Lowrance Ships iWay 500C Car Navigation System

While only just starting to ship, Lowrance’s new iWay 500C car GPS navigation system already picked up its first award at the SEMA 2004 show.

If the name Lowrance isn’t too familiar to the average consumer, that’s because in the past they’ve been more focused on GPS systems for alternate markets, such as boating. But with the new iWay 500C, there’s no denying that they are coming full-force at the automotive marketplace.

The iWay 500C looks to be a great entry into the market, boasting a 20GB hard drive with 10GB for high-resolution mapping data, and the other 10GB dedicated for… wait for it… MP3 or Ogg Vorbis music files! Yep, you heard me right – the iWay 500C is a combination GPS nav system AND a MP3/Ogg music player in one. How good it truly is at both tasks, we’ll have to wait to say until we see one firsthand. Until then, here’s the rest of the skinny.

While not the highest resolution, the iWay 500C has a 5″ 320x240 color touch-screen display that looks like it should provides great visuals of your route and touch-screen navigation controls, has custom Lowrance technology to make it visibile even under bright sunlight, a super-bright backlight for the screen, plus a dedicated blue-LED backlit 5-button keypad on the right edge for frequent-use controls. At 6.1′’W x 4.5′’H x 2.15′’D, the unit should fit most any vehicle easily.

Navigation is provided via a 12-channel GPS+WAAS receiver, with NAVTEQ maps and turn-by-turn audio and visual cues. I haven’t yet seen a shot with a 3D mode, so I’m assuming it is using normal 2D graphics – but the graphics shots I have seen are all very clear and detailed, unlike some of the cheap products on the market. The iWay 500C will also auto-recalc routes after missed turns, plus mapping controls so you can even tell it to avoid giving you left-hand turns. And, there’s an optional Turn Preview screen that can take over and zoom-in as you near each turn.

As an MP3 player, the iWay 500C looks like it could have a decent added feature built-in. The Music Mode display shows the track name, encoding, and time, a user-selected visualization, visual progress indicator bar (that you can touch-screen point-and-drag to scroll elsewhere in a track), next/prev, pause/play, stop, and volume level slider. The iWay 500C thinks in terms of ‘playlists’, whether that’s a track, a folder, or an actual .m3u playlist from your computer. Additional controls over music playback include shuffle, repeat, and a 6-band graphic equalizer and pre-amp screen.

There’s a lot more overall to this unit, that I’d love to cover in a full review. One last thing I will note is that apparently the user interface is skinnable, and the unit comes with a number of skins to start with. I’m making a leap that you could potentially create your own skin, or download more in the future…

The iWay 500C comes packed with all the accessories you should need. You get a car power adapter with speaker, volume control, and 1/8th inch stereo jack for plugging into the unit. Alternately, there’s a ‘hardwire’ adapter for wiring into the car’s stereo (and power) system. The iWay comes with two different mounts, both a rubber-footed ‘non-skid friction mount’ for dash or floor standing plus the usual suction-cup mounting bracket for windshield attachment – and a soft-cover for the unit when not in use to prevent scratches and damage. For in-home use, there’s a 12V power adapter brick and a PC USB connection cable, for downloading files to the unit such as updated maps or MP3 music. And, although the iWay 500C has a built-in GPS antenna, for poor reception areas they’ve included an external GPS antenna with suction cup and magnet mounts. That’s an amazing ‘pack-in’ set of accessories!

While the MSRP is around $1000 US, if you do a google for it you’ll find it for around $800 – not a bad price considering the maps, hard drive, mp3 player, all the accessories, and overall feature set.

TomTom GO 32MB GPSClick for GREAT DEALS!09/27/08 10:17pm

We’ve obviously had a lot of coverage of new GPS systems lately – check out the Related Posts on the left for more. Certainly, while this unit is price and feature competitive, many will find a unit like the Tom-Tom GO more ‘user friendly’ with the 3D map display. We hope to do a round-up of some of the new systems in the future.

Check out the next page for the press release, or visit the Lowrence iWay 500C site for more info.