The stylish Novogo S700 is a very good compact satnav device. It is extremely simple to use, and is fast and accurate. There are no fills, but who needs extras such as a tinny MP3 player or a completely needless camera?
The S700 very neatly guides you around, displaying the route on an ample 3.5in anti-glare touchscreen. You can use a qwerty or alphabetic touchscreen keyboard and simple-to-follow icons, although we found a slight delay on some touch functions. The 20-channel GPS receiver worked remarkably fast, finding a strong signal almost immediately. The full UK postcode search feature then quickly located even those addresses that other GPS systems had trouble with.
Indeed it's difficult to find the postcode, or even the address, of a shopping centre or museum, but the S700 has so many POIs stored in its memory, simply typing in the relevant area will almost certainly end up with the listing you need. It's really very intuitive, and useful, too. If you need a hotel room in the area it will even give you the phone number to reserve your bed for the night.
The S700 knows the legal speeds of most of the roads in its memory and can be set to warn you if you exceed these limits. We were particularly fond of the off-road function which will record your route through a forest or up a mountain and can then guide you out again. For the more responsible, there's an option for business users to log their petrol allowance.
For reviews of more than 20 brand-new satnav kits - dashboard, mobile phone and PDA kits included - click here.
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