Lowrance iWay 600c

I feel like singing a self-composed song: “I love the water, I love the land”. Why? The reason is nothing other than the Lowrance iWay 600C GPS device. Well, this has caught my attention because of the terms of engineering! Unlike the standard GPS devices, the Lowrance iWay 600C is a masterpiece, which does not only provide street maps but also provides marine charts! Undoubtedly, this device has something different to offer.

The interesting fact about the device is that it is complete with satellite images and point-to-point navigation. It has been priced reasonably at $799.99. It can be called reasonable because of the features packed in it and the size of the display, which is quite large and measures 5 inches.

Into the features:

The Lowrance iWay 600C as mentioned is packed with a bunch of features and the odd one out is the marine navigation mode. The first apprehension that came to my mind was its resistance to damage caused by water, however, the IPX-7 waterproof rating clears off the cloud. This rating ensures that the device can stay submerged under water at a depth of 1 meter for 30 minutes.

The device is loaded with a 30 GB hard drive. 25 GB is reserved for the following:

• Navteq-based maps of Canada and continental U.S.
• Shoreline details map by MapCreate. This includes information on more than 3000 lakes in U.S.
• NauticPath charts (which are high detail maps of coastal U.S. waters and great lakes).
• Satellite images.

What about the rest of the 5GB space? Simple! It is saved for storing your favourite music files, which you can play with the inbuilt music player. You can also store your favourite images. That is cool, right?

Display:

The Lowrance iWay 600C GPS device has a large screen, which many people like very much. At least I like it. The 32-bit color screen has a modest resolution of 640×480 pixels, which helps you to view high-resolution satellite images. This is actually a nice feature because you do not have to peer in order to see things clearly!

A bit technical- the specifications and the advantages:

The Lowrance iWay 600C comes with a WAAS enabled 12 channels (parallel) receiver, which is quite efficient. The device is also equipped with 5.5 million POIs. I should have mentioned it earlier; the maps by MapCreate include tidal data on depth contours as well as marine navaids. The specifications are compatible with both Mac OS X and Windows. This is good! The device also supports both 2D and 3D view of the maps and has both turn-by-turn and point-by-point navigation mode. The device needs to be connected to a 12-volt DC (VDC) power source because of the absence of an internal battery. The device also has a built-in speaker, which comes with a power chord. Interestingly, the speaker has a 1/8-inch output jack (stereo), which can connect to the audio input of a car or a boat. That is not the end! The device also has an in-built FM modulator, which can be used to send audio to any FM receiver located nearby.

Design and build:

The Lowrance iWay 600C mounts five blue backlit buttons (for Menu, Find, Map/Music, Power/Brightness and Speak/Volume). The moment you tap the menu key, you are taken to a tabbed menu with four selections. The device also has a virtual QWERTY keyboard. Dimension wise, the device is 6.1 x 4.5 x 2.15 inches and does not have a multi-vehicle support. The screen has touch functionality and if you tap anywhere on the screen, you will find a vertical menu, which allows a zoom in and zoom out function and it allows configuring the new satellite views.

Cons:

The thing that I did not like about the Lowrance iWay 600C is that it does not have a feature of text-to-speech conversion, which is actually very useful in any GPS device.

Conclusion:

The shortcoming of the Lowrance iWay 600C is excessively small to bother you too much because of the features set, which you are surely going to love.