Magellan CrossoverGPS

As its name suggests, Magellan's CrossoverGPS unit tackles a variety of transport means -- specifically car, boat and foot. Although it does a decent job of joining these areas, it's a little big to carry around on foot and its performance while driving is a little sluggish.

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Featuring a rugged design, the CrossoverGPS is water resistant and comes packaged with a removable rubber case, so it's definitely able to withstand some harsh treatment. The plastic has a soft but sturdy feel and the rubber flaps protecting slots are a nice touch. If you're planning to use this on foot though, it's a little large to carry around in your pocket.

The CrossoverGPS is quite easy to use, though the menus and user interface lack the detail of competing in-car units on the market and appear a little outdated. Regardless, it shouldn't take too long to get into the swing of things. The vehicle navigation menu is the best of the lot, with bright, colourful icons and clearly labelled text.

For driving, the CrossoverGPS offers plenty of flexibility when searching for an address, as you can enter it by city, post code or even an intersection, though the unit doesn't filter your search by state. Instead, you enter your city and it gives you a full list with the state proceeding e.g. Carlton, NSW and Carlton, VIC.

Conveniently, the on-screen keyboard says the letters out loud as you tap to prevent mistakes, though its small size means it sometimes struggles with accuracy. Unfortunately, the biggest drawback of the walking mode is the fact that you can't enter a specific address -- you can only search via roads, water, POIs (place of interest) or a specific GPS coordinate. A voyage tracker and compass are great features for the walking mode though.

Unfortunately we weren't able to test the marine feature, as we don't have access to a boat. This function offers much of the same features of the walking mode though, including a trip planner, voyage tracker, waypoints, a compass and port locations.

The CrossoverGPS is equipped with the popular SiRFstar III GPS chipset, but we found response times a little sluggish. It sometimes takes up to a minute and a half to pick up a GPS signal after turning the unit on and rerouting is also a little slow.

The road maps are solid, but not outstanding and they do lack the detail of other units on the market. The CrossoverGPS uses NAVTEQ maps and the unit comes preloaded with Australian maps. The best feature without a doubt is the next turn view, which shows an enlarged view of the upcoming turn, displaying direction and the street name. This is excellent at large roundabouts with many exits and lanes, for example.

The overall navigational experience is pleasing thanks to clear voice instructions while the text-to-speech technology works quite well -- even if it does struggle with some longer street names. Our only complaint is the fact there is no external volume control on the unit and the volume itself could have been louder. The usual routing options, such as avoiding tolls, unpaved roads, motorways, and U-turns are all supported. Users can also set a preference for using motorways or normal urban roads, while up-to-date speed camera and red light camera warnings are also included.

A music player and an image viewer are included multimedia features, but both are lacking in advanced features. The sales package comes with an AC adapter, in-car charger, a window mount and USB cable.