Off Topic With Ashley

The package arrived to great anticipation. This was it, the big purchase of the year; the Freedom Keychain GPS 2000 — a hip device for a brand new millennium. I spent two minutes trying to peel back the stickytape from the no-nonsense padded envelope before giving in to the excitement of a new toy and ripping it to bits with my keys.

Behold, a Keychain GPS.

While all I wanted to do was start walking in funny paths to draw pictures on my Nokia, the unit didn’t come charged for obvious reasons and was completely dead. I finished my shopping grudgingly before heading home to play.

The Keychain GPS 2000 is the second model in Freedom’s popular line of GPS receivers. It’s smaller, higher specced, and much more attractive than it’s predecessor, and fits neatly in even the most demanding of pockets. It’s a tiny unit not even five centimetres long, and a little over three wide, with a clasp for attaching to your keychain. It’s finished in a delightful matte plastic which is somewhat resistant to scratches (if not fingerprints,) and has three inline leds for displaying its status.

It’s an incredibly attractive little device, but subtle enough that anyone could mistake it for a fancy car door opener — so you can take it anywhere without the risk of some jerk wanting to steal it. The “take it anywhere” mantra is consolidated with the fact that it’s attached to your keys, so if for some reason you do leave home without it, you’ll have more pressing things to worry about than forgetting to take your GPS.

It’s a bluetooth device with no on-board memory, so it does little more than attach to your phone or PC and blink when it’s working. It’s a very simple set-up procedure (connect to Keychain GPS 2000, with the pincode “0000” if necessary,) and almost any bluetooth GPS software will jive with it. Essentially it works with any GPS enabled phone or computer software, even works great under Linux.

The signal quality is acceptable, but not the best you’ll come across. I’ve used it walking, in the car, even inside a train carriage, and while it does suffer from the occasional jitter it’s generally very accurate. It’s not as fast to lock on to your location as others reviews would lead you to believe, but it’s definitely not slow by any stretch. While I’ve had slightly better luck with some more expensive serial devices, the accuracy tradeoff for both the price and convenience is more than acceptable.

The battery life is slated at nine or ten hours depending on who you listen to, and is just about right. I’ve noticed it will run flat overnight even if it’s not connected to anything, so make sure to turn it off after you use it. Additionally, while the battery life is slated at ten hours, your phone is likely to die a lot sooner with the constant Bluetooth use. My year old Nokia 6120 will run flat after about four or five hours constant use, so for long trips you should make sure to keep a charger handy.

The device works okay from inside a pocket, but for the best signal it definitely needs to be out in the open. Only one device may connect to it at once which is unfortunate if you’d like to share your position between a group or multiple devices. Other reviews have also mentioned this device is susceptible to skewed data coming from reflections off tall buildings, and I can confirm that it seems to return a more accurate fix in the open.

Overall it’s still a brilliant choice to tide you over until you upgrade to a new and smarter phone. I’d recommend it for a convenience or amateur GPS-er, but if you’re after spot-on accuracy you may want to consider something a little more high end with a larger aerial.