of European countries on one easy to read European map. Pricing for this model is £299.99.

All models are available now.