 For the money I am satisfied. |
| Review Date: June 20, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Douglas A. Henderson, Seoul, Korea |
I love to ride and I have always been dissatisfied with my bicycle computers. I looked around for a GPS system but the cost always made me turn away, then I found Mainnav. I purchased the MG-950DM. Keep in mind that this is a data tracker not a navi. I believe that this system is a excellent entry system. It allows me to see where I have ridden, speed and elevation.
Pros:
-Large easy to read display.
-Shows altitude, time, total trip time, trip odometer.
-System will automatically rotate though the meters or you can select one and let it set.
-It record's a waypoint every second which will give very accurate tracks.
-Example of track-[...]
-Software that is provided is simple and exports out to google.
-If you have a digital camera and the time is set correctly the software will import the photos and correlate the time to the map.
Cons:
-Editing the track is difficult
-Slow to start.
-If you start tracking to soon after starting the track will jump around for the first 30-60 seconds.
-system only seems to work with Windows, I have not been able to make it work with Linux. I do not know about Apple.
For the price this is a great system. If you want a real navi, with heart rate and all the other bells and whistles then pay $300+ and get a Garmin.
I gave 4 stars because it does what it says it will do and nothing more. I am happy, but not wowwed. I plan on using it for a long time.
Good luck, happy riding!
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Barely competent cycle computer and data logger
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| Review Date: October 11, 2008 |
| Reviewer: Dale Trexel, Minnesota, USA |
I purchased this product as an alternative to Garmin's monopoly on the GPS-enabled cycle computer market, and because the promise of NMEA output would enable geeky stuff like post-processing differential correction. Sadly, my experiences with the product are disappointing.
First, the battery does not seat well. When I got my product, I could not get it to power up until I did some searching and found some posts that discussed the battery connection problem. (http://www.navigadget.com/index.php/2007/12/21/mg-950d) Upon removing and re-inserting the battery, I got it to work, but since then I had my unit shut down on about 50% of my rides. Eventually I crammed the battery in place with a piece of cardboard and have not had the problem recur in the 4 rides I've done since then.
The controls are horrible. There are two buttons and one touch-sensitive area. To turn the thing on you have to click and hold the button 3 seconds. To start data logging you have to click and hold it another 3 seconds. To turn it off you have to hold it 5 seconds. It's a terribly annoying waste of time when you just want to get out and ride! Would a couple more buttons have made the thing that much more expensive?
And the display -- early images (see above link) showed the unit with a number of useful information readily available on the screen (like the Garmin units), but the product as released has only speed and below it a rotating display of other measurements. So if you want to know your altitude and time and distance traveled, you have to keep looking down at your computer in hopes of catching it at the right time.
The documentation is also as horrendous as the rest. How much would it have cost MainNav to pay someone with actual English skills to edit the manual? It's practically unusable, and fails to say anything about most of the advanced features that the advertising claims it has. Stuff like Bluetooth -- what data output does the bluetooth connection give you? Good luck trying to get that information out of the documentation.
Also, don't expect this to be a GIS-geek's tool. The "NMEA" output is a tiny subset of the total information in the NMEA specification, ruling out any post-processing or even a guess at what sort of data reliability you were getting at the time.
So ultimately if you want to know how fast you're going and post your track on Google Earth, this toy will work fine. But it's definitely not a serious GPS tool...or even anything remotely along those lines. |
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