Recently, I made a trip down to Lake Tahoe, CA to visit the beautiful Meeks Bay area. Along with my wife, I chose the Nomad and Co-Pilot software as a travel companion.

Since I was using the basic model of the Nomad, I added GPS capability by plugging in the Holux GR-271 GPS card. I was all set with my Nomad, GPS card and a pre-downloaded route for the trip.

Everything was working wonderfully on the way until I realized that I had forgot one thing: a vehicle charger! I was already too far down the road to think about turning back, so I pressed on thinking that this will be a good chance to test the battery life on the Nomad.

The trip went smooth until we hit California. We were heading on Hwy 89 and we saw road constructions signs. Uh oh. Delay #1. I knew it would be a long wait when we pulled up and people were standing outside of their cars. Turns out it was at least a 30 minute delay and it was not the only one we would encounter on our trip. All of the unplanned construction added about 2 hours to our planned 8 hour trip.

I started to worry about the Nomad battery, but I decided to just let it keep running and did not bother checking the battery level. I was planning on just running it until it died.

However, that time never came. We pulled into the campground around 11:30 pm (10 hours after departure) and that is when I decided to check the battery level. My wife was ready to throw it out the window because she had heard enough of Mr. CoPilot's suggested directions throughout the long trip.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the battery still had about 25% remaining power! Looks like the vehicle charger was not needed after all. Turns out, it could have had even more power because I had been traveling the whole time with the backlight on....

Now that is battery life I can count on.