Iway 350C a best buy

I-WAY 350C in use for a couple of months. Has worked great. Initial Sat lock has been fine…No problems there. Units is very configurable. Many land feature details available for map screens. Maps are pre-loaded for North America. Show as many map screen details as you want to. And can customize overlay attributes that you want to see. Destination, current street, elevation, ETA, next turn, steer arrow, distance to turn, to name a few. Address Book holds 1,000 contacts. Uses via's (Way Points) if you have multiple stops to make on your route. You can autosort, to get best route to make the stops you need. Great for sales people, truckers or delivery and service businesses. And can re-trace, to go back the way you came. Or go direct to starting point. Onscreen keyboard is even configurable between QWERTY or Alpha order. You can make this unit look just the way you want it, and show you as much detail or as little, as you like.

Can switch to select from three levels of screen brightness. Excellent readability in direct sunlight. Can dim for night driving. Or can switch to night time mode. Can even change the look of the menu screens, if needed. Comes loaded with 3 skins. If you want something different, just download more free skins from Lowrance web site.

There is a free download to update to the latest v1.2.0 firmware, from Lowrance web site. This update was recently released, so units now in dealer stock may not have this update. If you get a new unit and it does not have latest firmware version, just download it for free. And you have all the new features.

The new update adds even more functionality. And resolves any bugs they may have in the initial new product. Satellite lock from cold restart in about 1 minute. Booting up from "Stand by" satellite locks are instantaneous, immediate lock. Turn on and go. New and better find capabilities. Menu improvements for easily locating things like Restaurants, Hotels, Airports, rental cars and all kinds of other stuff. 18 different language options, translates screen/menu text and turn voice directions. And a menu box to choose straight line navigation option for fishing.

Turn by turn voice directions are very clear thru the speaker. But can also be heard through the radio, using the FM Modulator tuned to a clear channel. And voice can be configured to give you verbose or minimum directions.

Excellent battery life. Will hold unit in stand by for 24 hours. Then it goes into full shut down automatically to save battery for use. In Nav mode runs a long time on battery. Maps are very up to date. Lots of POI’s.

One thing…although the iWAY-350C is plug and play, READ THE MANUAL. Many other posters indicate problems. Many of which are explained in the manual. A unit as configurable as this one is, takes a little learning to get all the benefits of it. If you are reading this you are researching GPS units. So if you take the time to do all the research to buy a GPS, then take a few minutes to learn how to use it. Have never needed to use Lowrance customer service, so I cannot comment on that. There are some great internet discussion forums with vast resources for info that may not show in the manual. Just google GPS forums.

Also, you’ll want a good SD card to hold MP3 music and photo’s.

Excellent, feature rich, GPS at a price that makes sense. You can pay a lot more and get a lot less.