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Averatec Voya 350
While you can't beat the price, Averatec’s first GPS device could be easier to use.

    Current Price: $210.00 (1 seller)Shop
Review Contents:  
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Pros
• Very affordable
• Convenient compact design
• Excellent freeway accuracy and prompting
Cons
• Nonintuitive user interface
• Sporadic lapses in accuracy
• Limited features
Quick Specs Full Specs
Size: 4.5 x 2.9 x 0.8 inches
Weight: 6 ounces

Price as Reviewed: $349
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by Billy Ristle on October 11, 2007

Averatec enters the GPS ring with its Voya 350, a freshman effort at a dedicated device that reveals a fair balance of pleasant surprises and frustrating misses. You get a satisfactory navigator that can slip into a jacket pocket for half the price of many competitors, but be prepared for a sizable learning curve and occasional fits of bad directions.
 
Measuring 4.5 x 2.9 x 0.8 inches and weighing only six ounces, the 350’s overall look is fairly attractive. It proved very convenient to take on a trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Averatec includes a five-inch swivel mount that suctions onto your windshield and a three-inch portable bicycle/motorcycle mount, as well as a dash disc, DC car adapter, and AC-charging adapter.
 
The Voya 350 features a 300-MHz CPU, a 3.5-inch LCD touchscreen with a stylus, and a 1GB SD Card containing NAVTEQ map data for Canada and all 50 U.S. states. To the right of the screen, there is a 1W speaker, power, menu, and up and down zoom buttons, plus a four-way pad. In bright sunlight, the screen can be hard to read, but otherwise it’s crisp and clear.
 
While the Voya is primarily designed for in-car use, its four hours of battery life help the device serve as a pocket navigator. Averatec includes routing options for ferries, toll roads, and carpool lanes, but not optimizations for RVs, bicycles, or walking.
 
This unit was at its best during turn-by-turn navigation. The LCD shows the turn direction, the distance to the turn, and the street to turn on along the top. The bottom of the screen displays the current street and time, the time and distance to destination, and current speed. With day and night views, 2D and 3D displays, and very sensible, clear prompts spoken in a neutral female voice, the 350 compensates for its small screen. On average, you get three warnings before a turn, and rerouting happens quickly if you go off course.
 
Averatec’s user interface could be more intuitive. When we tried to enter a destination address, we naturally entered the house number followed by the street name but then realized that these need to be entered on separate screens. Another example: You can search for POIs only when navigating to a destination, not when traveling home, which stinks when you choose to designate a vacation locale as home. Also, without reading the quick setup sheet, there’s no way to know that pressing left on the navigation pad brings up text route directions. With time and practice, you learn these things, but overall the UI feels clumsy and half-baked.
 
On major roads, the Voya 350 is a champ, and the device helped us navigate the chaos of Los Angeles’ many freeways with perfect accuracy. In residential or commercial areas, the Voya 350 fared less successfully. There were several times when it would issue instructions in rapid and nonsensical succession. Also, you can’t plot a trip with waypoints (stops between your start and finish); you are limited to a single destination. Next time around, Averatec should make the power button recessed to prevent accidental battery draining—a flaw that we learned about the hard way.
 
Additional downloadable POI data, such as restaurant reviews and hotel ratings, would also help this device along, but Averatec offers no such option. When the Voya 350 works, however, it works brilliantly, and for $349 you may be willing to tolerate this device’s quirks.

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