I’ve driven several thousands of miles across the US in the last 4 weeks, much of it aided by a Dash GPS device. Overall, I’m quite happy with it. It’s certainly made our road trip less stressful.
The pros:
- It’s web connected, the killer feature for me has been to be able to send addresses from my laptop to the device. I can research our route on my laptop at night – hotels, sights, restaurants, etc – and send them all to the GPS. The next day we get in the car, and I can just tap on the addresses and go.
- Another web connected feature that we’ve used a bunch is web search – you can search Yahoo Local from the device. For example, one evening we rolled into Columbia, South Carolina, searched for nearby restaurants (3 clicks), and blindly trusted Yahoo’s top rated recommendation which turned out to be a great Japanese restaurant.
- The UI and touchscreen work well.
- The road data and software updates have been seamless.
- The directions work well most of the time (though I don’t have anything to compare them to).
- We’ve not hit much traffic at all, but the few times we did, the traffic warning system worked pretty well. I’ve also not yet used any add-on apps, though the Weatherbug weather reports and the speed trap app look promising.
The cons:
- The device is a little slow, the screen only updates about once every other second or so, which gets tricky when you’re supposed to make immediate turns.
- A handful of times the directions have been strange with the device recommending routes that are clearly not the most direct way of getting somewhere.
- With the full touch screen, two large buttons at the top, and the on/off button on the side, it can be difficult to grab the device (for example to adjust its angle) without inadvertently activating something.
- The device/software have locked up a few times, requiring a reset.
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