Testing the Uniden GPS301

It’s nearly two years since we tested what was then a unique product, the Road Angel (see The Road Angel). At AUD$995 we thought it was cheap... but such is the march of technology, the Uniden GPS301 is now available for under AUD$300. And not only is the Uniden less than a third of the price of the original Road Angel, it also does a whole lot more!

But what are these things?

Both the Road Angel and the Uniden GPS301 can be classified as road safety warning systems. Using an in-built GPS satellite positioning receiver, they always know where you are. Together with a prodigious in-built memory of the location of black spots, fixed speed cameras and traffic light cameras, that information allows appropriate warnings to be automatically sounded as you approach.

However, the Uniden goes a few steps further. It also has a speed alert warning that sounds if you’re exceeding the speed limit, and the device can also give you distance and direction to 5000 suburbs, towns and other localities. A simple trip computer is also built-in.

What You Get

Open the box and you’ll find inside:

• The GPS receiver
• Cigarette lighter plug and curly power cord
• Hard wired plug and cord
• 240V plugpack
• Serial cable
• Suction cap mount for inner windscreen
• Instruction book

The GPS receiver is a small and stylish looking device. On its rear surface is a red dot matrix alpha-numeric display and two LEDs. On top are five control buttons, while on the left side is a volume control and sockets for the serial connection, 12V and speaker. As the provision of the suction cap mount implies, in use the Uniden is stuck to the inside of the windscreen. So that it can be easily seen by the driver and so its satellite reception antenna can see the sky, the most usual mounting location is at the base of the windscreen in the centre of the dash.

Power is fed to it either by the cable which can be hard-wired to the car, or by a curly cord that plugs into the cigarette lighter. Updating of the data memory is done online and it’s for this purpose that the plug-pack 240V adaptor and serial cable are provided.

Set-Up and Installation

The extensive user guide includes a quick set-up procedure which takes only about 5 minutes. The bracket is suction-capped to the windscreen and the Uniden then slides into this bracket. The power cord is plugged in and the unit switched on with the volume/on/off thumbwheel control. When the unit is turned on for the very first time it may take up to five minutes to find the satellites; however, in subsequent power-ups it is ready to go in 30 seconds or so.

Once these steps have been completed, the Uniden displays the current compass heading (eg NE for north-east) and road speed. There is no need to input all the blackspots, traffic light cameras, etc, into the memory as this information is already loaded. (However, the user can manually add another 500 locations.)

Operation

As with all GPS systems, the speed display lags a little behind real time changes in speed, however the accuracy of this display at constant speeds is much better than a typical car speedo. So even in this default display mode, having available the speed and car heading is useful. But what happens when you reach a location where a warning needs to be indicated?

There are three levels of warning. Level 1 occurs at 800 metres, where the green LED lights and a message scrolls past on the display - eg RED LIGHT CAMERA. At 400 metres the yellow LED lights, there’s an audible alert, and the distance to the camera and its direction are shown. Finally, at 160 metres the red LED lights, there’s another audible alert, and the distance to camera and its direction are shown on the display.

If that sounds like rather a lot of warnings, it’s because it is! However, the volume of the audible warnings can be altered individually as well as globally. For example, you can turn down the ‘black spot’ volume while leaving the ‘red light camera’ volume unchanged. Other options available from this menu include a variable display dimmer and the ability to select metric or imperial units.

Where the driver doesn’t need to interact with the Uniden except to watch it and listen for warnings, the device works well. (However, the red display should have been recessed rather than being made flush with the back of the unit – this would have prevented the occasional flaring-out that occurs when sunlight falls on it.)

But it’s when the driver (or passenger, for that matter), needs to press the buttons that it all becomes a bit clumsy. When the Uniden is in its mounted position, the five buttons (menu/cancel, navi, display, select and up/down) can’t be easily read, and furthermore, in many cars with steeply sloping windscreens, it’s impossible to even reach the device. The unit unclips from the suction mount but what it really cries out for is a remote control.

So why would you want to press the buttons? The first reason is if you want to mark a location - this is so that you can easily find your way back to the spot. To do this, the instruction book states that you must drive to the location and stop the vehicle, press the Menu button, use the up/down keys to scroll to Mark Loc, press Select, scroll to the desired Quick Access Location name you want, then press Select twice.

You’re unlikely to want to put your home location in more than once, but the Navigation feature is one that is useful to access frequently. More than 5000 Australian and New Zealand cities, towns and suburbs are programmed in. Navigating to a city involves pressing the Navi button, scrolling to City, pressing Select, using the scroll buttons to select the state, pressing Select, scrolling to the city’s name, then pressing Select again.

As we said: with a remote control, easy! But not if you have to stop the car, undo the seatbelt, lean forward, unclip the Uniden, perform the button pressing before then returning it to its position.

In Use

We used the Uniden 301 around the Gold Coast area and it generally performed well. However, the Red Light Camera warning didn’t seem to take into account which direction the camera was pointing in, sounding the warning even if the camera is set up for traffic heading in the other direction. The navigation system uses an arrow and a distance indication, which can certainly be useful in some situations but is obviously vastly inferior to the (much more expensive!) map-based, street-by-street GPS navigation systems. The over-speed warning has zero tolerance (not a bad thing) but on one section of road insisted the speed limit is 100 when in fact it is 110 km/h.

But at this price, having the safety of black spot, red light camera and fixed speed camera warnings is huge. The navigation and simple trip computer are bonuses! It’s just a pity that after an initial flush of enthusiasm we can see the functions that need button pressing being rarely used – something that a remote control would easily address.

The Uniden 301 is available at department and electrical stores and at the time of writing, was selling for as low as AUD$289.

The Uniden 301 was loaned to AutoSpeed for this review.