Pros
Cons
Our Verdict
With so many flat-rate navigation packages available, it’s difficult to recommend one with a relatively high recurring monthly fee. Nonetheless, AT&T Navigator was the most consistent and best performer among the GPS apps we tested, with its quality overwhelming the recurring cost.
For choosing addresses from Contacts, the software is the gold standard, succeeding where all the other apps we tested failed. The program was even able to correctly identify and provide directions to a house on a rural road in Maine owned by friends that even the Maps app failed to find.
Like two apps we reviewed, Navigator requires a live cellular connection to plot a route, although the route is cached and can be used to a destination without a feed. Pulling up maps en route fails without a cell connection, however.
I do have to report one unfortunate flaw in AT&T Navigator: it recommended three illegal, dangerous and impossible turns turning a single trip. A sensible driver, even following the software’s insistence, would not have made such turns, one of which was into a one-way road (changed from two directions at least three years ago). I did not see this behavior on any of many previous and subsequent trips, and the other apps I tested never suggested routes that would have gone against traffic laws.
[This app was reviewed as part of our GPS app roundup review.]