VMS 3DX

VMS 3DX – My unit was purchased in Dec ‘22 from VMS. I only recently had a chance to give it a proper workout with a trip to the Flinders Ranges in SA from VIC. As a navigation unit it is woeful. Most of the time it has only one navigation option which is the shortest route regardless of its status. I was often asked to turn off a highway route which went… Read more

directly to my required destination in favour of some narrow unsealed goat track. But sometimes it wanted me to do detours into small towns off the major highway route. Once it asked me to turn off the highway cross over a rail line and drive along the rail maintenance track for 7 km befor returning to the highway. While I was in Arkaroola I tried using the GPS to navigate to a selected POI. The location was signposted at Arkaroola as 32km but the GPS wanted me to go via a 75km route. Travelling through Adelaide the unit went crazy and asked me to travel in different direction every time I went through an intersection on a major route heading out of town. I lost track of the number of times it froze and had to be restarted. It didn’t recognise that I was in a different time zone: it stayed on Victorian time. The dark mode kept coming on each day and had to be turned off manually. Driving at night the dark mode is too bright and cannot be adjusted: I ended up switching it off. I liked the mapping and the touch screen controls when they worked, but I wouldn’t recommend this product.

A Great Idea But – I bought my 3DX with my own money, I am, in no way, a part of VMS nor have I received any free products or incentives from them. I really looked forward to having an off-road navigator that didn't need to reload maps every time it got to the edge of the previous map; the 3DX is great for that, it has seamless mapping. The day arrived when my 3DX… Read more

arrived and I put it in the car and replaced my VMS 700HDX. I set off from my house and used the new 3DX to navigate to my doctors even though I knew the way, well, at least I thought I did, I was in for a big shock. Not only did the 3DX take me where I had never been before, it got lost twice on the way. When it does go off track, it just repeats "start North" or "Start South" etc. in the most irritating American accent until it finds another route, which can be some time. Meanwhile, you just need to guess your way until it comes back online. I contacted VMS and they assured me that the 3DX was an off-road navigator, funny, it didn't say that on their website and when you search for POI's it finds ones in the suburbs as well as off-road POI's.

Now using the 3DX off-road, as long as it knows where you want to go it is great, but, that is the kicker, it doesn't always know for e.g. when I tested it, I tried to enter O'Toole's Campground north of Walhalla but it did not know the campsite so I had to use the older 700 HDX. In fact, the 700HDX is, by far, a better off and on-road navigator except for the seamless mapping.

I was also disappointed when it was in my car at night and I selected 'power off' because of the bright screen without an auto night mode, but, it would just start up immediately again and it does that even plugged into my computer. It turns out that if the 3DX is plugged into any method of charging, it switches itself back on constantly, which is really irritating if you mount it in the car and leave it plugged in. Also, the screen is very wishy-washy and lacks enough contrast to be of any use on brighter days. The search function to locate POI's or addresses is fine except when you click navigate on where you want to go, it doesn't populate what you've searched for and you have to add it a second time before it will navigate to that location. A problem I was assured by VMS would be fixed in an update released in December 2021, which it wasn't. Also, the height exaggeration didn't work correctly if you started up the device with it set to zero, the scale goes from 0 to 10 and having it set on 1.0 is enough height, anything higher than 1 is far too weird looking.

To be fair to VMS, we've all been through rough times recently and I'm sure they are no exception to this, however, 1 month after the launch of the 3DX, VMS offered the 3DX discounted with all the Topo maps for free, a kick in the teeth for all those who attempted to support them by buying it at the launch. VMS set out to address my concerns but soon became bored and stopped responding to me except when I said I was writing a review and funnily, they responded immediately. I have given them over a month to get their act together but nothing at all, so here I am writing the review.

So, to summarise, if you bought the 3DX at the launch, you got dudded a month later. The device is okay but not a patch on the 700 HDX which VMS themselves have said is now, "long in the tooth". I thought that given how well the HDX 700 worked, the 3DX would be a brilliant replacement but it just isn't, it isn't even a 1/4 of the HDX 700 and has a lot of development to go before it is a worthy successor.

So, would I buy another, not a chance until it gets the upgrades it needs and then I might consider it, but, VMS don't seem to be making any progress on updates? I wanted to like the 3DX but it just has too many fundamental issues for that price point.