Developer/Vendor: Easy PocketNAV, Inc. (OnCourse Navigator)
Price: $145.00 
Rating (out of 5):

I have had this mapping application on trial for over a month. I've given it a pretty thorough wring-out, using it for local travel, medium travel and long-distance travel. I've use simple start-destination routes and routes with multiple (as many as eight) waypoints. It stepped up to every challenge. In fact, this software is heads and shoulders above anything else I've used, bar none. There's not much not to like about OCN6.

Testing Environment
I tested OCN6 with two Dell Axims running WM2003 (an X50 and an X50v) and a variety of GPS receivers including two i-Blue receivers, one GlobalSat 338 and a serial receiver. The X50v has been upgraded to 128 Meg of RAM, the X50 has the original 64 Meg.

Installation
Installation is dead simple. When you buy the system you get a mini-SD card with the software and maps on it. To install, you simply insert the card into your device.  Because the Axim doesn't have a mini-SD slot, you get a mini-SD to SD adapter to use. Put the mini in the adapter and the adapter in the device and you're done.  The security scheme is tied to the hardware, meaning you cannot copy the software to another card and run it, but it does let you copy the entire card for a backup. The OCN folks recommend you do that right away as a backup precaution, then you can delete any maps you don't want from the card and use the extra space for anything you want to put on the card. The card I got was 2 Gbytes and had about 150 Meg free when I got it. I've kept all the maps (US and Canada) and have thus far added about 60 Meg of other files to the card, leave me with 90 Meg still free. I'll talk about what I've added later on in the review. I originally was removing the card and using my 4 Gig card for daily use, then swapping them whenever I was headed somewhere. Eventually I got an 8 GB CF card and moved the stuff from my SD card to the CF Card so that I can now leave the OCN SD card in the slot full time.

When you start the software you get a splash screen showing the progress of the loading. That runs for about 10-12 seconds. Then you get to the main console screen:



The red hue behind the center button indicates that you don't have a GPS fix. The triangle in the upper right corner let you minimize the application, leaving it running but freeing up the screen for other uses. In that mode you can still get voice prompts. The little red icon in the bottom left corner also shows no GPS and allows you to connect to the GPS screens by tapping it.  When you do, you get to this screen:

This screen allows you to let the software detect the GPS, set the configuration of the GPS, and if you have it, the TMC. Once you connect it has the typical display of the constellation of satellites you can see and the signal strength from each, along with fix data. If you want to synchronize your PDA clock with the satellites, you can do that by tapping the upper right corner. The green pilot light in the lower left corner of the satellite display blinks to indicate that you are getting data. Once you have a GPS fix that is reliable, the main screen changes to a green background:



This screen is the central control. From here you can go to the various functions of the software. OCN uses the expression "cockpit" for the screen that gives you guidance and the map/tracking functions. In addition, you can look at the map just as a map, should you need/want to do so.  The settings button takes you to an extensive set of screens to configure how the system works for you. The GPS icon is now white, showing that you have a fix. The Exit icon on the lower left is how you leave the application. Find and Go is a shortcut button to the route planning screen. With Home and Work saved locations, getting in your car and having directions home is a two-tap operation.

During configuration you can set how you want the software to work and how you want it to look/feel/sound.  I chose the US English Female voice, Amy. Amy is pleasant and very easy to hear. She warns you of impending turns as far out as 3 miles, and gives the turn warning pretty close to the turn. Overall the voice prompts seemed to be pretty good as far as frequency and location are concerned. I was not surprised by any turn that I did not get a warning, nor did I find myself turning, then hearing Amy speak. Overall, it felt about right. I also configured for "BUS"  on recommendation from the folks at OCN and asked for exhaustive planning. The planning was quick, so I left those settings throughout the trial period.

OCN6 In Action

To route you can either tap the "Find & Go" button, or you can enter it from the cockpit. In either case you get to set of buttons. (In this example I asked for the route options in the middle of a previously planned route, just to show that it can be done.) You can enter an address, a set of coordinates, or just tap Home for your home address (assuming you've entered one) or Work for your work location (again assuming you entered it). The POI button opens another menu of POI categories from which you can pick a category, find your POI of interest and then route to it directly. 

The "History" button opens up a screen with any locations you have previously selected. Here is a screenshot of my history screen.

As you can see, you can have street addresses, simple road segments or latitude/longitude coordinates in history. The icons tell you a little about the fix, with flags for via points, houses for home and work and the three arrows for coordinates.

Once you have your destination selected and a fix, the system will calculate your route. You get a progress bar showing the system is working. On the cockpit display below you see the bar in the center of the screen.

