 You have several ways of customizing your route options, including avoiding tolls, avoiding highways, and arriving faster or taking the shortest route." |
A rough start
Starting out, I was instantly skeptical, as the route the c330 had calculated from my house to the highway was very different than what I had anticipated. But then I realized that this was my own fault. Having played with the c330 the evening before, I had changed the setting from "fastest route" to "shortest route," yielding a course wildly different than one I'm used to driving. This route involves a lot of turns, back roads, and stop lights. But mileage-wise, it's a shorter distance. If you want to get there fast, better to take the main roads and rack up a few more miles. I was definitely interested in getting there fast.
Taking one for the team
After I rectified my route to a faster one — and set the c330 to avoid toll roads, too — I confidently continued on towards Charleston. Now, you're discouraged from fiddling with any navigation device while moving, and the c330 comes with the "Safe Mode" automatically on. That means that it prevents you from using certain functions while the car is in motion, such as all the "Where to" options. Come to a full stop and you get those functions back. You are certainly allowed to turn the safety mode off (why else would they include a button for it?), and I did. If you don't feel comfortable taking your eyes off the road, I'd suggest leaving it on. But, as I was testing the full functionality of this device, I felt compelled to turn it off.
 View the map in 3D, or with the top of the map always facing north, or with the top of the map pointing in the direction of travel, or as a split screen. I personally enjoyed the 3D option. |
Am I really going that fast?
I really enjoyed clicking through the different display screens. I went from a bird's eye view of my route to a 3D view. I zoomed in and out, depending on how far ahead I wanted to see (up to 23x zoom!) — zooming out for highway travel, and zooming in for city travel. (The c330 automatically makes these adjustments, too, and they're usually just the right amount of zoom.) I switched to the "turn in..." view, which presents a text preview and instructions for the next turn. But my very favorite view was a button in the lower left of the screen titled "arrival." That screen, designed to look like an instrument panel, showed all the nitty gritty details of my trip: current speed, current direction, distance traveled and distance left to go, average total speed, average moving speed, maximum achieved speed, total trip time, total time in motion, and total time while stopped. I had no idea that my speedometer was 10 miles too slow. Making up for that discrepancy made my journey much more fun.
 Even though my spedometer has me going at 80mph, the c330 clocks me at 71. |
A great dinner companion
The unit has a built-in battery too, so you can detach it from its base, sit in a diner, say, and calculate your way to the next diner, while plugging in a stop at the rest area between them. It also makes security very simple. Just detach it from the windshield mount (you don't even have to turn it off), put it in the glove box, or in my case, in my bag, and off you go.
