Netropa Intellinav 3

The Intellinav 3's route selections were usually spot-on, though I disagreed with a couple of the device's rush-hour suggestions. The product uses historical traffic patterns to choose your route and to calculate your arrival time. In my testing, however, I noticed no reduction in travel times.

While you can play audio files and view images on the device, you can't do so while navigating or viewing the map: You must close one application to open the other. The product features a pedestrian mode, thanks to its rechargeable battery. It also has the ability to add waypoints to a trip with multiple stops. Your route options are limited to the standard quickest/shortest, toll roads and ferries (include or exclude), and carpools, but you can also choose to minimize turns along your route. Two other nice features are the school-zone alert and the speed alert, the latter of which sounds an alarm when you exceed a speed that the device determines automatically (based on the type of road) or that you set manually.

Though the Intellinav 3's built-in 1-watt speaker was sufficient for me to hear the driving directions above road noise, I missed the ability to stream the navigation audio through my car's FM stereo, a feature of the more expensive Garmin Nuvi 680, for example. Nevertheless, the ability to hear street names while you navigate puts this GPS miles ahead of other entry-level devices.

Dennis O'Reilly