Once the route is calculated you get a full cockpit screen:



Lots of information here on this screen. Across the top from left to right are the next maneuver indicator (showing a right exit) the distance to that maneuver and the name of the road onto which the maneuver takes you. Down the left side are the zoom in and out buttons and two buttons that allow you to change the pan angle (up/down) of the 3D view. On the right are a compass indicator that points north, or if you are in North-up display mode points up, or if you choose to see the entire route displays a little airplane icon to imply that you are at a high altitude to see the entire route. The GPS icon can be tapped to take you to the GPS screen, the battery indicator shows battery status, or the fact that you are on external power, and a sound on/off button. On the bottom are four configurable boxes. On my display they show distance to destination, time to destination and time of arrival, plus the name of the road on which I am currently traveling. These items are configurable, so you can select what makes sense to you. 

The voice prompts are timely and useful. You get a first warning at 3 miles to go. Amy (my voice choice) says "Prepare to (maneuver) in three miles," where (maneuver) is whatever you are going to need to do.  If the distance is less than three miles, you get that early warning at one mile, three quarters of a mile, a half mile, a quarter mile or just before the maneuver. As you get closer it drops the "prepare to" and just states the maneuver. It does not have text-to-speech, so it does not provide road names in the voice prompts, but you can clearly see the road name on the visual display. After the maneuver, you get a "drive more that X miles" prompt to tell you that you have a ways to go before the next voice prompt. Overall the voice prompts are just about right, although occasionally the last prompt is right at the maneuver instead of just before it. That's not a big deal because of all the early warning you've been given.

The display is by default 3D. I've not been a big 3D fan, but this system has made a believer of me. You can configure the zoom levels and pan angles to get a display that makes sense to you. The top of the screen is artificially hazy, giving a very realistic depiction. On this screen you can see that the system does label some side streets, but only the close ones and not all of them. One anomaly is on the screen. Just to left of the blue arrow Lakehaven Ct. has a tear. That is not a function of OCN, but a function of the way I took the screenshots. I've never seen a screen defect with OCN6 in any situation. The green line shows the planned route going off into the haze, with a red flag indicating my destination. The screen updates multiple times per second, with a very smooth scroll as you move. Zoom is also very smooth, in very small increments. If you increase the pan angle to max, you get a vertical view, or classic map view. Here is the cockpit in that configuration for those who may be interested:



Here is a north-up map view:



Notice the top right icon now shows north up and the arrow is canted to the direction of travel. the display is intuitive and with the map you get a range bar. In all displays the blue triangle is your snap-to-road location. What is also visible is a blue dot for where the actual fix may be. If you leave the road for any reason (parking lot, for example) the arrow stays on the road but the blue dot will move to show your exact location. You can reverse that operation if you want to, but it seemed logical to me.  That arrangement is a nice compromise between real fix and snap to road location.

After you have a route planned, you can look at the itinerary of what it has planned:



You can chose to avoid any stretch of the route by highlighting the segment and tapping the Avoid key. It replans, avoiding that road. You can also edit to add/delete/reorder the via points and destinations. The avoid screen gives you options on how much of the road to avoid or detour around:



OCN6 does all the typical stuff--via points, automatic re-routing, POI (12.5 Million of them), multiple voices, detour on the fly, recording and exporting tracks (to GPX or NMEA), replay recorded routes, fly over planned routes (to check them out), etc, etc. You can also add POI of your own to the database.  And it does all this very, very well. I found no bugs, no problems and no errors in use over a month.

On the long distance planning the ETA was relatively accurate. On a journey of 7 hours it was 10 minutes pessimistic, which is not bad. I'm not a heavy-footed driver, but I do cruise slightly above the speed limit (5 mph, usually). If you are quicker, it may be slightly more pessimistic. In any event, it's better to be pessimistic and arrive 10 minutes early than the reverse. 

If you don't want to see the maps but do want to have voice prompts, you can minimize the display and it goes into the background nicely, tracking along. Amy (or the voice of your choice) will start to chime in when you get within 3 miles of the next maneuver.

Quirks

OCN6 does have some odd quirks. The choice of phrases in the voice recordings is occasionally strange. Amy says things like "Prepare to arrive to destination," and "Prepare to enter highway in quarter mile." She leaves off the indefinite articles like "the" and "a" pretty consistently. And it's just strange to arrive TO destination instead of arriving AT destination. The good news is that the voice is all recorded in .ogg files, so if it really bugs you, record your own prompts and put them into the system. For me, I'm getting used to Amy's little quirks.

