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| Hewlett-Packard iPAQ 310 Bluetooth 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator | 
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| Brand: Hewlett-Packard
Category: CE
List Price: $449.00
Buy New: $249.00
You Save: $200.00 (45%)
New (17) Used (3) Refurbished (2) from $199.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  89 reviews
Sales Rank: 2018
Color: Black
Media: Electronics
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Batteries Included: Yes
Native Resolution: 800 x 480
Display Size: 4.3
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.3
Dimensions (in): 3.4 x 4.3 x 0.7
MPN: 310
Model: 310
UPC: 883585309559
EAN: 0883585309559
ASIN: B000VRYLU2
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: 00% Brand new. Factory sealed original retail box. Ship immediately with Priority Mail and Tracking Number. Never opened. UPC code intact.
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| Customer Reviews:
 A Very Bad Product December 29, 2007
8 out of 19 found this review helpful
At first look the specs look impressive, but when I actually tried the unit I saw it was only half baked.
The audio is worthless. Low volume and muffled. You can not hear a thing ! Very disappointing !
Routing is inaccurate and slow.
The unit continuously locks up and freezes and I had to take the battery out to get it to reset.
It powers on by just touching the button. So, my battery is always dead.
3-D coverage while a cool idea only covers the center of very large metro areas. I do not live in downtown Chicago !
Back it goes to the store ASAP.....
 HP iPAQ 310 - Best In Class Graphics And Good Navigation December 28, 2007
28 out of 47 found this review helpful
QUICK REVIEW: This is a great GPS unit. It has outstanding graphics on 3D maps with good routing capabilities. The sound could be a little better, but it is good enough for me. It comes with additional features for Bluetooth, media, and utilities as the cherry on the sundae. Detailed review based with usage comments follows.
SETUP: There are a couple of things to do to set up your iPAQ GPS. First is charging. I used the wall adapter and the USB charging cable to charge my unit. It was fully charged in about 90 minutes. Once you power on the device, the on screen instructions are simple. There will be a couple of things you will want to change. Under Settings -> Time click on the double clock icon in the lower left portion of the screen. The "Use Auto Time Zone" setting was not working properly for me so I unchecked it and set my timezone manually. At this point my unit began to show the correct time. Then under Navigation -> Settings -> Regional you will want to choose a voice. The ones with (TTS) in the name are the only ones that support text-to-speech during navigation that speak full street names. I have been able to work with the default settings for essentially everything else.
As for in the car usage, it comes with a windshield mount that works well. In addition it has a disc that you can affix to your dash and attach the windshield mount. I am not using the dash disc as it is not removable/reusable once you put it in place. The USB charging cable is plenty long to reach from the windshield in our van to the power port on the console.
NAVIGATION: There are two main ways to navigate that most people will use if you are trying to find a specific address. For the simple cases I recommend going into Navigation -> Route -> Edit Route and clicking the turn sign with the "+" sign. From there you can either enter a new address by selection "Address" or you can selection a previous address from History. From there use the back navigation to get back to the Navigation menu and select "Go to".
For more complex trips, you can use HP's web site dedicated to the iPAQ Travel Companion to plan trips over multiple days with 1 or more stops per day. I used this to plan a trip for Christmas Eve that went looked like this: my house -> church -> my house -> my brother's house -> my house. The site allows you to specific the time of day for each stop along with a duration of stay. The target use for this is business travel as you can share your itinerary with others and optionally allow them to edit it. Once your itinerary is complete, you can sync the trip to your iPAQ using a download that is available from the HP web site. You also need this software to sync contacts to your device. Once you transfer the trip to your device, your trip is available under Navigation -> Nav Extras. Simply select your trip to begin navigation. I actually found that you want to begin with your first stop rather than your starting point when planning a trip. If you begin at a different starting point than planned, the unit will try to send you back to your planned starting point. This may seem obvious, but I thought it was worth mentioning since I made this mistake.
