The Active 10 Plus comes preloaded with a map of Great Britain at 1:1,000,000 scale, a 1:250,000 road map (road atlas-style) and a 1:5 million scale world map.
If you want to add OS maps you’re looking at £59.99 for 1:50,000 scale and £39.99-£200 for 1:25,000. There are plenty of maps available and there will soon be a way to build your own custom map by telling Satmap what you want.
The unit is easy to use and the online route planner makes planning a route much easier than doing it on the unit itself, but there were a few annoyances.
The claim of postcode enabled navigation only works on a small number of maps and it isn’t on the Active 10 itself; the buttons, when wet, are slippery if you’re wearing gloves; and the speed of the system had us shouting at it from time to time.
Zooming out of the map takes a while for the screen to refresh and when travelling quickly it was all too easy to overshoot waypoints for turnings because it simply didn’t update our position fast enough.
- Casing: Good sealing, but it could do with being much tougher at the top curved section for better impact-proofing.
- Buttons: Large and easy to use even with gloves on, although the joystick in the middle is a bit overly sensitive.
- Display: Large and bright, although at times annoyingly slow to update, especially when zooming.
- Batteries: The rechargeable lithium polymer battery gives a good run time, but not as long as the manufacturer claims.
- SD card slot: Not as well sealed as we would like – our memory card got wet. It still worked, though.
- USB and audio: There’s an audio output jack for the audible point of interest (POI) function.