My Road Trip with Dash
Jun 2, 2008 | Filed under Gadgets, Reviews
I’ve had my Dash Express GPS for a few weeks now, but I haven’t had the chance to really put it through its paces until last week, went I went down to Houston on business (not “business”). The Dash is unique in that it’s a GPS device with a built in GPRS internet connection that’s always on. This makes the Dash unique in four ways:
- Live traffic: This is the primary reason I chose the Dash over other GPS systems. The Dash displays traffic for all roads (not just highways) from a third-party traffic provider, historical data, and – this is the cool part – other Dash users. See, the Dash anonymously uploads traffic conditions you encounter while you drive, then shares it with other Dash users through the power of the internets. And , it gets added to the historical database, improving it for the future. Traffic conditions are updated every fifteen minutes, so you won’t see a rush hour jam on a Saturday afternoon, unless Bon Jovi is in town, clogging the freeway with hairspray-addled freaks who still wish it was 1987. The Dash also indicates how confident it is in the traffic info it’s providing, with solid colors indicating high confidence, and dotted lines indicating unverified or historical data.
- Live Search: Most GPS systems have an integrated POI database with locations of restaurants, hotels, and tourist traps attractions. The Dash one-ups those by connecting to Yahoo! Local Search live through its internet connection, giving up-to-date search results by name or category. Well, sort of, but I’ll get to that in a minute. What this lets you do is instead of just searching for the nearest gas station, you can see up-to-date gas prices, or find a restaurant that just opened this month. The Dash also integrates with your PC at home, letting you instantly send addresses from the website, saving you the time of mashing them in on the touchscreen in the car.
- Updates: Dash promises to update their software with new snoodads and floozits on a regular basis (with the first big update promised in the near future). In addition to constantly improving the software, Dash will provide up-to-date maps as soon as Tele-atlas releases them, making sure that every Dash user can find their way around the closest deserted McMansion development while they have a good laugh about subprime mortgages. This is made possible through…
- Monthly fees: This one is quite a departure from other GPS systems. Piggybacking on cell phone networks isn’t free, so Dash users have to pay $12 a month (less if you pre-pay for one or two years) to keep those colored lines coming. On top of the $400 price tag for the unit itself, this gets pretty expensive, pretty fast. But for all those powerful features, is that monthly fee worth it?
To paraphrase The Simpsons, the short answer is “No with a but,” the long answer, “Yes with an if.” I’ll post more impressions and a full review throughout the week.
June 10th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
[...] acquiring my Dash Express GPS (read about it here), my first real test with it was my road trip to Houston. You know, for business (not [...]
June 19th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
[...] Rage is in the midst of a multi part driver write-up about his driving experiences with his Dash. Here is part one…. here is part two… and the rest are still to be written. Keep checking [...]
June 30th, 2008 at 9:52 am
[...] covered a couple of problems with the Dash Express GPS receiver in part 1 and part 2 of my review, but there’s a growing list of frustration with the Dash that make it [...]