Lowrance has officially announced the iWay 600C. Lowrance's latest flagship navigation GPS combines street-level navigation capabilities with marine navigation (charting for inland and coastal waters with depth contours).
According to Lowrance's press release, here's how the 600C will stack up:
- 5-inch high resolution color touch screen display (640 x 480 resolution)
- 30GB internal hard drive (only 5GB will be available to store your mp3's / photos, with the rest used for internal mapping data)
- NAVTEQ mapping data (U.S. and Canada)
- 5.5 million POI database
- 3,000 enhanced U.S. Lake Maps with depth contours for inland waters
- NauticPath carts for lakes and coastal U.S. waters
- Navaids, port services, tide/current data, etc.
- MP3 and Ogg Vorbis (who the hell is listening to Ogg Vorbis in their car or boat?) support
The bad news? It looks like the iWay 600C will use outdated GPS technology, employing a 12-parallel channel GPS receiver. Why on earth Lowrance isn't using SiRF's StarIII chipset is a complete mystery to me. I'd say it's only a matter of time before they release a SiRF enabled device, so I'm recommending you hold off on the iWay 600C and wait until Lowrance gets with the program and gets on the SiRF train.
As a reminder, SiRF is the new high performance 20-channel GPS receiver that works so well you even gets reception indoors. It's the newest in GPS receiver technology, so there's absolutely no reason not to get a SiRF enabled device if you're buying a new GPS. You certainly don't want to buy technology that's already outdated!
Hi Fletch-
I find this a very compelling unit. I have a little Goldilocks syndrome--3.5 inches is too small, and 7 inches is too big. I wrote to Lowrance regarding the Star III technology and what I thought was a lack of text-to-speech. They responded very quickly (on a Sunday no less!). My respondent said, "Our units do use text to speech to tell you how to get to your destination. GPS receiver technology is pretty consistent across all manufacturers. Our chipset is uniquely engineered and manufacturered by Sirf. We also feel it will out perform any other chipset in the marketplace, for accuracy & signal acquisition quality." Fletch, would you please comment on this?
Thanks!
Mike
I've been looking for a marine/land portable GPS unit for some time. The choices are at best paltry. There are some many boaters out there and everyone has cars. Are the requirements that different for a marine unit?