I have been testing out both Nearby Explorer and Seeing Eye GPS for the past couple of days in Vehicle Mode, and here is my review of these apps. I am going to start with Nearby Explorer by American Printing House for the Blind. I have it set to use Apple s the Address Provider, and Google is the Search provider. The settings are pretty straight forward, but Nearby Explorer is not as customizable as I would like it to be. There are no options that I have found that let me change what information I want spoken at what speed such as POIs and Intersections. So, the information can get overwhelming at times with this app. I have used Nearby Explorer on a couple outings, and it could not find the LOuisiana Renaissance Festival when I searched for it from my house, which is less than 40 miles away. Nearby Explorer seems to only want to pull results up that are under 40 miles away, and the maximum search radius that can be set is 30 miles from what I can find. So, I did the return home trip,and it did reasonably well until in my neighborhood where it got lost and told me to go to the street past where my house is. I then did a trip to New Orleans, and Nearby Explorer did an okay job but not great because it kept having to reroute even though it should have been able to tell where I was better and give better directions. It did not even recognize when I arrived at Whole Foods, which was my destination. Coming home, the app failed miserably. It missed giving directions a couple times along the way back home, and the app crashed once. Then once in my neighborhood, it had the same problem as the other day with giving incorrect directions to my house.
Seeing Eye GPS is by Sendero, and I have used it a few times to compare it to Nearby Explorer. Swing Eye GPS has a wide variety of options that can be set, but the two things it does not have are the ability to change the TTS it uses nor the ability to change the speech rate. I used it on a trip into New Orleans to Ochsner, and Seeing Eye GPS did perfectly getting me there. The announcements were timed well, and they were clear on what to do. On the way back home, I had no issues either. I am using Google for POIs. Seeing Eye GPS had a bit of trouble when I used it to get to the LOuisiana Renaissance Festival because it got stuck on a previous direction it had given me, but once I had refreshed it, I had no problems. It is able to send your destination to Uber, which is a great feature, and it is also able to be launched from Blind Square, which is a really nice feature about Seeing Eye GPS. I am wondering if Seeing Eye GPS somehow got messed up since I did send the Louisiana Renaissance Festival to it from Blind Square, and who knows where the point for the Louisiana Renaissance Festival was placed especially if it was a user imputed place on Blind Square.
Overall, both Nearby Explorer and Seeing Eye GPS are both great apps, but given my test results, Seeing Eye GPS is a better app. It has more options, it gives better directions, and it gives the correct directions almost every time. The only real downside to Seeing Eye GPS is that the maps are not onboard maps, but even with that said, the app works great, and I can highly recommend Seeing Eye GPS to anyone looking for a great iOS GPS app.
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