One of the most compelling and many times overlooked applications for handheld devices is car navigation. While built in navigation systems from the auto manufacturers can add thousands of the dollars to the price of a vehicle, the PDA solutions offer similar capabilities for a faction of the cost. Prior offerings have been add-on GPS hardware and mapping software, but Garmin has gone one step further and released the iQue M5, a Windows Mobile Pocket PC with integrated GPS navigation.

As soon as I opened the box, I was impressed with the iQue M5. Along with the handheld, Garmin has included more accessories than other companies have available for their PDA. The package includes a leather flip cover, a desktop USB cradle, AC power adapter, and a windshield mount with a built in speaker and 12 volt power adapter.

The M5's specs make it a pretty good Pocket PC, including a 416 MHz processor, Bluetooth, and SD expansion slot. From the base Windows Mobile 2003 operating system, Garmin has added a number of its own enhancements. The Today screen includes a GPS status item, a QuickLaunch bar to make your favorite applications one tap away, and even enhancing the date item to include the rise and set times for both the sun and moon. The standard contacts application includes menu options to copy addresses to the mapping application.

Out of the box, a very basic highway map of the United States is installed on the M5. Additional, more detailed maps have to be transferred to it using the included MapSource software and City Select maps. Using MapSource and while the M5 is connected to the host PC, the desired sections of map are highlighted and sent. Maps can be installed into the main memory of the M5 or, more likely, on to a Secure Digital memory card in the device. With only a 64M of total RAM and only half of that available for map data, only a small portion of the available maps can be downloaded to main memory. This is the only area that Garmin was shortsighted on, as the core application needs a lot of memory for map data to run well.

To activate the built in GPS unit, you simply slide the release switch and extend the antenna. This also automatically launches the Que software on the device. From here, it is a quick jump to setting up beginning and end points for routes, finding points of interest near your current location, or getting stats on your travels. Overall the QueMap application works well, finding just about every address or landmark that I threw at it. I really liked the "Route to Home" feature. With two taps of the stylus, a route is automatically calculated from your present location to your home address. I also used the Find feature to locate restaurants and other locations of interest quite a bit. It is particularly handy to find the nearest gas station in an area you have never been to.

One thing I did notice, however, was some delays in calculating routes, especially the automatic rerouting that is triggered when I missed a turn. It was not a serious lag, but it was just enough that it is possible in some cases to get lost quicker than the M5 can recover.

With the iQue M5, Garmin has really managed to put it all together by starting with a good Pocket PC and integrating a good GPS solution into it. Even with the cost of a required SD memory card, the device is several hundred dollars less than Garmin's own dedicated solutions. The M5 is an excellent option for those road warriors that not only want their names and address, but also want directions to get there.

The Good:

• Complete, full featured Pocket PC
• Included accessories cover just about everything a person would need

The Bad

• Built in RAM too small to download good sized maps
• Automatic re-routing is occasionally slow in recalculating

Garmin iQue M5, $749

http://www.garmin.com