Bluetooth GPS Receiver Reviews

Click here to read the review	TravRoute recently brought out their new Bluetooth GPS Receiver, and we have a unit here for review. Although the CoPilot Bluetooth GPS Receiver looks familiarly like an Emtac/Socket BT GPS, I have been assured by ALK that it is not, and that it does have a different FCC ID showing it as a different product. Platforms Supported

Click here to read the review	Daisy Technology are an electronics manufacturer based in Sophia, Bulgaria. We met them at the CeBIT exhibition in Hannover this year where they were showing a prototype Bluetooth GPS receiver alongside their established GPS tracking systems. Daisy have now productised the BT GPS and have sent us a sample for review. Daisy claim to have perfected a low power GPS with built-in power management which can last for 10 hours on a single charge. Platforms Supported

Click here to read the review	DConnex are a company based in South East Asia (Singapore) that works at bringing GPS electronics to market and also have a retail store where they sell other GPS manufacturer products and will shortly be bringing to market their own branded GPS Receiver the DC-0103. Some of you may already have noticed the design to be very close to the GlobalSat BT308, and it is. The core GPS is a BT308 I am told with an enhanced battery and firmware update. Platforms Supported

Click here to read the review	DeLorme were kind enough to send us a review unit of their latest BlueTooth receiver, the Earthmate Blue Logger GPS. It stands out from the crowd of Bluetooth receivers quite a bit. First of all, it's yellow. Very yellow, a typical Earthmate trademark. Then it's pretty small – smaller than the CoPilot receiver. Next it is packed with features – Logging, GPS post processing, replaceable battery. Package pricing starting from USD 149.95 plus tax and shipping/handling. Platforms Supported

Click here to read the review	Deluo have recently introduced a new GPS receiver that also has some data logging capabilities - the BlackBox GPS. As the name suggests this is a black box that is supposed to be tucked away somewhere in a safe and hidden place, recording your GPS position, and allowing you to retrieve the collected data for reports of all kinds. Platforms Supported

Click here to read the review	EMTAC released the BT GPS in late 2002 to a worldwide market. Distributed by Transplant Computing in North America and Socket in the UK/Europe. The Emtac BT GPS is the first Bluetooth GPS Receiver of it's kind. Several other manufacturers have started to follow bringing out their own Bluetooth versions. The Emtac BT GPS performance is unquestionable, runs off of batteries giving up to a 6 hours of use and can be charged up overnight or when you have it in-car or at your desk. Platforms Supported

Click here to read the review	The Fortuna Clip-On uses the latest SiRF IIe/LP chipset to give support for both SiRF Binary and NMEA, as well as support for WAAS (Wide Area Augmentation System). But wait! It also supports SiRF's new XTrac The Fortuna Clip-On comes in two colour's, a gray or a metallic blue. Personally I prefer the blue, it looks much nicer than the dull gray. Platforms Supported

Click here to read the review	This new receiver has a split personality. It looks like a handheld GPS Receiver and it is, but it also has Bluetooth connectivity to connect it to a PC or PDA allowing you to have a wireless GPS connection in-car or when hiking. The Fortuna GPSmart is the first GPS Handheld Receiver to enter the GPS Handheld Market that sports a Bluetooth connectivity. Platforms Supported

Click here to read the review	GlobalSat have a new Bluetooth receiver. It looks strikingly similar to the EMTAC and Socket Bluetooth GPS, but it's on steroids! It is larger due to it's battery and gives much longer battery performance compared to the existing set of Bluetoth GPS Receivers Platforms Supported

Click here to read the review	The Bluetooth Slipper is a converter for existing Haicom 303 cards, the 303MMF, 303E and 303S. The slipper will not work with any other Compact Flash cards. What you do is simply insert the card part of the GPS into the BT Slipper and the BT Slipper will power up and start trying to send out a Bluetooth signal, just like a regular Bluetooth GPS Receiver would do. Platforms Supported

