Mobile Crossing WayPoint 100

Designed to double as a GPS navigator and a PDA, the WayPoint 100 is priced about $100 cheaper than competitors like the Garmin iQue M5. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the GPS receiver isn’t built in, there’s no Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, and map cards cost $69 extra.

The WayPoint 100 is an unassuming Pocket PC. It runs Windows Mobile 2003 and comes with 224MB of RAM (with about 30MB available the first time you turn it on). It has a 3.5-inch screen, a spring loaded stylus, dual memory card slots, and an ActiveSync cradle with a slot to charge a second battery. Don’t look for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a high resolution display, or any other fancy features. The device itself measures a clunky 5.3 x 3.1 x 0.63 inches and weighs 5.9 ounces. It’s bulky, sits uncomfortably in your pocket, and has a cheap, molded plastic feel to it. Even the screen is rather old school at 320 x 240 pixels. This package might have been attractive a few years ago, but in 2005, it simply looks like a throwback.

The WayPoint 100’s real appeal isn’t being a Pocket PC. It’s billed as a low-cost navigation system, and that’s where things get interesting. There’s no built-in GPS at all. Instead, Mobile Crossing includes a GPS receiver in the form of a CompactFlash adapter. Again, you won’t find any elegant, fashion-conscious technology in this package; the receiver extends a cumbersome 2.5 inches out of the top of the PDA, making it nearly 7.75 inches in length and quite top heavy.

Mobile Crossing bills the WayPoint 100 as a “PC optional” GPS solution, meaning that you never have to install ActiveSync or connect the PDA to your laptop. That’s because you can order a regional edition of the device that comes pre-loaded with all of the maps you need, including street-level details.

To install a map that’s not pre-loaded on your device, you need to sync your device with a PC that has a live Internet connection. After that, your maps are downloaded and installed onto your expansion card. We installed the Pacific Northwest, one of the 16 regions that make up the U.S., and it took several hours to download using a computer equipped with a broadband connection.

On the plus side, Mobile Crossing offers regional maps on a 1GB Map Loader card ($69) for faster loading. You can’t leave the Map Loader card in the PDA, since you need that slot for the GPS receiver. It’s faster and more convenient than the Web approach, but we found the Map Loader interface convoluted and the transfer took quite a while (over 30 minutes).

Once the map was installed and we could try the system on the open road, our experience with the WayPoint 100 gradually improved. The system comes with a car mounting kit and car power adapter. There’s no one-cable connection between the cradle and PDA; you need to wire audio, power, and other cables separately, making the cradle a dangling mess of wires.

We were able to build a route to addresses, intersections, businesses, favorite locations, and contacts in the Pocket PC’s address book. The software announces turns audibly through the PDA or a speaker built into the car kit cradle. We did like the Detour feature, which quickly locates an alternate route around traffic jams and road work.

In our tests, the receiver found the satellites quickly (in less than a minute) and navigated us to our destinations without losing its signal, even in moderately urban areas. The receiver occasionally lost the signal in the urban canyons of downtown Seattle, but few GPS receivers can successfully contend with a dense wall of skyscrapers. 

The WayPoint 100 has a few unusual twists, like TrafficWatch and WeatherUnderground. TrafficWatch is a live traffic service that delivers current traffic information to your PDA for your current region. WeatherUnderground is much the same for weather; it displays live weather radar images of your locale.

Unfortunately, both of these services are fee-based (you get 30 days for free) and neither integrate with the navigation data; they’re available only via separate screens. Worse, both of these services obviously require live Internet connections. These add-ons are more valuable for the WayPoint 200 ($749), which has integrated Bluetooth, but if you have the WayPoint 100, your weather and traffic information are only useful when you’re at your desk.

It’s not nearly as polished as competing GPS/PDA combos, but the WayPoint 100 redeems itself with a low price and good navigation accuracy. Make sure that you get a regional edition of the device for your area or wait for Mobile Crossing to release maps on memory cards so that you don’t spend all day syncing with a PC.