ROUTING/REROUTING: The device performs well in both areas. Despite what I've read in other reviews on both Amazon and CNET, I have been please with the routing capabilities and accuracy of the device. It does a good job of quickly generating an accurate route to your destination/stop, and it reasonably handles the situations when you go off course. It initially tries to send you back to the original route, but if you go far enough off the original route, it will give you a completely new route. I tested this while going between my house and church. Due to traffic flow patterns, it is faster to come home a different way than we used going to church. The route selected our route that we use going from home to church. Coming back, it eventually locked on to our alternate route after trying to get us to go back to the original route. I found this to work in a similar manner to other navigation software that I have used.
GRAPHICS: This is an area where the iPAQ is amazing. The generous 4.3 inch screen is very crisp. The 3D maps allow you to choose different perspectives. The overhead view essentially gives you a 2D map that allows you to keep the heading up at all times. This is mysteriously missing in 2D mode where you are stuck with North up. I don't like this setting so the 2D map is essentially useless. However with the 3D maps and all of their features, I don't know why anyone would ever use 2D anyway. In driving around downtown Dallas, I saw many buildings rendered quite lifelike such as the American Airlines Center and Reunion Tower. This seems like a potentially useful feature for additional visual queues in unfamiliar cities. You can also select different orientations with various depth of field ratios. These are available by tapping on the map during navigation in the center of the screen. This is also how you select the zoom features.
While navigating the street of your next turn along with the direction and distance are giving along the top of the screen. In addition there is an icon on the left side that gives you the direction of the turn along with the distance. In the center along the bottom are two times: the top is the time remaining on trip while the bottom is your absolute arrival time. The only drawback that I noticed on the graphics is that the direction of your heading is mysteriously missing. While this is relatively minor, it does seem like an odd omission.
SOUND: The speaker on the device is not the best. Given the lack of bass that it has, I found that the "Susan" voice gave much better TTS directions than the "Dave" voice. This is probably the one area in the device that could stand some improvement. If I concentrate, I can understand the directions ok. However my wife thinks it is difficult to hear/understand.
BLUETOOTH: In addition to standard GPS features, this device will pair with your cell phone and act as a hands free device. The one thing that is missing in this area is a way to initiate voice commands on your cell phone. The Motorola T305 (see my review) has a "multi-function" button for interacting with your phone. So you will have to initiate calls from your phone. This limits the usefulness to receiving incoming calls which can still be done truly hands free as long as your phone has auto answer features.
MEDIA: This device also comes with an MP3 player, movie viewer, and photo viewer that all work with SD cards. The speaker on the device does not really lend itself to being a multimedia player for use in the car. However it works well with headphones so it can be handy while killing time at the airport or elsewhere. The photo viewer can play slideshows of photos. The general picture viewing experience is pleasant, but I would consider all of these media applications to be nice to have features.
GAMES: The iPAQ comes with 5 games preloaded on it. The graphics are pretty good, and they work will with stylus navigation. I liked Jewel Master the best. These are also a nice to have that are useful for killing time, but are not a real selling point of the device.
EXTRAS: If the above is not enough, the device also comes with a calculator, clock, and phone utilities. These do about what you would expect. The phone utility is integrated with your contacts.
OVERALL: This is a great device. While the price tag seems steep, the 4.3 inch screen and 800 x 480 screen really make a difference. I have not seen comparable graphics in other units. While the sound could be better, it is acceptable to me. I would highly recommend going to a store where they have a live device to test the sound prior to purchasing. All of the other extras are gravy in my opinion.
 Needs a lot of improvement December 28, 2007
18 out of 35 found this review helpful
I don't understand all the negetive ratings for my review? I have tested this and I also tried a garmin and the garmin wins hands down on performance, maps and satellite aquasition.
