TeleNav Shotgun Standalone GPS Navigator Review

PC World — How much do you hate entering destination addresses on the touch-screen keyboard provided by your GPS navigation device? If you think that being able to sync addresses easily to your GPS device might be worth US$10 to $12 a month, the $299 TeleNav Shotgun definitely deserves a look.

TeleNav is new to the field of dedicated GPS devices, but it's an old hand at navigation software: For quite a few years the company has developed GPS apps for BlackBerry and other GPS-enabled cell phones, both under its own brand name and under the names of various carriers (including AT&T Wireless and Sprint, which we recently reviewed in a roundup of carrier-branded smartphone GPS apps).

As dedicated GPS hardware goes, the company's debut offering is pretty good for the price. The Shotgun has a 4.3-inch LCD screen and comes with a car charger and mount, an AC adapter, and a USB cable. (The cable is provided strictly for charging the device from your PC; when you use the cable to connect the Shotgun to a Vista PC, the sync software in the Shotgun's Windows Mobile operating system activates, but it doesn't actually sync with anything.) The Shotgun comes preloaded with maps and a generous database of 11 million points of interest (POI) for the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico.

What distinguishes the Shotgun from the GPS pack, though, is the optional TeleNav Connected Service. Not only does it deliver POI database updates, fuel prices (which you can search by location and fuel type), and real-time traffic conditions, but it also transmits frequently used addresses to the device. (You enter those addresses ahead of time on your personal My Favorites page on TeleNav's site.) TeleNav also provides several free plug-ins--for FireFox, Google Toolbar and Internet Explorer--that let you transfer addresses from Web pages to MyFavorites, simply by highlighting them and clicking a TeleNav icon.

The cost of these features varies depending on whether you pay as you go (in which case it's $12 per month) or invest in a one- or two-year prepaid subscription (which bring the monthly fee down to just under $10). TeleNav lets you try the service free for three months.

The Shotgun is only the second GPS device we've seen that comes with its own cellular data hookup (it carries a SIM card). The Dash Express was the first; but ironically, the week before the Shotgun was announced, Dash Navigation said it was ceasing production of the Dash Express. The Shotgun's svelte dimensions (it's only 0.7 inch thick and weighs a tad over 4 ounces) make it much more suitable than the bulky Dash was for business travelers to toss into a briefcase or purse. I also found the device easy to snap in and out of the dashboard mount.

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