Route 66 Chicago 8000 review

Route 66 Chicago 8000 Review

Reviewed by: Brett James

Reviewed on: 30 October 2007

The Route 66 Chicago 8000 is the third product in the series and offers European mapping, a safety camera database and a rather useful 'Fuzzy' search engine.

It's now available to buy for around £280. For more information, check out Route 66's Web site.

Strengths
The Chicago 8000, with its plain silver/black finish, is complemented by a touch-sensitive 109 mm (4.3-inch) widescreen display which is both vibrant and colourful.

The initial welcome screen presents you with two options -- 'Navigate' and 'MP3' -- the latter is basic but with the supplied headphones you can enjoy the odd track or two.

The attractive menu structure is simplified further by the excellent Fuzzy logic search screen, which can be used to search for destinations or Points of Interest (POI) -- its POI database is also quite vast and will display an impressive amount of info.

Simply type in parts of an address/POI, for example 'rest lond', and it will display a list of results. Be warned though, the simpler the words used, the longer it will take to search and display results.

The widescreen display was easy to view -- even in direct sunlight -- and it displayed a nice early warning symbol for any approaching safety camera hot spots. During navigation it displays your route in a unique colour so you can distinguish between the route and normal roads. A quick delve into the settings option even allows you to customise the colours to your own preference.

More impressively was its signal acquisition time which was extremely quick -- primarily thanks to the SiRF Star III receiver. Both its route and re-route calculations were nippy and its routes were also efficient in the process.

Weaknesses
Traffic Message Channel (TMC) is something we would have liked to see included with the Chicago 8000, but for £280 it was never going to be realistic. You do have the option to upgrade or get hold of either the 7000 or 9000 models, which both have the option already included.

Whilst the search screen was useful, it would have benefited further with the inclusion of a Qwerty keyboard. Instead you have to switch between A-Z letters and a number screen.

Though you can pre-plan routes, there does not appear to be a dedicated route simulation mode. As a result, you are left to pan around the maps manually, in order to see in advance of where you're going.

Voice instructions were audibly clear and precise, but you only get the basic commands such as 'turn left in 400 yards', there is no text-to-speech option, so you need to rely more on the maps to route around roundabouts and complex junctions.

Finally, the lack of Bluetooth hands-free support prevents it from becoming a complete solution.

Conclusion
Route 66 has turned the Chicago 8000 into a great budget widescreen sat-nav device. It features an excellent search facility which is backed up by an equally impressive signal acquisition time. Its lack of TMC and Bluetooth support are the only real blemishes, but they won't put off the casual consumer.

Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Jon Squire