The personal navigational market isn’t one that excels at originality or resourcefulness. But fortunately, there are still a few companies out there which are innovative. Like Dual electronics eg., a US company. This company’s PNDs, the XNAV3500p and the recently announced XNAV3550, are only for sale currently in the US, but we find them interesting enough to mention anyway. These PNDs have one very special feature: they are equipped with… indicator lights!Function
We’re pretty sure you can imagine how curious we were about how these devices operate. A spokesman for Dual explained it to us: “The indicators, when not in use, are coloured white. But if you reach a junction which you have to take, the the indicator first turns blue, and finally red, just before the junction. This gives the user a clear visible signal of the direction he or she has to follow.” How this works in practice we do not know, but you probably can get an inkling from the illustration above.The rest of the Dual’s specifications are pretty standard (3,5 inch touch screen, 64 MB RAM), and they are shipped with the complete maps of the United States.
The company assures us that there is still a lot of room left for innovation in the PND market. We are happy to believe them, even if we’re not really sure that this is what we were waiting for…
The Dual NavAtlas XNAV3500p can be bought in the US for less than $ 400. The new NavAtlas XNAV3550 which will become available soon is more expensive and costs $ 800.
