Mobility Digest Review: RightWay RW 200 3.5" Touchscreen GPS

Hello Folks! Today for review I’ve got another Portable GPS navigation device for review from our friends over at Geeks.com. This one though is one that I never heard of, it’s a brand called RightWay and it’s the model RW 200 which features a 3.5” touch screen and a ton of other features. I’ve looked a a few GPS units in my time reviewing, but this one is the first that I’ve seen that can play movies, but it can also read ebooks, view photos and play music, it’s like a portable media player with GPS functionality and I like it. It’s not perfect though, but it works fairly well for everything it needs. This thing is though full of features, so this review is a bit long with lots of pictures.. Read on..

 

Author: Kristofer Brozio

Vendor: Geeks.com

Price: $49.99

Overall Rating: 4/5

RightWay RW 200 3.5" Touchscreen Portable GPS Navigation System w/USA & Canada Maps, MP3, Photo Viewer & Text to Speech

Price: $49.99

This RightWay 200 Portable GPS Navigation System offers a multitude of features at an incredible price! It can show you how to get to ANY destination in the United States – by address, intersection, or a location selected directly from the map. With Text to Speech  you get clearly pronounced instructions, including street names in US English, UK English or Australian. This RW 200 comes with 2 GB of internal memory along with an SD card slot for expansion!

Locate the essentials no matter where you end up. This RightWay RW 200 Portable GPS Navigation System features over 2 million points of interest including hotels, shopping, restaurants, gas stations and more! It comes equipped with a 3.5-inch touchscreen display, which makes it easy to navigate. For entertainment on the road, you can view videos, photos, e-books and play music too. Finding your way around can become a problem of the past!

General Features:
– Black color
– 320 x 240 WQVGA Display Resolution
– 3.5-inch Touchscreen Anti-Glare LCD Color Display 
– Samsung ARM9 400 MHz processor, 64 MB RAM 
– 2 GB NAND internal flash memory
– Windows CE .Net 5.0 operating system
– Can be viewed in 18 different languages
– Over 2 million travel related points-of-interest
– Turn-by-turn voice guidance with street names
– Detailed street level maps of the U.S. and highway level maps of Canada
– Routing options include: quickest, shortest, scenic and toll road avoidance  
– ALK Map Data
– Includes Stylus
– SiRF Star III GPS
– Built-in 2W speaker
– Automatic re-routing
– Lock / unlock switch 
– Built-in tutorials and tips
– 2D and 3D driving views
– Powered by Co-Pilot software
– Automatic and reliable route calculation
– Create and save multi-destination routes
– Driver safety view reduces driver distraction
– Car stereo compatible, connector cords not included
– Built-in Rechargeable Lithium Ion Battery (1050mAh)
– Battery Life: 3 hours working, 180 hours sleeping (average)
– Multi-stop trip planning with optimization and fuel cost estimation
– Itinerary View 
– Distance to next turn
– Direction of next turn
– Estimated time of arrival
– Route avoidance options 
– Distance to final destination 

Supported Media Formats:
– E-Book Reader: TXT
– Music Player: MP3, WMA, PCM
– Photo Viewer: MP, JPEG, BMP, GIF, PNG
– Movie Player: MP4, ASF, WMV, AVI, DIVX, DAT, MPEG, MPG, MOV, ASV 

Connectors:
– Reset pin hole
– USB Mini B port
– Secure Digital card slot
– 3.5 mm Headphone jack

Dimensions:
– 3.3 x 3.7 x 0.9-inches (H x W x D, approximate)

 

What’s in the Box?

Let’s start with the video unboxing:

(video)

Then onto some pictures:

Inside the box you’ll find the mounts, clip, documentation, car charger and the GPS itself.

Here’s the GPS itself, yes it’s small, but that’s what makes it very portable:

On the back you’ll find the speaker and the stylus:

On the top you’ll find the power/menu button.

On the right side the lock button:

On the left side you’ll find the SD card slot, headphone connection, reset button and the USB port.

 

To attach the GPS to your window you’ll need to use the included bracket and either attach it right to your window via the suction cup or you can use the semi-permanent mount.

