GPS navigators have become extremely important over the past couple of years, these accessories replacing almost completely old road maps. There are numerous reasons for this situation, but probably the most important is related to the fact that these personal navigation devices are capable of delivering a lot more functions than those antiquated paper maps, including here voice guidance, POIs, 3D map views, multimedia playback features, etc.
And although, at global level, the number of well-known brands is rather limited (we're talking mostly just about Mio, Garmin, TomTom and Magellan), things are quite different at local level, where we see a larger number of local players enter this market segment with some pretty interesting products. And, in fact, that's exactly the case with the GPS navigator we'll talk about as follows, namely the Smailo HD 5.0.
The Smailo brand of GPS navigators (the “baby” of AROBS Transilvania) is one of the best-known in Romania (but also other parts of Eastern-Europe as well), its main advantage being that, since it is a local brand, it is much more adapted to the status of the local market than some of its other competitors. Plus, the devices from this family offer very competitive features, being able to easily hold their own against their much better-known rivals (mostly Mio and Garmin, but also Prestigio, just to give a few examples).
The device we had the chance of testing, the Smailo HD 5.0, represented a pretty big surprise right from the start. To be perfectly honest, we weren't expecting that much out of this 5-inch gadget, given the fact that we were talking about a localized brand with lower development budgets than the big players in this field, which, in fact, made the whole experience ever more interesting, because, in the end, the Smailo HD 5.0 proved to be an extremely attractive PND, with a great value for money ratio.
However, we won't go into too many details right now, because you'll be able to discover them one at a time, as you move through the various chapters of our review, starting with the external look of the Smailo PND.
