Navman has seamlessly combined both PDA and GPS features in the Personal Interactive Navigator (PiN) 570, which makes an ideal travel accessory for professionals on the road.

The appeal of integrating personal information management and GPS navigation is obvious, as it saves carrying around both a PDA and a GPS unit. Business users would appreciate the convenience of being able to edit Microsoft Word or Excel documents, synchronise with Microsoft Outlook, store important documents and then hop into car and to use the PiN 570 as a GPS navigator. Instead of merely tacking GPS functionality onto a PDA, Navman has successfully fused both, allowing users to enter a contact in the address book, and then navigate to the contact's address using the GPS.

Running on the Microsoft Windows Mobile 2003 operating system and powered by a 266MHz Samsung processor, we found the PiN 570 generally fast to operate--but not as fast the similar Garmin iQue 5. In addition to the usual organiser functions, the PiN 570 can be used to view photos or listen to music using Windows Media Player 9. A memory expansion slot is provided in addition to the inbuilt 64MB of RAM, but the map data would usually occupy this space.

The PiN 570 uses version 3.5 of the SmartST 2005 GPS software and stores maps of all of Australia on a single card. The user interface for navigation involves a confusing combination of stylus and the buttons under the screen. Using the stylus to tap and hold on the map brings up a menu allowing you to navigate to a certain point in the map, avoid an area or find the nearest POI. Alternatively, the four-way joystick at the bottom can be used to access system menus and zoom in and out of the map.

The map display can be set to day or night mode, and different routing methods are supported such as quickest or shortest. You can also determine the amount of freeway usage and instruct the GPS to avoid tolls when calculating routes. While no speed camera warnings are included, a speed limit warning can be set and audio alerts customised to be either male or female.

While a quick read of the manual was all we needed to get started, one aspect of the software we found especially confusing was the number of unlabelled icons at the bottom of some navigation screens. These buttons allow you to access configuration information quickly, but you would have no idea what they actually do until you click on them or refer to the help screen.