Holux GR-241 Low Power Bluetooth GPS Receiver

Cute little gadget. It is a comparatively fast and sensitive little Bluetooth GPS unit with a tiny display that can show Lat/Lon/Alt/Speed/Compass/etc. and has a backlight. It will also automatically or manually log waypoints and routes with a modest number of configurable options. It works great with my Treo 680 Smartphone and DeLorme Street Atlas USA 2006 Handheld Edition. In fact it is more reliable than my DeLorme Bluetooth GPS's. Running 12 hours on an alkaline AA battery is rather amazing. The fact that the accompanying software can export the saved waypoint and route data in a number of formats, including NMEA and Google Earth KMZ format is cool. The software is a bit primative but it seems to work. I hope they come out with some updates.

Now for the negatives.

The USB driver doesn't seem to work properly on XP!!!

It seems to work okay on Win2K Pro.

Fortunately it is possible to connect your XP PC and the data download software to the M-241 over Bluetooth and get the data off of it. Slowly.

And Holux Technical Support (email to China) seems to be strictly a one-way communication medium. You send them emails and nothing ever comes back.

Would I buy it again? Yes! It's cheap and works great as an amazingly sensitive and fast little GPS. And if you can negotiate the usual quirks and user hostility of Bluetooth, you can make it do everything that Holux promises it can do. However it sure would be nice if Holux fixed the stupid USB driver for XP!

-Christopher Erickson

Here is a details review of both the GPS logger models and read on to see which one is a clear winner over the other.

So I purchased the RBT-2300 and had some issues with the signal fix and one of my friend suggested to try the new Holux-M241, later realised the fix is due to the low signal level inside my apartment and its an issue with all GPS units.

My main use is for Geotagging photographs and also to be used as GPS with my Nokia N73.

Here are my observations on both the devices on a test I did this weekend.

Specs:
RoyalTek RBT-2300 with Nokia battery fully charged
Holux M-241 with Energiser lithium battery fully charged

Time to Acquire first fix:
Tried both inside my flat and first fix was difficult, so moved both the devices to my Balcony, RBT-2300 acquired the fix in approx 12 minutes and the Holux took 15 minutes.

Lock:
The RBT-2300 was able to lock to the signals more easily than the holux M-241 when i moved inside my apartment, Royaltek lost signal one in 10 compared to Holux losing 4 times in 10.

Logging:
RBT starts logging the moment you switch it on and the GPS is fixed, no hassles to wait for the fix and then press the start button to start logging.
Holux needs to get the fix first and then need to press the enter button to start logging.

Log size:
RBT : 180 days worth data or approx half million way points
Holux : 130,000

Battery life:
RBT using a Nokia batterly (860mAh) ran very good for 9 hours until the unit totally died.
Holux using the new Energiser lithium battery (approx 2800mAh) ran for 6 hours till it totally died.

Connecting to Smartphone:
Both the devices were very easy to connect to my Nokia N73 using bluetooth, got connected immediately without any problems.

Connecting to computer:
RBT provides only bluetooth and connected pretty well,
Holux uses both USB and bluetooth and connection was good.

Software:
RBT software is better then the Holux, remembers the selected Com port and also the folder location where GPS log file was last downloaded.

Downloading LOG files:
This is the main part where I started hating the Holux M-241, both took the same time to download using bluetooth, however the Holux files were empty without any log info in a previous test.

Reliability:
For any geotagging and logging purposes reliability of the data is more important, RBT has delivered proper ones till now and had no issues, but with the Holux, I was not able to download the data, this might be due to the fact that the battery got over and the unit switched off without stopping the log, now am not able to see the data in Holux, using the download tool, it crashes whenever I try to get the file.

Verdict:

Eventhough the looks of the Holux is better then the RBT, and the Holux has an attractive LCD display and many modes, it is clearly not a winner in the Geotagging scenario, may be it can be used as a GPS device for smartphones, but definitely never a reliable one for Geotagging, the reasons below.

1. For geotagging, i would prefer to switch on the device and start logging by default and if I dont want it, then I can switch it off, its ridiculous to wait for a signal and then to switch the logging on.

2. If the unit dies of low battery charge, I should atleast be able to get the proper log files from it, here Holux fails to impress.

Overall the new Holux M-241 is just a beauty with absolutely no brains and does not seem to be very useful for logging and Geotagging world with a highly unreliable performance.

Even though the RBT is simple and does not have any fancy display, it exactly does the job its claimed to do.

so anybody planning to buy the Holux M-241, please assess these facts and base your decision on what you mainly intend to use the GPS for, if visual display of the GPS details is not much of a bother to you, better go with the RBT-2300.

The Winner:

[b]RBT-2300 is a clear winner[/b] compared to the Holux M-241.