Impressions / Review:

Here it is in action in my car:

The screen is supposed to be anti-glare, and for the most part it is, but under bright light it can be a bit hard to see:

The one thing that’s great about this GPS is that it’s actually a portable media player and eBook reader in one. Essentially it’s a PMP with GPS functionality.

So before we get into the actual GPS part of this let’s start with the beginning or the startup screen, here you’ll find Navigation, Music, Movie, E-Book, Photo and Settings.

Navigation is done through folders like we’re all familiar with, here’s the music folder and files:

Here’s the player, it works well with large buttons around the sides.

The movie player is simple but it works very well, the movies look very good actually and the sound is clear. You can just press the button and it will go to full screen for an even better view.

 

The E-Book reader is ok, it reads regular test files and you can read it just fine. Yes I found some good old ‘Lorem ipsum’ to toss in there for this review..

The photo viewer works fine, you zoom in and out, go full screen and even when it’s zoomed in you can drag it around to see the whole picture. You can also view the pictures in full screen, and you can set it so you can view your pictures as a slideshow. There’s even a rotate button as well. It’s actually a fairly decent photo viewer.

There’s one last thing to touch on and that’s the Settings, fairly straightforward stuff here with options for Navigation Setup, Emend T-Scr, Language, GPS Status, Backlight and Volume. That Emend T-Scr is for calibrating the touch screen. Those are just on the first page.

 

The second page is just Time and System Info:

Alright let’s jump into the navigation part of it:

When you get passed the title page, you’ll be greeted with Tips and Tricks, which you can turn off.

 

After that we have CoPilot Live which is essentially shortcuts:

And then we have the navigation screen which you also saw above with the pictures of the GPS in my car.

Hitting Menu gives us three pages of menus:

There’s tons of POI options for you to choose from.

When it comes to driving views you’ve got a few of those as well.

Here’s the settings:

So as you can see this little GPS unit has got tons of settings and features in it

I used it like I would nay other GPS, I drove around and followed it’s instructions and maps.

The first thing I noticed is that I don’t like the computerized voice, it’s hard to understand and I could have swore it was telling me to turn right when the map was saying left.

I have several ways to get where I’m going when I’m traveling, especially in the morning, if the parkway or expressway is busy I’ll go the other way. I let the RightWay GPS figure out my route and it of course wanted me to take the parkway, but the traffic told me differently so I went my way. The GPS wanted me to turn around and it persisted to tell me to turn left so I could turn around, the road I was on had several left hand streets but no right-hand ones. Turning left wouldn’t normally be that big of a problem, but the ones it wanted me to turn on were one-way streets coming out, so I couldn’t turn on them. So eventually it stopped telling me  where to go and finally realized where I was going. Then everything seemed to work fine.

As far as satellite acquisition, it was nice and fast no matter if it was sunny, rainy or overcast.

The battery charges when it’s plugged into your car, there’s no AC adapter included and I can’t figure out why. I did find out though that you can charge it via your computer with a USB cable and it will try and sync with Windows actually.

I got the rated battery life of 3 hours with no issues.

The touch screen is very responsive, no issues there at all, it worked fine with and without the stylus.

One little thing that bugged me, especially about file navigation, was that you couldn’t just select the file or double tap it you have to select it then you press the checkmark button to actually select it and open it. Not a big deal, but just a little annoyance.

Conclusion:

Despite the voice issue I like this little GPS unit a lot, mainly because it’s just full of feature that you don’t see in units costing twice as much and it’s from the little relatively unknown company.

Yes the screen is small at 3.5”, but the unit itself is very small making it very portable and unobtrusive on your dashboard.

In the end it’s not a bad little GPS unit, especially for the cost coming in at $50 i think it’s worth it.

 

Pros:

+Small and very portable

+Easy to use

+Surprising amount of features for such a small device

+Plays videos, music, views photos and even reads ebooks

+Good battery life

+Quick GPS acquisition

Cons:

-Voice isn’t exactly clear

-No AC adapter included

-No carrying case