HP iPAQ 314 Travel Companion
Enjoy the journey as much as the destination. Whether you’re on the road for business or pleasure, this advanced, high-definition 3D navigation system provides a wonderfully immersive experience to help you find your way. Confidently follow turn-by-turn directions to the places you need to go, with both spoken and on-screen guidance. Even street names are spoken to help you along the way. Pan and zoom to the level of detail you desire. Quickly zoom in from 3,000 meters to street level view. On the touch screen display, use your finger to simply slide the map in the direction you want to view. Let your iPAQ Travel Companion guide you to family, friends, and business associates using your Microsoft Office Outlook Mobile contacts. Before you go, tailor your travel experience with HP’s online trip planning services and download it to your iPAQ 314 for a more productive trip.
With established brands like TomTom, Mio and Garmin churning out featured-packed navigators with wanton abandon, it’s a little surprising to see a company that’s relatively inexperienced in this sector trying to get involved. HP certainly isn’t the first name you’d think of when it comes to GPS, and in labelling its effort the iPAQ 314 Travel Companion it’s not immediately obvious that this is the intended market.
The device is attractively designed with a gunmetal finish and a slim and light build, and comes supplied with a car kit, AC charger and a leather carry case. When you start it up you’ll be able to choose your entertainment; namely video, music or photo playback and a range of supplied games.
You can upload your Outlook contacts to the device to use with the Bluetooth support for hands-free calling, and extras like a clock, calculator and calendar are handy additions. The bulk of the functionality is obviously centred on navigation, and we must admit to being a little sceptical about HP’s prowess in this area considering the range of capable alternatives from more established rivals.
Both visual and audible prompts are clear, with upcoming turns shown in a separate window and text-to-voice support for reading out road names and destinations for added clarity. Route calculations and recalculations are fast and accurate, and there’s an impressive array of options for tweaking settings and editing and adjusting the planned route.
The iPAQ 314 is also one of the most impressive we’ve seen for adjusting the map view. The scroll wheel on the side allows you to zoom from 3,000 meters to street level and, if you tap the screen, you’ll find the display changes to show zoom, elevation, panning and 2D/3D controls. Tapping and dragging scrolls around the map and thanks to the powerful 600Mhz processor all of these functions are smooth and responsive, making it a true joy to use on the road.
The iPAQ isn’t just about navigation, though, and while we’ve seen extras such as media playback on rival devices, we were particularly impressed by the format support and accessibility of these applications here. Since all of the Western European maps are stored on the 2GB of internal memory, the SD card slot on the side is free for you to use to store media content such as music, video and photos.
Plug a card in and the device automatically searches for media and displays it in the relevant application. Impressively, MP3 files are sorted by ID3tags and it’s easy to set music playing while you switch to navigation mode for directions on the road. Disappointingly there’s no FM transmitter built in, so if the fairly capable internal speaker isn’t loud enough your only option is to connect the device to your car stereo through the headphones port using a cassette adaptor or 3.5mm jack cable.
The video player is capable and managed to handle the AVI and MPG format files we tested without requiring them to be re-encoded, and the photo viewer can use a range of transitions to display pictures in a slideshow mode.
View your route comfortably on the spectacular, high-definition touch screen display. Find your location fast with the dual-core 600 MHz Titan processor with autonomy acceleration. Keep your maps and points of interest at hand with 2 GB of flash ROM storage. Transfer content quickly and easily from your PC with the high-speed mini-USB 2.0 connector. While you travel, use your iPAQ 314 as a hands-free answering system for your Bluetooth -enabled phone. Then when you arrive, enjoy your digital media library, business multimedia content or even a challenging video game on this premium high-definition entertainment system. Travel first class with the iPAQ 314 - perfectly suited for your business or personal adventures.
Tags: ac charger, business associates, car kit, clock calculator, GPS Device, immersive experience, intended market, microsoft office, navigators, planning services, productive trip, street level view, street names, travel companion, travel experience, trip planningRelated posts
Posted on July 20th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: GPS Device
Leave a Reply