GPS Review – SEMIFINAL: NDrive vs Sygic Drive

After the first semifinal, it looks like TomTom is in for the final tomorrow. But who is going to follow him there, well, that’s a question which we can hopefully answer today.

Because today we have the second and last semifinal, where the winner of my third review, NDrive battles it out with the “lonesome software”, Sygic Drive, the one for whom I did not have an opponent for a first review of it’s own.

So, it looks like Sygic was lucky enough to get a spot in the top 4… let’s see if it is capable to take up NDrive and fly to the final:

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1. Computer graphics / Display performance

	NDrive	Sygic Drive
In 524Mhz processor – Frames per second in routing and non routing	10 FPS	4 FPS
Support of Anti-aliasing on routing	Yes	Yes
Support of LandMark	Yes, with dynamic view on touch	No
3D free camera view on routing and map	Yes	No
In navigation get street or POI names by pick in LCD	Yes	No
Configurable map design based on templates	Yes	Yes
Uses real 3D aerial navigation photos	Yes	No

2. Search efficiency

	NDrive	Sygic Drive
Search concepts accepted	City center, Street name, House number, Postal codes, Crossings, coordinates, POI names, POI proximity	City center, Street name, House number, Postal codes, coordinates, POI names, POI proximity, POI near address/near destination
Search for 10, Gran Via – Madrid – No. of clicks needed	9	20
Search for POI: Tourism: Puerta del Sol – Madrid -  No. of clicks needed	12	23
Search for Barcelona, Gran via de los cortes catalanes / Carrer de bac de roda – No. of clicks needed	15	21
Accepts Initials for search	Yes	No
Recognizes finger movements	Yes	No
Uses POI category and subcategories	Yes	Yes

3. Routing

	NDrive	Sygic Drive
(Madrid / Toledo) – 90KM – seconds to calculate*	5	16
(Madrid / Toledo) – 90KM – No. of clicks needed*	9	20
(Barcelona / Vigo) – 1150km – seconds to calculate*	9	149
(Barcelona / Vigo) – 1150km – No. of clicks needed*	14	22
Quality of calculation	***	***
Velocity of re-routing*	2	3
Routing options accepted	faster, shorter, pedestrian, tolls	fastest, economic, shortest, pedestrian, bicycle, types of vehicles and tolls
Routing block possibilities	distance, roads, alternative and calculation	distance
Safety camera support	Yes	Yes
Info Lane assistance	No	Yes
Add favourite while routing	Yes	No
Multiple routing	No	Yes, stores current position in the history
Save, import, export routes	No	No
* In a 524mhz processor PDA

4. Favourites

	NDrive	Sygic Drive
Number of different categories of favorites accepted	Unlimited	Unlimited
Information accepted	Name, address, web, email, phones, fax, description	Name
Customization possibilities	Visibility, Scale of visualization, icon	None
Search possibilities	Name, Category, Distance	None
Import / Export	Compatible with Google format – KML	None

5. Reality view technology

NDrive:

On 900 European cities, 3D Aerial photography view on 4 angles + top view and 4 zoom factors, giving perfect view of buildings, gardens, streets…

Sygic Drive:

Not available.

6. Conclusions:

• Computer graphics / Display performance

NDrive multi-angle aerial photo is a cool feature that makes navigation in major cities much easier and intuitive and it’s a strong competitive advantage for NDrive. Regarding the navigation animation, Sygic Drive’s navigation frame rate is slower than NDrive’s.

Clean graphics make NDrive and Sygic Drive stand out, while video-like smooth navigation, very intuitive commands and great interactivity, like pan and tilt, even during navigation, are characteristics that give NDrive an edge toward his opponent.

• Search efficiency

The search engine effectiveness has been proven to be satisfactory using any of the software, regarding the capability of search by concepts like: City centre, Street name, House number, Postal codes, Crossings, Coordinates, POI names, POI proximity. Sygic Drive has some extra POI search options, like POI near a given address and near the destination.

But while the search engines effectiveness is quite similar in all software, their performance and efficiency is quite different. NDrive search results are displayed very fast, since it can search by address initials and display the results simultaneously. The user can save a lot of taps in the touch screen and time entering the address. The results are also ranked by cities with biggest population on the top, making the result coming out even faster for most users.

Sygic Drive search engine is very slow… it’s performance is by far the worst of the test.

• Routing

The results for both of these calculations were in majority better using NDrive. The re-routing calculations were also faster using NDrive. Sygic Drive time to calculate routes was disappointing, taking almost 2’30’’ to calculate an 1150 km route.

Only Sygic Drive supports Info lane assistance and multiple routing. Moreover,

Sygic Drive has the most complete routing options, while NDrive only has the most common: fastest, shortest, pedestrian and tolls.

• Favourites

NDrive is the clear winner here aso because it’s capable of storing unlimited number of categories; search them by name, category, distance and it’s also compatible with Google’s .KML file format.

• Reality view technology

While Sygic Drive isn’t capable to reproduce the real world, NDrive has the capability to change the view from 2D only to 2D with 3D landmarks to Aerial photos with different perspectives.

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