If you're new to satellite navigation you may not be aware of a range of products from Binatone. Despite specialising more in the telephony market, this company has produced some excellent and reasonably priced navigators in the past.

We recently reported on an interesting addition to its range in this new T430, which, as well as an upgraded GPS unit in itself, is provided with a fixed-focus camera designed to be attached to the rear number plate of your car.

The intention is to effectively turn the navigator into a rear-view camera to aid in parking or check for obstacles when reversing. You may be sceptical about the potential application for the device, but it's cleverly designed in that it wirelessly connects to the GPS and is powered by the reverse lights of your car. When wired up correctly the screen automatically switches to camera mode when you slip the car into reverse gear, so it's a nicely automated process.

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We tested this ourselves and were pleased by the results. The full colour camera has quite a high refresh rate and its 1.3 megapixels manage to pick out details quite well on the 4.3-inch display. A convex lens spreads the picture for a wide-angle view of surroundings and, although it takes a bit of time to get used to exactly how close you are to objects behind you, we can see it having clear benefits.

The installation process is relatively straightforward if you know your way around a car and have some experience with electrical wiring, but if you're not comfortable doing this yourself Binatone can organise a professional installation for you.

Moving onto the navigator itself, the T430 uses the new Navigator 7.0 software which has a number of small improvements over the previous range and comes with UK and Ireland maps. We've been pretty pleased in the past by the straightforward way in which Binatone guides you around, and thankfully none of this ability has been lost.

Routes are calculated quickly and maps are clear and easy to follow on the move. There's also a range of ways of customising the device, including zoom and elevation control, a full itinerary and range of options for configuring exactly how the device calculates a route.

There's Bluetooth here for pairing to your mobile phone and a built-in speed camera database, and in terms of extras you'll find video, music and photo playback applications. Sadly, it doesn't appear as though you can enjoy music while driving, since you need to exit the media application before you can plan a route.

While the device omits some useful features found on modern navigators, like text to speech and advanced lane guidance, it's highly efficient at the important things, namely helping you find your way around. There's an excellent level of customisable control here and best of all it's reasonably priced, particularly when you consider you're getting the wireless camera thrown in.

While you might wonder how often you'll use the rear-view camera, it's a tidy setup that's well automated and certainly worthwhile, considering the price. Binatone has kept up its recent high standards in the navigation stakes by performing admirably on the road and, while the T430 omits some useful features found on rival navigators, it's still great value for money.