VMS navigator

I ordered a VMS 430 portable navigator today, with street and offroad mapping and also a reverse camera. Hopefully it will be in store tommorrow so i will let you all know what I think when it comes!

I ordered it through Opposite lock at Bowen Hills, the guy there was extremely helpfull so he got my business.

On paper it does much the same sort of thing as the hema, I'm not sure how the maps compare with hema, but I can upgrade to hema maps down the way if I choose. The hema was just too much extra to pay for my liking, probably an extra $400.

My first impressions are, the unit is excellent!

I got the 430 unit (4.3 inch screen), they also do a 500 unit (5 inch screen) but I just couldn't justify an extra $300 for a 0.7 of an inch bigger screen. As far as I found out the only other difference between the 2 is that the 500 will accept a bigger SD card. I'm sure the 430 will do me just fine.

I bought the street/Itopo and 1 camera kit, I ordered it through Opposite lock at bowen hills and they were excellent to deal with, They seemed to take a real interest in customers cars and talked for ages about all the things we could do to it (like I need convincing LOL). They got it delivered to them overnight and rang me the next morning to say it was in.

The street nav side is really easy to use, has predictive text so its really quick to find addresses, and the directions are quite good. I was quite concerned about this because I will use it far more for street nav than I ever will offroad. All of the reviews on this product and the Hema seem to concentrate on their ability offroad and mention very little about their on road capabilties.

The onroad nav uses whereis maps, and the offroad side has both MemoryMaps and a sample version of OziExplorer (which is basically the full version except has 'Demo version' written across the screen like a watermark) I can upgrade to the full version of Ozi if I want but honestly I think I will deal with the watermark.

I am yet to set up the reverse camera side of it, hopefully i will get it done through the week. The camera looks like a good bit of gear though, it's metal bodied and looks really well sealed. Hook up also looks nice and simple, running the cable will be the biggest pain.

The unit uses a stylus but is still easy to use with my fingers, I used to really struggle with that with my Mio GPS, constantly hitting the wrong button.




Oziexplorer



Memorymaps


Sorry about the crappy pics, I tried heaps but they just wouldn't come out right.


Its pretty hard to get pics of the screens, but there are loads on here:
www.vms4x4.com.au

They also have loads of tutorials on how to do various tasks. Its really well setup.

I was reading a review of the 500 the other day, as you say its a bit more expensive and the main difference is the screen size but the review was really positive. Most GPS reviews these days seem to be the same in that they mention very few new things and report everything that's standard is similar to Tom Tom or Navman but the review I read on these things even reckoned they compared well to HEMA in their ability.

HEMA is coming down in price soon according to my suppliers but I believe it will still be dearer than the VMS so VMS might get some business

You have just made my life much more expensive. I really want to replace the stereo in my D22 with something including reversing camera, GPS, Bluetooth and so on. Most of the regular brand names do nothing much. I would end up doing it with a dual camera kit!

And I would probably end up buying two, one for the R51 as well, pity it is only a single disc unit though. I wonder if you can daisy chain extensions to have bluetooth and a CD stacker.

Well its all set up now, I got a third cigarette lighter wired to accessories and mounted it in the void above the radio, so that I could permanently mount the GPS on a bracket in the top dash panel. So now I don't rely on a windscreen mount and the unti is basically hard wired so should be a little less appealing for theives.

I ran the video cable through the car yesterday and hooked up the reversing camera (with a bit of backup from Jason to find out why the hell it wasnt working lol) I am really happy with picture from it, and the my reservations on whether or not the 4.3 inch screen was big enough for the reverse camera were not warranted, you can see quite clearly.

I still haven't taken it off road to really use the off road maps but I am really happy with both the street nav and the reverse camera, and also the ease of using the whole system.