The Pros & Cons of Using Paper vs. GPS Navigation Skip to Main Content

On the Road? Pros & Cons of Paper vs. GPS navigation

Summer’s a popular time for long car trips. There’s nothing quite so exciting as climbing in the car with friends or family — or all alone — and going on an adventure.

But whether you’re going on a cross-country car ride or heading down to the corner store, you need to know where you’re headed. Thankfully, there are plenty of ways to get good directions, especially in the digital age.

Navigating with Paper Directions

GPS technology has been available to consumers since the 1980s, but it only really took off by the late ’90s and early ’00s. Before that, taking a car trip meant bringing paper directions with you. Drivers stowed atlases and maps in the glove compartments of their cars, so they knew where to go. Toward the beginning of the Internet Age, they might have printed off instructions from a website such as MapQuest.

These days there’s something quaint and charming about bringing paper directions on a trip. But that’s about where their excellence ends. A paper map can’t give you information about traffic, construction or detours. Printed directions work well to describe your route, but often have little information about the surrounding area, so if you want or need to take a detour you risk getting lost.

Navigating with a GPS

By comparison, navigating with a GPS is far preferable. A GPS, whether a dedicated device or your phone, will usually “speak” its instructions as you go. This means you don’t need a human navigator reading off the directions to you (or you don’t need to risk taking your eyes off the road to consult a map yourself). You also don’t need light to consult a GPS navigation screen, like you would with a paper map, so you can safely get to your destination at nighttime.

Most modern GPS devices update themselves with real-time information about traffic, construction and detours. And because a GPS excels at navigating on-the-fly, you can reroute and know the GPS will get you where you need to go.

The only drawback is that sometimes a GPS navigation display can be difficult to read. Especially on a sunny day, glare from outside reflects off the screen, making it impossible to read. Most in-dash units are tilted upward so its easy to read, but it also catches a lot of glare. The smaller units can be adjusted slightly since they are just stuck on the windshield.

Many drivers end up disappointed with what’s often an expensive GPS purchase, because the GPS navigation screen can be so hard to read. Thankfully, there’s an easy solution.

Protecting Your Eyes from Glare

To make your GPS navigation screen easy to read, NuShield developed the Triple A™ anti-glare overlay film. It diffuses sun glare, making it easy to read the display. For drivers who wear polarized sunglasses while driver or have a convertible, Nushield offers the DayVue™ anti-reflective screen protector. NuShield offers these screen protectors pre-cut to fit any device with an LCD screen.

These screen protectors are easy to apply: just smooth it over your GPS navigation screen. The film is sturdy, and will typically last the lifetime of the device, but it’s thin enough that you’ll be able to use any touch screen functionality. Plus, it’ll help to protect the display from damage by window cleaning solutions with amonia.

By investing in a NuShield screen protector for your GPS navigation screen, you’ll remember how fun summertime car rides are — no paper maps required.

How to Order NuShield Screen Protectors

Order online or call 215 500-6426 to purchase a film to fit your display.