Today in the mail I got a review unit of the HP Travel Companion 310. The 310 is a multi-purpose device designed to facilitate a number of roles for the traveler. It offers GPS Navigation, a Media Player, a Contact repository, Games, Bluetooth capabilities, and more. Here are my impressions from spending part of today with the device.
Look, Feel, Specs - This is a clean and elegant device with a 4.3 inch screen that has good contrast making media and navigation look clear and crisp. There were no screen tearing with fast movement or lags on any of the media I have played. The device is a good portable size that fits comfortably in your hand. The built in speakers aren't designed to be used for much more than navigation so take some headphones with you for media playing.
I don't have a lot of info on how it will do on battery life yet, but I was able to play an episode of How I Met Your Mother and navigate about town for an hour without dinging it too significantly.
The device has 2gb of storage on board plus expansion capabilities via an SD card slot located on the right hand side.
Full Specs:
Processor: SiRF Titan 600MHz ARM11 dual-core processor
ROM: 2GB (user available memory varies based on maps installed)
RAM: 128MB
Display: 4.3-inch WVGA 800x480 TFT with touch screen, antiglare, landscape orientation, 16bit RGB depth
Bluetooth: v2.0 with EDR
Headphone jack: 3.5mm 3-pin for stereo and microphone
Connector: mini-USB
Battery: 1700mAh, removable
Expansion: SD, high-capacity, supports SDHC class 2, class 4, and class 6 memory cards
Speaker: 1, large for navigation volume
Microphone: 1, positioned speakerphone, echo cancellation
Input: touch, stylus
Buttons: power, reset, scroll wheel
LEDs: 2 - 1 blue for wireless, 1 dual-color for charge (amber for charging, green for fully charged)
Navigation is the heart of this device and where it will probably get the most use from consumers. The voice was clean and audible and gave plenty of warning on when to take the next turn and seemed better at preparing me at what was coming up ahead than my current navigation device (a tom-tom one). The ability to rotate the view on the display was interesting, but setting new destination and clearing routes was a little more difficult than the tom-tom. Tip: you have to go back a screen from your current navigation.
One of the things that is going to set this device apart is the 3D capabilities. I plan on testing this more while in Vegas for CES.
The second aspect of the navigation to set apart the HP solution are its ties with the new online iPAQ Naviagate site that allows you to create and share travel plans. Update: Brandon has some thoughts on the navigate site integration which I would echo to HP.
Media Capabilities - In my opinion there is a disconnect between the media playing capabilities offered and the intial vision of device. To me it almost feels like an afterthought. While it supports a broad set of media capabilities. (ex. I was able to copy over an xvid file and play it no problem) Getting the media to the device was not something I could have had my wife do routinely. The software used to sync the device is largely centered around the Navigation aspects of the device and offers no capabilities to sync media files. So after a hunt via the help file, which wasn't much help, it looks like I need to use Windows Media Player, yuk!
I would have like to seen HP make a more encompassing solution for media management. Just as Microsoft created the "Zune Marketplace" it would be nice to have an HP branded client portal for this device that handled all sync capabilities making a user friendly unified experience and not a disconnected one as it exists today.
The 310 also offers the ability to sync your contact via Outlook to allow you to place calls via the Bluetooth and use for navigation. While Outlook might be enough for your average office worker more and more home users are using online mail clients, be it Comcast, Hotmail, Gmail, etc. To that end it would be nice to see future capabilities that expand to web based mail products and also social networks(via that unified client I mentioned earlier).
Summary - The HP Travel Companion 310 is a very capable navigation device that HP has augment with some very intriguing online capabilities. The device itself has a sharp, clear screen and nailed a number of aspects user want in a media device like support for popular media types (xvid) and expansion capabilities.
HP should work on creating a simpler more unified experience via a client application so that end users have a unified sync experience for the device. It should allow them to pull in with their existing media libraries and various contact repositories.
Posted
Jan 03 2008, 07:13 PM
by
Josh Phillips
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