Medion GoPal P4425

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http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/handhelds/0,39030065,49295785,00.htm

Reviewed 28 February 2008

Reviewed by Brett James

With sat-nav theft on the rise -- criminals are stealing both the device and more worryingly, gaining access to the owner's home address -- Medion have stepped up to the plate by introducing a fingerprint scanner to lock out unlawful entry. We took the £250 Medion GoPal P4425 for a test drive to see if its sat-nav performance was as good as its security promises.

Strengths
Despite the Medion having a stylus pen and a plethora of external ports and buttons to the side, it is a relatively stylish sat-nav.

These buttons do certainly come in handy. Its fingerprint scanner housed at the top can be used to lock your device from unlawful entry. The 'P' button to the side can enable voice activation commands from virtually every menu. Though the latter is not 100 per cent accurate, stick with it -- it does get better with practise and prevents you from having to touch the display while driving.

The interface is kept relatively simple throughout. It offers a Qwerty keyboard option for inputting destinations, though you still need to switch between numbers and letters. You can also navigate directly to GPS coordinates or via your imported Outlook contacts.

General route performance was good and spoken directions could be piped through our cars internal speakers via the supplied active cradle. You can also utilise the cradle -- which does not require an external antenna -- to give traffic reports en route. The device will prompt you verbally of any traffic problems, with additional info available to you via the quick menu shortcut.

Despite the lower screen resolution, we found maps to be clear. There's a handy lane assistant option included to show you the correct lane to be in at complex junctions. The split screen mode was also useful. It displays your map on the right, while placing shortcuts and a large directional arrow -- with countdown markers to the next turn -- on the left of the screen.

Basic multimedia functions are also included as standard, like an MP3 player, picture viewer, a Berlitz travel guide and even an alarm clock -- although hopefully you won't need this while in the driver's seat.

Weaknesses
The software can be sluggish to start with, due to the maps being held on the memory card. Fortunately, after a warm-up period, the software becomes nippy, as all the maps and menus get cached into its internal memory.

The text-to-speech option was useful, but it did not pronounce every road name and only standard voice commands where given while routing over roundabouts.

Indoors, the GPS receiver struggled to pick up our location, but outdoors -- where it counts -- it fared better, but its signal strength was still relatively low. Thankfully, this did not impede on its performance.

We found the Medion's main selling point -- the fingerprint reader -- was fiddly at setup. Coming out of standby, we noticed that it intermittently failed to recognise our fingerprint properly. This could be easily resolved by a software update.

We also found that the active cradle places all the connection ports at the back of the unit, so if you forget to plug in the car charger you will have to remove the device from the windscreen and start again.

Conclusion
For security conscious users, the inclusion of the fingerprint reader will be a great addition. However, it does take a while to get used to and at times, the device didn't recognise our fingerprint. Regardless of the negatives, you still get a lot of additional features in the box to ensure solid navigation at a respectable price.

Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Shannon Doubleday