Here’s a review of quite possibly the best PDA car mount available today. The Arkon Powered GPS Car Mount is an innovative new offering from Arkon. I am very impressed at the quality of the workmanship of this product. It combines a PDA charger, GPS receiver, car mount, and speaker amplifyer into one compact product. Very nice!
My first impressions were favorable. I attached the suction cup to my windshield and was impressed how tightly it adhered to the glass. My Tom Tom car mount had begun to fall off periodically and was quite annoying. I have been testing this mount for 2 months now and it has yet to fall of the windshield. Arkon recommends that you release the suction every two weeks to maximize the life of the suction cup.
The above picture shows the GPS receiver and the wonderful swivel feature. The GPS receiver gets very nice reception and is hidden out of the way behind the mount. It can even swivel to the side for those of you who would like to use your PDA in landscape mode in the mount.
The swivel mechanism on the mount is like a ball-in-socket design which allows you to move your PDA to just about any angle you can think of, and then you tighten it to hold that position. When tightened, the swivel holds very firmly and does a great job. This was definitely one of my favorite features.
There is also a speaker in the back of the mount that is covered up in this picture. You can connect your device’s audio through a male to male headphone cord to the speaker in the mount. Palm devices are notorious for having poorly powered speakers, but you can use the amplified speaker to hear your GPS voice directions over your music or other noise. There is also a volume dial on the side for this speaker. I couldn’t get the speaker to work with the supplied Tungsten C cable they gave me. I was able to get the speaker to work using other devices. I’m sure the Tungsten C’s mono sound caused the issue. The quality of the speaker was average but definitely sufficient for your basic voice directions.
As mentioned, the mount also charges your PDA. It does this through one of the two USB ports in the bottom of the mount. I liked the option to charge another device through USB. The entire mount has a cord that connects to a cigarette lighter which powers the entire mount. A red light at the bottom comes on when the mount is powered. The device also has a bluetooth charger, but there is really no reason to opt out of using the mount’s GPS receiver as it performed extremely well.
In conclusion, my Tom Tom Car Mount that I bought is soon going to be in the trash. This Arkon Mount is the best car mounting product I have seen available. Its innovative design, array of features, and brilliant workmanship makes this product well deserving of a favorable review.
-Brock
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That’s a cool little gadget there.
I wonder if they have any on ebay for cheap?
Thank you for the heads up on this great little gadget, my last one rattled to death every time I went over a bump. How much do they retail at? Which stores stock them?
That’s amazing. Everything has gps these days. I wouldn’t be surprised if I heard of gps shoes. The reason is that gps technology has evolved a lot. Not only that but gps systems can now be found at really low prices.
hey. this is good to know. but where can i buy it?
Hi helmuth,
sorry – I am not aware where this can be bought nowadays…but I would guess that it was available at Brando’s once.
Maybe a quick Googleing can help!
All the best
Tam Hanna
Hmm… I wonder how well this holds on? I had one kind of like this before, but whenever I’d go over a bump, BAM … there goes my Palm on the floor of the car.
The screen actually got damaged a little from it once. If this held on tight, I’d be all over it… well, if I could find one for sale.
I used to have one exactly like this for my treo as well, now I’m looking for one like this for my iPhone. I haven’t really found one that I like yet as many of them are cig lighter ones and unfortunately I don’t trust the cig lighter solely supporting my iPhone. Anyone have any suggestions?
its very useful I think