By far the most luscious satnav we’ve seen for a long while the Navman S90i, dressed in silver and grey trim, is one of Navman’s sensual S-series satnavs.
Put aside the aesthetics for a minute, though, and ponder the spec: the S90i has built-in Real-time Traffic and Route Traffic Overview, text-to-speech, Bluetooth, and a two-megapixel camera for geo-tagging pictures.
In use, the Navman S90i is thunderingly simple. The touch-sensitive menus are simple to use and well organised, and the unit itself picks up satellites with time to spare. Route-plotting is equally speedy, and there are plenty of points of interest to keep you, well, interested. A free lifetime of traffic updates and safety camera trial round off a competitive feature set for such a budget model.
The Navman S90i, however, isn’t quite the perfect entry-level satnav. That two-megapixel camera for geo-tagging seems a bit too much like a gimmick to us. By the time you’ve found the old geo-tagged photo, you may as well have just entered the postcode! Besides, that’s not the biggest flaw here. The lack of an FM transmitter and a Pedestrian mode seem to be the biggest oversight, which is a shame given how portable the S90i is.
Still, those qualms aside, it’s difficult to pick faults in something that only costs little more than a ton. With terrific Western Europe maps, Bluetooth and a voiceover man that’s come straight out of the Roger Moore school of charm, the S90i is one of the most user-friendly satnavs in its price range.