Click here to read the review	The GR-230 has a good specification chart including support for NMEA (38400 preferred), it sports a SiRF Star II chipset with embedded ARM7TDMI CPU, 12 parallel satellite-tracking channels for fast acquisition, high speed signal acquisition using 1920 time/frequency search channels, Low Power mode, SBAS (WAAS/EGNOS) and more! The GR-230 also comes with the standard SPP Serial Port Profile which Bluetooth uses to connect to a Pocket PC or PC. Platforms Supported

Click here to read the review	Holux just released their new Bluetooth GPS Receiver. Based upon the technology built into the GR-230 that we already reviewed, Holux have re-engineered this and brought out what appears to be a slightly larger version of the GR-230 called the GR-231. Platforms Supported

Click here to read the review	Navman released the BT GPS in July 2003 to a worldwide market. Navman have decided rather than to go for size like other manufacturers, they'll go for pure unadulterated POWER! Note, the software SmartST Pro that comes with the Navman 4400 will only work on Pocket PC's, but the BT GPS will work on any BT connected device with a Serial Port Profile. If you are looking to purchase the Navman 4400 for a Palm, go for the 4100 which is cheaper and doesn't include the software. Platforms Supported*

Click here to read the review	RoyalTek have taken the simple approach and named the new GPS BlueGPS! The BlueGPS is unique as it it's not just a GPS Receiver, but a data logger which will support more than 30,000 records for download, great for checking where you've been. The BlueGPS comes with a built-in lithium-ion battery that supports up to 10 hours of use under optimum conditions. Platforms Supported

Click here to read the review	San Jose (or SA Nav as they are better known as) have brought out their first Bluetooth GPS to market. The new version is dubbed the BT-48. I'm amazed at how small these GPS's are becoming even when they are cram packed with wireless capabilities. The BT-48 is a about 1cm smaller in length compared to the Fortuna Clip-On, spray painted in a silver metallic look and runs off of 3xAAA batteries. Platforms Supported

Click here to read the review	SysOnChip shouldn't need any introduction here. Back in August 2003 we reviewed the SysOnChip CF Plus GPS Receiver using the latest SiRFXTrac technology. In September, SysOnChip announced that they were producing the new Bluetooth GPS Receiver dubbed the SOC2S03. The SOC BT GPS comes standard with SiRF IIe/LP Chipset (not SiRFXTrac like the CF Plus GPS Receiver). Platforms Supported

Click here to read the review	TomTom are always an adopter of new technology and Bluetooth is no different. TomTom have teamed up with Leadtek again to produce a Bluetooth GPS and to place this under the TomTom brand name. The TomTom BT GPS is a good all round performer, and performance is on-par with the EMTAC/Socket BT GPS. Platforms Supported


Other Hardware Related Information

Click here to read the review	Sometimes it's hard to determine what Handheld GPS Receivers have what features. They all look alike and have very similar features, the only thing sometimes to tie them apart is one or two features. With this in mind we've pulled together a huge comparison of GPS Receivers showing the full specifications of each receiver making it easy to tell which receiver has which features in a single resource.

Click here to read the review	One important aspect of all GPS Hardware is the Time To First Fix or TTFF. When using GPS Software it all hinges on how good the TTFF is and also how good the re-acquisition is of the GPS Receiver. Many GPS Receivers share the same chipsets from the same manufacturers, but some GPS Hardware are better in acquiring TTFF's. We have created a TTFF table where all GPS Hardware we review is listed within this table. This helps understand which hardware is good and which hardware should be avoided.

Click here to read the review	Have you ever been in a situation where you have a PDA but don't know which GPS will work with it ? You're not alone! We've created a complete review page to discuss this. We detail what PDA's have which storage cards which play a big factor in GPS connectivity. We also show you which GPS hardware will work with which Pocket PC's and if you have a handheld GPS receiver, no worry there as we also list a whole host of cables that are available from different sources to connect a handheld GPS receiver to your PDA.