The Good
- Comprehensive listing of rest areas
- Decent filtering options
- Free
The Bad
- More fine-grained filtering to exclude rest areas not meeting your needs would be nice
The Price
Free
The features and options provided by Rest Area are similar to those offered by other rest area finders. What helps Rest Area stand out, though, is a lack of bugs and a clear interface.
Solid Lists, Good Functionality
Rest Area uses the iPhone's built-in GPS to locate where you are and provide you a list of rest areas near you based on the preferences you enter into the app. It can show rest areas as near as 1 mile and as far away as 300 miles. It offers rest areas in both the United States and Canada.
When it finds the rest areas, it shows them either in a list or as pins on a map, depending on your preference. In the list view, each rest area is designated as one of three kinds--turnouts are places to pull over; unlabeled rest areas are standard rest areas with a variety of amenities; service plazas offer all amenities plus gas--and includes how far away it is from your current location. By tapping on the listing, you can see a full list of amenities available. (In the map view, you tap on pin to see the distance and then tap on the label to see the amenities.)
The amenities listed at each rest area include food, bathroom, phone, gas, handicap accessibility, picnic areas, and more.
In searching for rest areas, you can use your current location--which works well on the iPhone thanks to its GPS; on the non-3G iPad or iPod touch, you'll be shown the last location where you connected to a Wi-Fi network--or enter a location. You can also choose to filter results by proximity or type.
There's not a terrific amount more to the app. It would be nice if the types of rest areas had some visual way to distinguish them both in the list and on the map (different pin types or icons, color codes, etc). That would make using the app a little faster. It would also be useful to be able to filter certain types of rest stops. For instance, if I need gas, I don't care about the nearest turnout, so being able to remove those from my listings would help me focus on the options that meet my needs.
The Bottom Line
Rest Area provides solid functionality and a good price--free. It's similar to other free apps that do the same thing, and has some of the same areas where it can improve, but since it doesn't share any of its competitors bugs, it's worth a look if you travel a lot.
What You'll Need
An iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad, running iOS 4.0 or higher
