Pretty Good

Just spent ten days touring Nova Scotia using the Avec S-1 GPS. On the whole I was very pleased with it’s performance. It navigated me flawlessly through and around Quebec, Montreal and Ottawa. Montreal would have been a nightmare without it as it was raining hard and getting dark.

Pioneer could do with updating it’s database, many small places I wanted to visit in N.S. were not in its database I had to direct it to the nearest large place and navigate my own way from there.

Pioneer please take note that your GPS does not take kindly to mountains and or lots of wooded areas. It became completely disorientated at times when in mountainous regions. Another frequent problem I had was, after starting out on a journey I found that it was trying to take me back to the address I had just left.

On the plus side I gained so much confidence in it that we often wandered off into unknown places without a clue as to where we were, and Sally as I nicknamed it always got us back on track, albeit I suspect that it ran us around in a few circles before hitting on the right track but not knowing the terrain I wouldn't know if that were the case or not.

In towns it didn't falter. One has to be extremely careful programming the required information in to it or it’s very easy to find yourself anywhere except where you wanted to be because you had made an error in the info you entered.

I had tested a Tom Tom and a Mio before deciding on the Pioneer and I think I made the right choice. It is definitely easier to feed the required info into this one than the other two. Unfortunately the journey preview on the Pioneer isn't as good as the other two I tried.

If anyone owns one of these and would like to swap ideas about them my address is geoffco@rogers.com