The old adage 'you get what you pay for' still holds true, even with modern electronics such as the low priced Via Michelin X-930 GPS navigation unit.

We recommend you spend a little more money to get a lot more functionality in return.

Via Michelin X-930 GPS Navigation Unit Small and compact, but disappointingly underfeatured
	The Via Michelin X-930 is small and compact, but note the wasteful use of screen space, leaving very little room for the actual map itself. Part of our series on GPS - additional articles to be published in coming weeks.

The Via Michelin X-930 GPS receiver promises to be an appealing unit at a great price.  But, this promise is massively broken.  The unit suffers from irrational and inexplicable limitations and problems.  It is difficult to understand and use, and not nearly as flexible as other units.

Accordingly, this unit is a poster child example of how a unit can look great on paper (and get good generic reviews from reviewers who apparently have done nothing other than read the press release) but which is completely unsuitable for normal people and normal uses.

Not recommended.  If you're looking for a small size low price unit, choose the vastly superior GlobalSat GV-370 instead.

Via Michelin X-930 Overview

Michelin are best known for their travel guides, books that enjoy a very high quality reputation.  They moved into offering GPS receivers in Europe a couple of years ago and are now expanding into the North American market.

The X-930 went on sale in the US in December 2006.  It has already been superseded in Europe by first the X-950 and subsequently the big screen X-980, but these newer units are not yet (March 2007) available in the US.

At first blush, the X-930 has a lot going for it.  It comes from a respected supplier; it is small and lightweight, and has an acceptably large 3.5" screen.  Best of all, its list price of $299 has been discounted to $199 by Amazon, making it - in terms of price - one of the very best value units currently being sold.

But this unit is a classic example of how a unit that looks good on paper massively disappoints in real world testing.  Its user interface is obtuse and difficult to follow, and much of the screen is wasted with unnecessary and overly large data.

Programming is difficult, and unlike many competing units, simply using it to show you where you are is not a default action, but instead requires you to work through five layers of non-intuitive menus.

The design of the maps is also poor, with roads at certain scales being shown as thin orange lines against a lighter orange background.  This makes them almost completely invisible!

And, talking about scale, you have no way of knowing what scale the map is being displayed at.  Does an inch on the screen represent 100 feet or 100 miles?  Regrettably, we're not told that important information.

There are plenty of other quirks and failings, too.  For example, we can't get the unit to show our direction, in a straight line along a road, as a straight vertical line on the screen (as is uniformly the case with every other unit we've ever seen).  Instead, it is displayed as a slanting line from the bottom left part of the screen to the top right part of the screen.  When we called and asked Via Michelin's help desk about this, they variously didn't know what we meant, couldn't explain why the path was oriented that way, and were unable to fix the problem.

Using the Unit

The unit turns on and off instantly which is nice, and doesn't treat you to any warning screens about using the unit carefully when driving, which is even nicer still.

The unit had good sensitivity to satellite signals, even inside the vehicle with no external antenna, with at times as many as ten satellites being locked on.  But it sometimes took five minutes or more to get a 'lock' on sufficient satellites as to know where it was and be able to start helping you with directions - this is way too long; imagine having to wait five minutes or longer before being able to start your journey.  This is longer than other units, but might be reduced if you added an external antenna.

The screen is crisp and clear, but as soon as we confronted the main screen we found ourselves reaching for the manual.  The three options offered - 'Navigate to', 'Plan your journey' and 'Settings' were confusing when all we wanted to do was display the map and see where we currently were.

To get the unit to do this basic function, we had to follow this complicated sequence :

1.  Choose 'Plan your journey'
2.  Choose 'Display a Map'
3.  Choose 'Map Options'
4.  Choose 'Center Map'
5.  Choose 'on GPS position'

This is completely counter-intuitive.  The difficulty in mastering the unit is compounded by having sometimes strange symbols rather than names on the buttons on the front of it.  All in all, we could never adequately understand how to get the best use out of the unit.  Sure, we could have committed ourselves to an intensive course of study and practice, but that would not help us if we then didn't touch the unit for three months, because we'd for sure forget everything about the unit in the meantime and have to relearn everything once more.

This poorly designed interface is aggravated further by Via Michelin's penny pinching decision not to include a manual with the unit.  You have to go online and download a copy from their website instead.

In terms of actually using the unit, it suffers from significant drawbacks in that area, too.  As the picture at the top of this page shows, about half the screen is used for various informational displays, leaving only a slim narrow band in the middle for the map.  This is regrettable for two reasons - firstly it is a shame to waste so much valuable screen on this information, and secondly, when you're using the unit, most of the time you're interested in what is ahead of you, rather than what is on either side of you.  If Via Michelin really did need to use parts of the screen for the other information, it should do this on the sides, not on the top and bottom.

And for a really illogical arrangement, if you have the unit simply showing where you are on a map, the map is fixed in a north up direction - most of the time you'd want it to be in a 'direction of travel up' direction instead, but when you have the unit set to direct you somewhere, it switches into the direction of travel up mode.  Unlike most other units, it is impossible for you to change directional modes yourself.

Most people use their GPS in what I'd call 'active' or 'passive' modes.  In active mode, they have programmed in a destination and are using the GPS to guide them to that destination.  In passive mode, they are just using it as a moving map to see where they are.  This unit works acceptably (but not excellently) in active mode, but in passive mode it is very disappointing, showing little information on the screen.

In active mode, the unit was sometimes struggling to give us turn information ahead of when the turn appeared on the map, and unlike many units, it didn't clearly highlight exactly where and how to make turns.

There are problems and poorly thought out issues with many different parts of this unit's operation.  One other thing we really disliked was the lack of a scale on the map.  We had no way of knowing if the scale as zoomed in or out, and by how much.

Recalculating directions was automatic, and moderately fast, but not as quick as some units we've used.

For some strange reason, the unit decides that you've reached your destination way before you have.  Sometimes I could be five miles away from the destination and the unit switches from turn by turn guidance to triumphantly telling me I've arrived.  Wrong.

The Bottom Line

Much as we wanted to like this unit, we feel it to be a frustrating waste of money with no redeeming features.

You're much better advised to buy a unit with a more user-friendly interface and better laid out map and screen graphics.

Feature Analysis
 

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Originally published 30 March 2007, last update 21 Jul 2020

You may freely reproduce or distribute this article for noncommercial purposes as long as you give credit to me as original writer.