Lowrance iWay 350C Arrives for Review at the GPS Lodge

The Lowrance iWay 350C arrived for review at the GPS Lodge and we are pretty happy to see it. Lowrance has been ramping up production on these and I had to wait for Santa to get all of his delivered before I could get a review unit - I don't resent it; it's great sounds like business is brisk. The Lowrance iWay 350 was recently released and is in the crowded mid-tier automotive GPS segment. It has lots of features laid out in a nice compact product. The 3.5" backlit LCD touch screen is bright and is easy to read. The unit gives you turn-by-turn voice guided directions on your way while navigating, telling "Turn Right on Main Street" and not "Turn Right in 400 feet." This is quickly becoming a standard feature and one that I have come to appreciate. I think that this feature is great when turning streets start to get close together, and you need that extra reassurance of what street to turn onto. Another nice feature is the on-board lithium ion, which allows you to operate without being tethered to the car power outlet.

See our review of the Lowrance iWay 350c.

The big extra on the Lowrance iWay 350c is the fact that it integrates an MP3 player into the model which uses and FM modulator to get the music to the stereo. You can always play the music through the small speaker in the back - that is just fine for directions, but is not what you want to be listening to your tunes on as you drive down the roadway. One of you loyal readers, Bryon C, jumped on the Lowrance iWay 350C back in December when it first came out and has really enjoyed using it. He has told me that Lowrance did their job well when the designed this feature, because you can play your music over the FM modulator to your radio, and when a turn comes up, the iWay 350C chimes in and tells you about the turn and then goes back to the music. An issue is that you can't play BOTH the Sirius or XM and the iWay on the same FM station at the same time, because even when the iWay is not transmitting directions, it is still locking up the channel.

The iWay 350C comes pre-loaded with NAVTEQ maps and over 5 million points of interest (POI) on the 4GB hard drive. Bryon has been telling me about the quality of the maps and the POI database. For instance the POI database has telephone numbers included which is a big plus when you are trying to navigate to somewhere like a restaurant and you want to call ahead to see if reservations needed.

So over the next couple of weeks, I'll be putting the Lowrance iWay 350C through its paces to check out this new comer to the market. The Lowrance iWay 350C is available for between $400 and $499.

Features of the iWay 350C

Display
Sunlight-viewable, 16-bit color TFT touch-screen display
320H x 240V pixel resolution
3.5" (8.9 cm) diagonal display size
Super-bright, white LED backlit screen

Navigation
Built-in, precision 16-channel GPS+WAAS receiver
Simplified touch-screen menus
Three selectable mapping displays: 2-D Track Up, 2-D North Up, and Elevated 3-D
Built-in, detailed and highly accurate NAVTEQ turn-by-turn database for the continental U.S. and Canada with over 5 million Points-Of-Interest
Turn-by-turn audio and visual cues, including auto-zooming and automatic recalculation of directions after a missed turn
Street address searching, plus auto-routing choices to choose or avoid Toll Roads and Interstates, and avoid Left-Hand Turns
Mega-memory storage for up to 1,000 address
Maps can be updated through the internal USB port with a PC
Safety Passenger Mode allows a passenger to use the GPS features while the car is in motion

Media Players
Full-featured stereo MP3 music player with digital media card slot for loading music with an SD/MMC memory card
Built-in FM modulator to wirelessly stream music and voice directions through any open FM radio channel
Full-featured picture viewer displays JPEG photos stored on MMC/SD memory cards

Specs
Rugged 4GB hard drive for built-in, high-detail mapping
Operates on 2 internal lithium ion rechargeable batteries for up to 15 hours of cordless navigation, music and picture viewing
Built-in battery charger
Integrated speaker
4.52"W x 3.54"H x 2.55"D (11.48cm x 8.99 cm x 6.48 cm)
Full one-year warranty

Accessories Included
12 vDC plug power adapter for power and recharging
Suction-cup mounting bracket for windshield applications
USB to PC interface cable
iWAY 350C protective cover
Touch-screen cleaning cloth

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Review: Lowrance iWay 350c Review by GPS Lodge - Feb 04, 2006

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Posted by Scott Martin at January 12, 2006 10:03 PM

I had the Iway 350c for a couple weeks. I discovered that it does not have intuitive text and has a hard time finding places unless you know exactly how to spell them or know the entire name (which is verry proabable if you use it too travel). If you are looking for belvedier street and aren't sure how to spell it you can not just type in BELV and have it list all the street that start with BELV. same for almost every location. Also the Iway kept freezing and powering itself off. and uses a strange slider to select if you want highway or toll road instead of just shortest or fastest travel.These were all a major issues for me.

So I returned it and baught the Garmin c330 wich if you type in BEL it will bring up BELview BELvedire even campBEL.

That being said I miss almost all of the features of the Iway I believe it is far superior in most of it's advanced features easy map scrolling, ability to select and change info that is imposed on screen (direction,eta,time, speed,and much more), had maps that where less than 1 year old, and was also just fun to play with around the house, unfortunatley it just was not good at actualy finding locations.

In conclusion I feel that if Lowrance were to make it more intuitive and as good at finding hard to spell or partial names as the Garmin then I would definetley by another and I believe otehrs would agree. But until then I will be using my Garmin that Jsut gets you there but does it easily.

Posted by: Bryon C at January 25, 2006 8:26 PM