Such a great GPS
Rating: 5 out of 5
Weight: 5.8 out of 10
Created: Dec 25, 2008
Thanks for your feedback
Lowrance is the most consumer oriented GPS on the market. I bought the iFinder when they first came out quite a few years ago. After nearly ten years of perfect service, my old unit started to show its age - being bounced around in suitcases, dropped, scratched, and generally abused, it was time to replace it. Lowrance provides free firmware updates for this unit, which let me take advantage of the latest features and tweaks. The new iFinder has all the buttons in the same places and operates identically to my old unit, so I didn't need to read the manual again. They've added a few improvements. The buttons are easier to press, it's faster, it locks onto position better - in fact, once I had a lock it continued to operate indoors without loosing its position. In addition to the MMC card, it now takes SD cards as well - and, up to 1gig in size. The backlight on this unit is brighter and the battery cover is more secure than the old unit. The memory cards are easier to swap in and out. They even threw in a DC power cord for the car because it does run through batteries - also customizable, you can conserve battery power but dropping the sample rate.
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br /What sets Lowrance apart from others is that there aren't any gotcha's. My original unit was bundled with MapCreate which allowed me to add map details - almost obsolete now, since I'm no longer trying to squeeze everything to fit on a tiny 64meg card. All my old routes, points, and map details were read without the need for software upgrades. I just dropped in my old memory card, loaded my files, and I was running. Even sweeter is the new firmware which can find a street address or display addresses along a long stretch of road. They made little tweaks, like the street pop-up name is anchored to the lower right corner instead of where it used to be - blocking the road detail right under the cursor.
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br /And, the MMC card reader which comes with add-on MapCreate package can read any MMC card, such as my PDA's storage card. This was one of the best purchases I've made since I purchased my old iFinder - and, if you have an old unit you'll love the faster navigation and little enhancements they've made.