Acer does Satnav

THE D150 IS Acer's first foray into the standalone satellite navigation market. And, up against established brands such as Tom Tom and Navman, the Taiwanese firm certainly has its work cut out, writes Paul Monckton.

Unlike some skinny PDA-shaped GPS devices, the d150's somewhat bootylicious form has a large rear end that, depending on the design of your car, can make dashboard placement somewhat tricky.

But installation is very simple, using a level-operated suction cup and flexible mounting arm with a locking cradle. An extra degree of freedom would have been useful and what appeared to be an extra arm section was included in the box, although there's no mention of it in the instructions and it has no obvious use.

Below the 9cm touchscreen display sit six backlit control buttons and a navigation joystick. These have a positive feel, are well spaced and large enough to operate without error.

Its solid form keeps the voice announcements from sounding tinny, although they occasionally distort at the highest volume.

Built-in mp3 and photo viewer programs are also included. Stuff can be stored on the supplied 256MB SD card (with the UK maps installed there's 71MB free) and played back using the on-screen controls.

Destinator DS navigation software powers the d150 and it comes with pre-installed Navteq maps of the UK and Ireland as well as major roads of Western Europe. Wider coverage can be purchased separately, while Microsoft Activesync 3.8 allows you to sync contacts from your PC onto the d150 and navigate to their addresses by name.

During testing, the d150 managed to get us from A to B without any problems and the speaker had enough oomph to be heard on busy roads.

Full postcode support lets you tap in a precise address, but the lack of dynamic routing means it isn't able to adjust your route according to traffic reports.

At £299.99, the d150 sits in the budget section of the GPS market, but we still prefer the design, extra features and overall usability of the Tom Tom One) - it's also £20 cheaper. ?

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