ALK Copilot Live for iPhone Review

First Impressions

I bought Copilot Live from the app store because I needed a GPS navigation software for my iPhone and didn’t want to spend to much. 34 EUR was a reasonable price and Copilot Live had decent online reviews so I went for it.

The best way to go about it is to download the app on your computer via iTunes and then sync it on your iPhone. When you first start the app on the iPhone, it requires you to enter a user name and a password which will be used as an identifier for live services.

Over the last months I used Copilot Live extensively in city and suburban traffic in the Le Mans area. I also took it on a long distance highway trip: 850 km from Le Mans to Orcières-Merlettes in the French Southern Alps and back again.

Route Planing and Guiding

Copilot live comes with the latest Navteq maps which are very accurate and up to date. I generally found Navteq maps to be better maintained than TeleAtlas. Take my address for example. I live in a brand new neighborhood. The whole quarter was built from ground up a couple of years back. Four years ago there was a corn field where my house is today. There were no streets, no houses nothing. All GPS devices with fairly recent Navteq maps knew my address from the day I moved in. Many GPS units with TeleAtlas maps, still don’t know about the street I live on and it’s only been a couple of weeks since I can look up my address on Google Maps. That’s really annoying, trust me. It’s been a pain for me to get anything delivered. I had to meet the delivery trucks in the village center and have them follow me home or spend time on the phone guiding them around. So, to make the story short, Copilot Live has Navteq maps and that’s good.

Maps are nicely rendered and smoothly animated. The auto zoom features is comparable with Navigon’s but inferior to TomTom’s. If you use the 2D view like me that could become problem.

Copilot is very accurate when showing your position on the road, way more accurate than my TomTom unit. Everything is right on spot, in the city as well as on the highway, and that by using just the internal GPS receiver. Turns are exactly where they’re supposed to be and the software is never late when speaking out directions. Copilot actually accurately show my position on medium roundabouts, a feature I’ve never seen before.

As far as route planing goes, you might not always agree the route Copilot Live suggest is the most efficient one, but it will always get you to the destination.

For my long highway Copilot estimates a trip time of about 9 hours and 15 minutes. That’s about 30 minutes more than what my old TomTom unit and Google Maps calculate, which is 8 hours and 40 minutes. It took me 8 hours and 45 minutes to get there so I’d say Copilot Live is a less accurate than the others, but than again, that’s really a minor point.

Where I highly disagree with Copilot is suburban trip planing. To drive from my place to the Le Mans train station in the morning, for example, the fastest way to go is via the city ring. I know it, TomTom knows it, Navigon knows it, Google Maps knows it but Copilot insists that I should through the city center. Which is a huge waste of time. Even if I ignore it and go on the ring, Copilot would try to get me off the ring and trough the city center until the very last moment. All this makes me wonder how much time Copilot would make me waste in areas I don’t know so well. I mean yes Copilot would definitely take you to your destination, but I seriously doubt the route is would be an optimal one.

POIs and Speed Cameras

Copilot has an impressive POI database, definitely better any of the TomTom units I’ve ever used. Every hotel, restaurant of tourist attraction I could think of, Copilot knew it.

I don’t like how speed cameras are announced. You can’t configure a beep or some other sound. Copilot insists on speaking out to you: “Attention, point of interest. Speed camera”. Really annoying and useless. By the time Copilot finishes announcing the speed camera you’re already in front of it.

Conclusions

All in one, ALK’s Copilot Live for iPhone will get you at your destination. Chances are it will take you through city centers rather than city rings and express ways and time estimations might not be very accurate. TomTom and Navigon’s both compute far better routes but then again, Copilot is at least twice as cheap.