Review: Acer p610 sat-nav device

Our first contestant also happens to be the least expensive. Coming in at less than £200, the Acer p610 is in a minority of one, with the next cheapest model costing a full £30 more.

The name Acer is perhaps more commonly associated with notebook PCs and PDAs. In fact, the p610 shares many characteristics with its Pocket PC cousins, built as it is on a Windows CE 5.0 platform with a 400MHz processor and 64MB of Ram. Its slimline gun-metal grey and black body even looks like it might have been designed with a PDA in mind, although it does have the side effect of making the p610 easy to slip into a pocket whenever it leaves the car.

The software Acer employs is Copilot 6 Premium, which includes maps that cover most of Europe. Copilot is operated almost exclusively via a touch-sensitive screen, which in the p610’s case is larger than average at 4in.

The system is simple to use and the Navteq maps located all our test addresses without any problems. Unfortunately though, the system can’t handle full UK postcode searches. Tapping in house numbers and road names each time is a bit of a chore, but one that many people may be happy to live with for such a low price.

Being a budget-priced option, the p610 has little in the way of extended functions or additional frills. In the box are standard accessories such as a windscreen mounting system and a cigarette lighter power cable, but not a lot else. Like most of the other devices here, a USB port allows for a connection to a PC, while SD or MMC memory cards are used for storage.

It’s a tempting prospect, given the price. Those who require up-to-the minute information about the state of the roads will need to look elsewhere though, since the p610 doesn’t support Traffic Message Channel (TMC) or any other type of traffic update system.

This article is part of a group test of 10 satellite-navigation devices
See also:
Introduction
Garmin Nuvi 310
Magellan Roadmate 3050T
Medion Gopal PNA465
Mio Digiwalker C510E
Navman N40i
Novogo S700
Sony Nav-u NV-U50T
Tomtom One Europe
ViaMichelin X-950
A tables of features can be read via our pdf download above