Update- I have used this GPS for a couple weeks and I have found it to be horrible in accessing the satellite signal as I received a garmin for Chistmas and that one has no problem with the satellite signal and is much simpler to use. Sorry HP but the ipaq needs the satellite reception improved in a major way. Plus the ipaq kept wanting to make one of my destinations as my home address and wouldn't let me change it.
I have never owned one of these before but have read many reviews on the different brands.
Pros: 1. I love the removeable battery, it makes it easy to replace unlike some GPS that the battery is integrated.
2. the screen size is good and the touchscreen is responsive.
3. Somewhat intuitive interface.
CONS: 1. I feel the interface could be improved since it tells you no where that the thing has to access a sattelite signal before it will show the entire route.
--For the turn by turn I feel it would be much better if the input would read Starting point-- input address or allow the satellite input it then have a destination point-- input the address. Plus when you do this it would be so nice if they would show an overall destination map that would show your route. (maybe I missed something but I didn't see this)
2.I have had it freeze up on me a few times and the one time I had to press the reset for it to even shut off.
3. Very difficult to see in bright light
4. Takes forever to aquire a satellite signal inside of the car. (If I stand outside I can get a signal in half the amount of time or less, this is supposed to be for a car so I think they need to make improvements in aquiring the satellite signal)
I wanted to test it so I input the address of a local place we were going to, it took the HP Ipaq at least 15 minutes to aquire a signal, it tried to take us in a circle before heading us to the main road but it did compensate for the different turn we took, we reached our destination and I set it down until we came back out ( iwas holding as a passenger so that I could hear the voice). It lost the satellite signal. I wanted to have it guide us back home (which in a real world situation I would need this, luckily this was a route that we did know) It took until we were 2/3 of the way home before it finally aquired the signal again. "This is much to long to aquire a signal" and there weren't a lot of tall buildings but was a cloudy day.
5. The sound level is much too low and difficult to hear, make the sound more adjustable and a larger speaker would help tremendously.
The way this has performed so far I would not recommend it and I would not buy it. The games are nice and the music features some may use but this is to be a GPS first and I feel it fails in this area since it loses signal too easily and takes a very long time to aquire a signal and the mapping system trys to take you in circles. I would love to try another HP if they improve the GPS.
High Definition GPS! December 21, 2007
7 out of 20 found this review helpful
I've been using my HP 310, and the resolution is stunning! The Garmin and TomTom units are there are nice, but they only have QVGA (320x240) resolution or the widescreens are only Wide-QVGA(480x272).
This HP device is 800x480!! This is 5x the resoluion of the Nuvi 350. The resolution is so crisp, and the performance is snappy.
I'm a big fan of this next generation technology from HP.
Unfinished product, albeit with some nice features December 17, 2007
40 out of 51 found this review helpful
There is a reason why Garmin is one of the leaders in GPS market for the US: it is designed with users in mind. This HP unit has some nice features such as a beautiful screen, relatively fast processor, nice graphic if you live in a major metropolitan such as here in Boston, and a list of POIs that is not too shabby. However, there are three major flaws in my view:
(1) Navigation: route recalculation is so illogical one has to believe the algorithm used is fundamentally flawed.
(2) Sound: What sound? one has to put the unit literally next to your ear to hear anything. Turning up the volume seems to aggravate the tiny speaker as it blares with statics. This is joke if HP engineers have a sense of humor.
(3) Power management: The unit powers on with the slightest touch of the power button. While the manual states that holding down for 2 sec to turn on, a single touch will power it on. As such, do not consider this unit if you intend to keep it in its carrying case to carrying it around, since the slightest squeeze of the case turns it on. The solutions are to set power save to the max and/or take the battery out, else you'll run out of power within a few hours. I called HP tech support and they suggested that I should "tape over" the button!!!
There are some nice features as this GPS unit has its roots traced to the iPAQ handhelds. But clearly, this product is an incomplete and flawed one. HP appears to have rushed this product to production before it is field tested.
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