TeleNav Shotgun Standalone GPS Navigator Review
TeleNav's first dedicated GPS navigation unit is definitely worth a look--but it's not perfect.
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Other GPS devices with similar services generally rely on either FM radio or a Bluetooth hookup to a cell phone that you provide (and that can be tricky to set up). When powered on, the Shotgun made its data connection quickly and downloaded new information in seconds.
Its speedy Web-based data-entry features are very welcome, since adding addresses manually on the touch-screen keyboard can take a while: Though TeleNav helps you narrow down cities as you type, it inexplicably makes you enter street numbers before helping you narrow down street names.
Searching the POI database can be cumbersome, too: The device asks whether you want it to find results near your current location or somewhere else--but if that somewhere else is in a distant neighborhood in the same town, you're out of luck: As far as the device is concerned, "elsewhere" probably means somewhere near your current location, so that's where it starts its search; as a result, you'll have to wade through a ton of results before you get to the outlying district.
The Shotgun doesn't support waypoints, either; waypoints are helpful for planning a long day of driving to multiple stops. Insteasd, you must enter your destinations sequentially, as you arrive at each one. And if you try to look at routing for the next destination, the Shotgun will terminate your current routing--so when you're done with your sneak peek ahead, you'll have to reenter the data and wait for the device to recalculate the original route.
Still, I found the moving maps (available in 2D and 3D views) generally clear and easy to follow, and the routing generally made sense (despite the absence of lane guidance in some complicated freeway junctions).
Spoken directions use text-to-speech technology to identify roads by name, which is helpful when you can't take your eyes off the road to check the name on the display. The spoken names were generally clear, with a few weird anomalies such as numbered highways (CA 85 sounded like "Kah 85"). You don't, however, get to choose a voice, as you do with some units.
I liked the way TeleNav managed to display a wealth of information, such as the estimated remaining time of a trip (constantly updated), on the screen without obscuring the map. When I missed a turn, however, I wished that the Shotgun would not completely obscure the map with a message saying it was calculating a new route. It would have been helpful to see the map and the turn that I'd missed.
TeleNav Shotgun
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