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Lowrance 112-362 iWay 500C Portable GPS Navigator and MP3 PlayerUser Review: - What a piece of junk!I bought this unit 5 months ago and have already gone through 2 of them. The first I used lightly around town for 3 months, then the unit's touch screen stopped responding, rendering it useless. I returned the unit to lowrance, and received a replacement unit a month later. The FIRST DAY that I used this replacement unit, it died within 30 minutes of powering it on. I drove about 7 miles with it and the screen started flickering, becoming faded, then inverted, then black. Now it powers on with a black screen. Useless. I've gotten very little use out of this unit for the price and now I wish I had gotten a better known brand of auto GPS. The problems this unit seems to have with overheating and poor customer service shouldnt be overlooked. When it works it's great (though heavy and clunky), but for me it mostly doesnt work... Buy at your own risk! User Review:  - nice unitI really like this unit. We call her Helen. It gets me where I want and it plays my tunes at the same time. The screen is big and clear. A couple of problems I have had: -it sometimes takes a while in the morning to find the initial position. -the POIs are out of date. Lowrance claimed they were up to date as of 8/05, but that is clearly not so. there are places that were long gone by 05 and many not-that-new places that aren't th ere -sometimes the directions can be quirky. But if I know better, I just ignore. After all, I am the human in this relationship User Review:  - Flaky unit and poor service.I can't believe all the good reviews. I've had mine for 4 months. I had never used GPS system before and didn't do the comparing and research to buy, as it was a gift. I can say I love having a GPS! Other than that, I am very unhappy with this unit! I have a problem with the unit getting into a mode where it flips displays modes extremely fast and is useless from then on. It seems to be from being overheated. And I have only used it during the winter/spring season so far. On our first sunny day in some time, it started doing this within a minute of powering up. In cooler/cloudy weather, it starts doing this after 15-30 minutes. It even does it when I turn it on indoors. It also has a problem with occasionally recycling power for no apparent reason. I also have a problem (which I saw someone else write about also) that the display will be very dim when first powered on and take up to 15 minutes to display more brightly. Other issues include that it sometimes get stuck trying to find its position and has to be turned off/on to get it to work again. And it sometimes give very quirky routes between points. So I am finally sending it in for warranty work - let's hope it really gets fixed or replaced. They did say this is a problem they are aware of and the units does need repair work. I can report on the length/quality of service after this. I had huge problems getting through to their customer service. Their 800 number was being every time I tried to call - different days, different times. I reported the unit problem through their online system and never got a response. Finally through some struck of luck, I got through to their customer service number and held 20 minutes and finally talked to a person there and got my return authorized. User Review:  - Best unit for performance and costI bought this unit for my wife who does home health and is in the car all day long. From what I see with all the competition, this unit has the biggest bang for the buck. It is very easy to read, very bright screen even in daylight, very reliable and seems to be very accurate on its directions. It comes with a decent mounting system by Ram Mounts. I ordered a weighted base for it which makes it easy for my wife to set it on the floor out of sight when she parks the car. Havent really did anything with the MP3 player capabilities, dont really have a way of inputting it into the cars stereo. Once I get that, it may have even more utility to her if she has all her music available in one source. Definately reccommend this as the unit to buy. Update: While I still like this unit, I can say it does have one big flaw. It is very sensitive to heat. Most people will sit these on their dash, and on a car with a black interior and dash, in the summer that can get very hot. When this unit gets hot, it shuts down. AS it is, we are on our second unit, the first developed heat related problems and I sent it back under warranty. Lowrance was very good about it, they sent a return shipping lable and shipped out a replacement unit free of charge. Having used it for quite awhile now, I am still impressed by the size, brightness and clarity of the screen. Overall its direction finding ability is really good, but occasionally it makes mistakes and you have to be smarter than the machine. On one occasion, we had to go to a house address in another town a half hour away. Instead of taking us on the interstate which would have been a 20 min trip, it routed us through every side street it could think of since that was the shortest physical distance. You can set parameters for that, but they don't hold if you shut it off. On other rare occasions, it has gotten "Confused" and was telling me to take the wrong off ramp when I could see the signs in front of me for the right one. That was probably due to an error in the navtec database (which all these machines run by the way). I will probably try and buy the extended warranty with this unit before it goes out of warranty, I think we will need it. Still, my wife has become dependent on this thing so that must say something for it. UPDATE #2: I have had to send the back for the second time. The first time it was replaced under warranty, this time its costing me 100 bucks. I had the unit mounted in my truck since Momma got a new car with built in Nav and I got the GPS to use. I had it mounted low in the vehicle and used a remote antenna which worked great, actually better performance than the built in antenna. We pulled it out of the truck to use in a rental and it went haywire. Definitely hardware problems. Sent it back to Lowrance, they are building some replacement units so it has been gone about a month now. They said the Touch screen and hard drive were bad on my unit. While I really like the unit when it works, the heat sensitivity and the less than stellar reliability record would cause me to downgrade the rating to about a 3 if I could. User Review: - Pleased is too small a word!I have had my Lowrance 500C for a couple of weeks. I purchased it for use on a motorcycle. Last week I traveled over 800 miles to Daytona for Bike Week. The 500C surpassed all my expectations. Even in birght sunlight the screen was easy to see. I find the 3D mode best for highway use and the regular map mode best for city travel. The map detail much better than I expected. The ability to just type in an address and tell it to take you there is fantastic. It's hard to follow a map while driving a car. It's nearly impossible and extremely dangerous while on a motorcycle. The Lowrance 500C has increased the safety factor of traveling on my motorcycle. Amazon.com did not have the lowest price on this product, but the lower priced supplier had not been rated or reviewed and I know Amazon.com's reputation. Service from Amazon.com was everything I expected. Billed correctly, delivered in 2 days, and everything was as advertized. |
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