Lowrance iWay 500C Review
The Lowrance iWay 500c has been reviewed by Laptop Magazine. The iWay 500c is a vehicle navigation GPS system that is mounted in your car. It is most well known for its large size (it weighs two pounds) and large hard-drive. The drive is 20GB, 10GB is preloaded maps and the remaining 10GB can be used to store MP3 files.
Lowrance cut its teeth in the nautical GPS arena, and it shows in the iWay 500C’s expert attention to navigation details. The hypersensitive antenna picked up satellites indoors, even before we were able to get it into a car. If that’s not good enough for you, Lowrance offers a second, external antenna for $99.95.
They liked that the maps were already installed on the drive and that you could listen to music and use the GPS vehicle navigation system at the same time. They also liked the touch screen and the sensitive GPS antenna. They were not so keen on the large size of the unit and that the screen wasn’t quite as sharp as that of the Mio 136.
Using the receiver is a snap. The key controls are implemented as buttons beside the five-inch color LCD screen, so it’s easy to get to the main menu or find a destination. From there, the very responsive touch screen and big onscreen buttons make it easy to program the device. Both 2D and 3D navigation views are available.
