When we heard that NDrive was releasing a satnav device with full colour photography instead of your typical drab coloured maps, we were itching to get our hands on one and take it for a spin.

The G800 is the more expensive of two new devices in the range that includes this feature, and it also sports a healthy collection of extras such as Bluetooth, an FM transmitter and media playback functionality for your music, video and photos.

There are other treats in store as well, such as the 8GB of internal storage provided by default and a handful of games to play. On paper the G800 looks pretty capable then, so we took it on the road to see how the photo mapping looks and how it fared on the whole.

The first thing we noticed is that the NDrive doesn't use photo mapping by default: the device actually uses TeleAtlas' maps for general operation, with the photo views kicking in when you drive through an area that is supported. That's the other issue: you won't get photo maps for the entire UK here. There's currently coverage for 29 cities and, although this number is set to increase, it's disappointing that this headline feature isn't a little more comprehensive.

When the photo maps do work they look very nice, and NDrive has managed to make the visual and audible directions clear enough that they don't obscure the view of your route or affect its performance in getting you from A to B. It's important to remember that the photo mapping is a bit of a luxury and is ultimately unnecessary, so the G800 must get the basics right as well.

Once you've got a journey configured and you're on the road, the satnav is pretty adept at getting you where you want to go without any problems, but it does make it a right pain to initially set up the journey and then adjust it on the move. For a start you can only navigate by 5-digit postcodes, so you're back to address entry if you want to get anywhere. There's also no route itinerary so you can't see how you're getting there, and the range of options to configure the map display is poor at best.

In general the interface appears quite clunky and it's difficult to find your way around. Buttons are small and awkward to operate so you'll often resort to using the built-in stylus to control the thing. While there's a good range of media features and plenty of storage provided, even this doesn't work as we would have liked, since media takes an age to copy across and you need to exit a particular media tool (and therefore stop playback) to open the map application.

We ended up being quite disappointed by the NDrive unit which, despite advancements such as the photo mapping, is something of a backwards step in terms of general navigation and usability. NDrive has failed to offer a solid GPS device that can compete with rivals, and considering the patchy coverage of the photo maps it doesn't come near to justifying its price tag with the extra features.