Mapping sites showdown! Part 5: NAVTEQ's Map24

Hello and welcome to my review of the mapping site Map24

This review will be broken down into the positives and the negatives of the mapping site and will compare the performance of the routing engines at the end of this review.

This site is actually made by NAVTEQ the mapping data supplier to Mapquest, Bing and Yahoo Maps! This shall be a very interesting review then!

First we shall take a look at the positives of the mapping site.

The interface: The interface to map 24 is a more powerful version of the big sites. It gives you a lot of options to input your desired data. It is more aimed at power users.

It also has hotel and other POIs as well. It even has some hotel booking features!

I have to say NAVTEQ's Map24 has the best printing options of all the sites! They have a detailed print configuration page with the following options:

Print content: Map/Route paper format: USA letter/US legal/A4

page orientation: Port/land Font size/ Map print options

Route print options: show route overview/shoe map for start/show map for dest./show for way points/show route discr.

Show minimaps for cities/borders/highway junctions/stages/ferries

Also has presets as well.

Let's take a look at the negatives:

lack of bells and whistles such as street view or birds eye views.

Cannot drag to edit route but can cheat by adding “vias”

Let's take a look at the routing options!

NAVTEQ's map24 has the most routing options of ANY of the websites!

Route options: fastest,shortest with avoidances that include the following: highways, ,ferries, tolls, Trains/ferries, with transport modes that include the following: car and pedestrian, with sped settings that include the following: car,motorcycle, and truck and highway use bindings that include more, normal, less, and avoid

that is a excellent amount of routing options!

Now we shall move onto the routing engine performance!

I took my trip to MicroCenter to purchase my monitor on 9.22.10 that I am now using to write this review on. It is a good bit of a trip, but I thought it was worth it!

I sent the directions to my cellphone as a MMS message so I can take it with me since I did not have a printer at the time and I did not have a GPS unit or a phone with one. It worked and formatted decently well and was pretty easy to read.

I did choose to drag the route, as I did not want to take the back way to my destination, However I did let Map24 do the rest.

The route was : 2 hours 33 minutes | DISTANCE: 154.1 miles according to Map24 and seemed reasonable.

The timing was fairly accurate, had we not stopped at a rest area and talked to a man with his dog for a long time. (laughs)

I will present the route in more detail:

Please note: I am going to start at step 7 to avoid disclosing my current location:

7. At connection point 44B change from I-77 North onto I-70 West towards Columbus. Follow I-70 West for 70.60 mi. 129.82 mi

8. At connection point 108B change from I-70 West onto I-270 North towards US-270, Cleveland. Follow I-270 North for 19.67 mi. 149.48 mi

9. You are reaching the 1. via, I-270 North. 149.48 mi

10. Continue on I-270 West for 377 yrd. 149.70 mi

11. At connection point 22 change from I-270 West onto OH-315 South towards Columbus. Follow OH-315 South for 3.76 mi. 153.46 mi

12. Leave OH-315 South and join Bethel Rd. Continue for 968 yrd. 154.01 mi

13.You have arrived at your destination Bethel Rd. 154.01 mi

As you can see the I270 stretch is only on one step on map24! Excellent! This makes it very easy to follow. This route was very clean and very easy to understand. Now they call these connection points instead of “exits” because this mapping site is actually developed in another country. It still is not too bad for US routes! These directions formatted nicely for my MMS message!

Overall I have to give the routing engine performance for map24 a 5/5!

Overall my ratings for each category are as follows:

presentation:4/5 routing performance:5/5 printing:5/5 ease of use:4/5 routing options:5/5 website performance:5/5

Overall rating (all categories) 4/5 Recommended: yes!