Lowrance iWay 500C

The iWay 500C is a monster of a GPS system. It weighs a staggering two pounds and is meant for full-time duty in your car. The iWay 500C doesn’t have its own battery, nor is it remotely convenient to carry around. Commensurate with its heft, the iWay 500C comes with two mounting solutions, including a very heavy friction base that we preferred to the less reliable suction mount.

Since it comes with a beefy 20GB hard drive, there’s no need to download maps to the iWay; 10GB is preloaded with maps of the U.S. and Canada, and another 10GB is reserved exclusively for music that you transfer from your PC with the included USB cable. The device supports both MP3 files and the less common Ogg Vorbis format. When used as a music player, the screen displays all the essential track and equalizer information, as well as visualizations or equalizer settings.

Audio quality is a bit thin by default, since it’s pumped through a tiny speaker built into a small gadget mounted halfway along the power cord. On the plus side, Lowrance recognizes you probably want to make this a fairly permanent part of your car and includes a wiring kit to connect the device to your car’s sound system. Best of all, you can listen to music and navigate to your destination at the same time.

Lowrance cut its teeth in the nautical GPS arena, and it shows in the iWay 500C’s expert attention to navigation details. The hypersensitive antenna picked up satellites indoors, even before we were able to get it into a car. If that’s not good enough for you, Lowrance offers a second, external antenna for $99.95.

Using the receiver is a snap. The key controls are implemented as buttons beside the five-inch color LCD screen, so it’s easy to get to the main menu or find a destination. From there, the very responsive touch screen and big onscreen buttons make it easy to program the device. Both 2D and 3D navigation views are available.

What didn’t we like about the iWay 500C? Not much. For transferring music at your PC, you’ll need to connect the device to a power outlet, and the AC brick is positively enormous. The screen isn’t as sharp as the Mio136, but it has about the same pixel resolution, simply stretched to a much bigger physical display. All things considered, the Lowrance iWay 500C is a major achievement. Let’s hope all GPS manufacturers take note.