The second quirk is that the directions, while always technically correct, are occasionally confusing. Look at this screen:



It's showing that I need to make a right turn in about a quarter mile, but the road is turning to the left, so it's not clear what it wants me to do. Amy is telling me to "prepare to remain right in quarter mile." As I got closer the image zooms in and changes to this:



Now this is a tangle of roads, but let me explain. Just past the arrow at the bottom is an exit to the right. That exit goes to the reversible carpool lanes which at the time the screenshot was made was one-way southbound, so the exit was closed. But the green line is not saying to take that right turn, but to stay on the main line. It also wants you to stay on the main highway and not take the left exit also just at the arrow to the SB lanes of I95. Technically, it's correct to say stay right, but in reality there is no reason to say anything at all. While we're on it, across the top are a series of boxes, all but the far right one black. As you get closer to the turn the boxes turn from white to black across the top, giving a visual cue to the upcoming maneuver.

Another quirk that originally really annoyed me is that the TeleAtlas database used by OCN6 has some errors in it for my area, and three of them are on my route to and from my work location. One of them is that the average speed for part of the Fairfax County parkway is seriously low, causing the software to avoid using it. It chooses to add 2 miles to my journey instead of using the "slow" segment. I can force the issue by putting in a waypoint more than halfway up the slow segment, but it's  still a map error. Another error is shown below:



On this view you can see that the planned route (green) has me traveling eastbound on 7100 toward the Rolling Road exit. Instead of staying on the main highway and traveling under Rolling Road it is planned for me to exit, cross Rolling Road at the light at the top of the exit and re-enter 7100.  This is a map error in that the database doesn't know that 7100 continues past the exit for Rolling Road, although it shows it on the display. As soon as I  pass the exit ramp it immediately replans and has a new route for me before I cross under Rolling Road.

The lesson learned from these quirks is that you need to study the plan results before setting out and that if you are in the middle and it re-routes, pay careful attention to what it is commanding you to do. I will also say that in my long distance travel I never saw map errors. In fact for most areas the map data is very up-to-date, including some highways that have opened in the last year, much better than other databases in that regard. I used the software in North Carolina, South Carolina and southern Virginia and never saw any of the errors I did in Northern Virginia. It's also just a little frustrating that two of the three errors I found in Northern Virginia are on my commute route! (The third error is a road near the Central Intelligence Agency that is open to public traffic, but TeleAtlas thinks it's closed. You can plan to it, but it won't use the route unless you put a waypoint or destination on it to force it to do so.

Configuration Options

OCN6 is based on the iGo engine, as is the MIO All-In-One. The support forum at the OnCourseNavigator website is functional, but to get to the iGo stuff you can visit the iGo support site hosted by PDAMill.com. In the forums dedicated to iGo you will find color schemes, skins and configuration items that will allow you to completely change the look and feel of OCN6. You can change road and background colors and textures, configure how it works with TMC, etc, etc. Look at this screenshot I took after making some changes (the "Tap screen to abort simulation" in the middle of the display is there whenever you do a flyover of a planned route):



The color scheme is darker, for night use, There is a different look and feel to the top bar, there is a current speed box added to the lower left corner and a TMC indicator on the upper right. The icons on the left and right are more transparent. There is an additional box on the bottom of the screen which I now use for display of elevation. And all of those changes are just the tip of the iceberg. What you can't see is that there is an added "high speed" flyover function that lets you simulate your trip not at road speeds, but at roughly 10 times the road speed!  You can also customize not only the POI database, but the POI icons as well.  Basically, you can control pretty much everything about how OCN6 looks, feels and operates.

And did I mention that you can do all of this in landscape as well? And that you can turn it either left or right to get the best arrangement for your vehicle?  Here are some screenshots of the system in landscape:












The bottom line is that if you can't get OCN6 to look and feel how you want it to, you probably won't be happy with anything on the market!

Closing Words

After my six-week evaluation of it, I can say that OCN6 is far and away the best product I've tested in a long time. It is quick, bug-free and highly configurable to fit your personal likes. It works flawlessly on long and short journeys and never caused any problems at all. It's a great system! OCN6 has set a new standard for routing and mapping applications.

Pros:

• Excellent GUI - highly configurable
• Quick routing/re-routing
• Good POI database, customizable
• Full Featured
• Pleasant voices
• Can be used in multiple machines (security is tied to the card, which you can move from PDA to PDA)

Cons:

• Security system is tied to the card
• Some errors in the TeleAtlas database (at least in my immediate area)
• Strange language choices (quirky, not fatal)