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Review by
Dave Burrows
Introduction
When the Emtac Sleeve came out
back in 2002, we reviewed this as part of the
TravRoute CoPilot review.
What we didn't do is create a separate review, and we've been receiving
quite a lot of response lately asking for a separate review for the Emtac
Sleeve, so for all you who asked for it, here it is.
The New Sleeve
The new Emtac sleeve shows it to be
very robust and well finished. No sharp or pointy edges and is
a lot slimmer than the Navman sleeve. The antenna is angled at
approx 45 degrees, when the sleeve is held upright hanging from a
vent mount, you'll find the antenna has a perfect view of the sky.
For those who want to use an external antenna, or if you have a UV
coated windscreen, you'll also notice a little metal socket top left
on the rear of the sleeve, this is for the external antenna.
Oh yes! You can plug an external antenna into this baby!
At the bottom right of the sleeve is a
DC socket to enable you to plug your charger cable directly into the
sleeve, no need to mess around with that horrible 3800 iPAQ
connector cable anymore! The sleeve also comes with an
internal battery. Thought has really been put into this
sleeve.
Several Pocket GPS readers have
commented that the sleeve looks ugly, and there have also been
concern in the GPS user community that having an antenna stick out
at this angle could be a problem if it were to fall and catch on
something in-car.
We can tell you that this antenna is
rock solid, made of very tough plastic, and even if this were to drop, we would hedge
our bets that
the iPAQ would receive more damage than the sleeve antenna! The
antenna may look obtrusive, but when you're walking with it, or have
it in a case on your belt, it really doesn't feel obtrusive.
The antenna also doubles up as a good stand
when you put the iPAQ onto your desk ;-).
Seriously though, the sleeve design
makes it as slim as a CF card sleeve, and doesn't skimp on any
features!
Performance
The Emtac Sleeve pits itself directly against the Navman sleeve,
and surprisingly is only the second GPS sleeve available for the Compaq iPAQ.
The sleeve itself performs very well and does beat the Navman 3000 sleeve hands
down in TTFF's and re-acquisition times.
Mounting
On the rear of the sleeve you'll see a circle, this is designed
to be a clean smooth piece of plastic to stick a round button mount. A
perfect addition to this sleeve is TheClip.com
Vent Mount. You can see some photos from our review below.
Inside Emtac Sleeve
Here's an opened up photo that shows
the circuitry within the sleeve and how the antenna is attached.
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