"Seidio gets full marks for this well thought out mount. It holds my PPC in place snugly, provides power and sound amplification, and is well made. If you need a an uncluttered environment, this could be the mount for you! "
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Originally posted by as77 Can it be used with the extended battery?
I don't think so. I don' t have the extended battery, but from pictures it sticks out from the back of the Axim about 1/4 inch. There is no room in the mount for that extra thickness. However, because the mount is powered a standard battery works very well and maintains a full charge even with an all day long trip.
It won't work with the extended battery. If you don't absolutely need the amplification (if you have a newer car, and it's resonably quiet), check out the TomTom car mount. I tried both, and wasn't impressed with this one, ended up sticking with the TomTom. Seemed to be built much better, and I really didn't miss the amplified speaker. It was a little louder, but seemed to distort the audio, making it hard to understand, and I ended up not using it anyway (and I have a h2210, with the speaker on the back, and it still works for me)
Everything about the TomTom seemed to be more solid, including the cables, which had nice right-angle connections, and seemed to be better quaility. They even included both a 12v cig lighter cable and an extra cable with stripped ends for connecting directly to your car. Nice.
For the Axim, the worst feature for GPS is the really poor internal speaker. Even in a quiet car the lack of bass response and volume from the X5 makes it problematic to hear. The G2500 provides the missing bass response and higher volume without excessive distortion that makes the GPS directions understandable. The TomTom unit is missing these functions entirely. If all you want is to mount the Axim, Arkon and Ram make good solid mounts as well.
except that from what I've seen, the Arkon style mounts aren't the same type. They require a cable to charge it, unlike the Seidio and TomTom, which are just like a dock or something.
Like I said, I wasn't impressed with the sound quality at all, I even preferred the muffled sound of rear-mounted speaker of the h2210. Obviously, I can't compare it to an axim since I don't have one. I've also noticed on forums, that other people have complained about the sound quality (as well as the volume dial) on the Seidio. Perhaps this has been fixed?? Because the way mine sounded, EVERYONE would have noticed how bad it was. Since yours obviously sounded fine, I"m assumming they've fixed this, 'cause it's not just a personal preference thing, it's something you would have noticed, it really sounded pretty pathetic...louder, but pathetic.
Sammyafrikan, it's a judgement call on what suits your situation best. Arkon and Ram both have powered mounts like TomTom. I think Ram only has powered mounts for Ipaq units, but I didn't do an exhaustive search on the site to make sure. Arkon clearly states they have powered mounts for X5, X3 and X3i. All of these units, including Seidio and TomTom require some sort of power cord, whether with a lighter plug or hard-wired to the vehicle. I prefer the lighter plug myself because I use the mount in multiple vehicles, but if you only have one car then it might make sense to wire it into the vehicle power. And if all you want is to hold the unit, an unpowered mount that allows a standard lighter plug power cord to be plugged into the Axim directly is the least expensive and least likely to fail approach. Both Arkon and Ram have lots of options for that solution, too.
Again, what the Seidio brings to the Axim X5 is a quantum improvement in the sound quality. It doesn't get close to hi-fi, but it sure is better than the tinny little voice that comes from the Axim itself. It may be that your 2210 sounds just fine on its own, but in the Axim world, we can use all the help we can get on that score!
I think you misunderstood the power cord idea. I was talking about the fact that the arkon uses not only a power cord from your cig lighter to the mount, but also from the mount to your pda, where as the Seidio and the TomTom use a single power cord to your cig lighter, and use a dock-like connection to charge your pda. In other words, when I get into my car, all I have to do is drop my pda in the mount. If I had an Arkon, I'd have to drop it in the mount, and THEN plug in a short power cord that went from the Arkon to the pda.
You're right of course, if you're sound is small comming out of your pda, the Seidio is your only option. I wasn't impressed with the improvements, but honestly can't remember what the axim speaker was like (I owned one until 10 months ago), so it probably is an improvement.
However, I think Seidio could do a small thing, and include a second powercable (just like the cig lighter one, but without the lighter plug) so that you could have it hardwired to your main vehicle, leaving your cig lighter available for other things, and still have the flexibility to have a second power cord with the cig lighter for rental cars etc. I was impressed that TomTom included this, when I got it. I should have done an all out comparison during the 3 days that I had both of them.
I just wanted to voice the opinion, that after owning and using both of them, I went with the TomTom because of the build quality. It just felt better. Of course, if you need to have the speaker, and if Sedio has improved the speaker quality, the TomTom is completely out of the question anyway.
Last summer, I tried to use one of the vent mounts to hold my axim/GPS. One problem that I ran into is vibration that the unit
is subjected to. Ones the vehicle is going past 40-50 mph,
axim is subjected to constant vibration. Long term effects of prolonged vibration on any PDA is probably not very good.
Any one aware of different mounting devices that specifically address the issue of vibration, please post.
All mounts vibrate (both windshield and vent mounts, but the vibration on the vent is more of a jolt than an oscillation). For windshield mounts, I rest the mount on the dashboard to keep it from shaking. Just adjust the arm so that the mount is in steady contact with some portion of the dash and the vibration is damped down. There isn't a good solution for vent mounts, as far as I know.
On the other hand, I have been using my Axim as a GPS for over a year, every day, and it's running just fine. They are built to take some abuse, after all.
I have the Deluo universal GPS with the X3 cable. One caution about using the dash for window mount support: The cable that plugs into the x3 will mess up your plug-in portion on the dell.
I am thinking about returning the deluo and cable under their 30 day warranty since I just ordered the Seidio Mount and GPS. Using the Seidio Mount, I will no longer have to plug/unplug the gps and I don't have to worry about the cable/connector at the bottom of the unit.
Food for thought.
edit: I wanted to add, I sent the cable back to deluo for Return/replacement since it was messed up and still haven't heard squat from them. Apparently, unlike other companies, they won't send the replacement out right away until they receive your product. This results in me not having a GPS system at all for like 2 weeks now.
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Jake reviews a handy GPS Mount for the Axim
