Sony NAV-U Review
You may have noticed recently that more and more motorists are driving around with suction cups on their windshield holding high-tech digital devices. You also should have realized by now that these aren’t radar detectors, but either satellite radio receivers or navigation units. For this test report, our good friends at Sony were kind enough to send us one of their latest mobile navigation offerings. This is a market Sony just couldn’t ignore, and its contender is the NV-U70 Personal Navigation Unit. The portable Sony unit has been put through its paces over the last few weeks, spending countless hours glued to our windshield as we traveled from event to event and noted our impressions along the way.
What It Is
The Sony is a palm-sized unit that’s built stout: as with most Sony products, you can feel the quality that comes from being backed by such a reputable company just by looking and holding it. Sony’s fit and finishes are as good as they get. Its fairly compact dimensions (at 10.47cm wide, 8.75cm high and 4.29cm deep, or about the size of your average men’s wallet, except thicker) mean it doesn’t cover up much of your view when mounted on your windshield and, combined with its curved back, is easy to carry around outside the car. The included suction cup cradle has knobs that allow you to adjust the unit on the X- and Y-axis to face the driver.
A cloth carrying pouch, car adapter and home charger are also included with the Sony , as is a permanent dashboard mounting plate. A built-in GPS sensor means no fiddling with wires and the built-in Lithium-Ion battery makes that totally possible, if only for about 4 hours or so.
The 3.5-inch touch-screen LCD is a high-quality one, resisting glare and providing 320- x 240-pixel resolution. A claimed 80° viewability from all directions is another good feature, and we never yearned for more. The screen also has an auto-dimmer feature, turning darker at night to prevent the navigation screen from being a driving distraction. You can set it one way or another, as well as the brightness levels, or leave it in auto and be ready for it to dim when in tunnels and under dark clouds.
The allows a vast number of options including a choice of 15 languages on the supplied DVD-ROM, but on the unit itself, you only have a choice of three: US English, Spanish and French. The others can be downloaded from the DVD, however.
With Sony, you get unparalleled support, so any issues can be quickly resolved by a quick visit to the website, a link to which is included on the DVD.
Coverage
Out of the box, the holds maps for most of North America on its 1GB of imbedded memory, with only 18 US States not pre-loaded onto it. The supplied DVD holds the remaining States, and if you’re planning a trip, say to Alaska, Arizona, Florida or Texas, among others, you need to spend some time uploading the map from the DVD to the unit. Sony claims the length of time this process takes will be updated in the near future. The internal memory can hold 1.6 million points of interest. Additional points of interest and mapping can also be updated via USB connection to the Internet and you can actually sign up for automatic updates of points of interest for a nominal fee.
When we first fired up the unit, we had to agree to a Warning (a process that doesn’t go away in subsequent start-ups) which basically advises you not to operate the unit while driving. It’s there to make lawyers’ jobs easier should something unsafe occur while the unit is in operation. Sony’s warning of waiting up to 20 minutes the first time around while its 12-channel GPS receiver got its bearings was very surprising and unnecessary, as our took only about a tenth of that. As with all GPS units, you need at least three satellites for a signal and before navigation can begin.
The interface and the unit in general is fairly user-friendly, with only two buttons to worry about: the power button and a Voice / Position button, which repeats the last set of voice instructions.
The destinations can be input via a character keyboard or a mobile phone keyboard (the advantage of the latter is that the field is bigger, the drawback being that it requires multiple taps to get to the character you’re looking for). In either, each character narrows down the field of roads in the city you’ve selected. For example, typing in Y and O in the city of Toronto, Canada will yield Yonge Street first, then any others that start with the same two characters, alphabetically.
Alternately, if you don’t have the full or proper address of where you want to go, all you need to do is enter the city, show it on the map and find the place visually on the map. Intersections can be typed in as well.
Get Lost!
Purely in the name of science, we tried to search for a local Gentleman’s club near our office, but to no avail. Imagine the time when units such as this are connected to the Internet and smart enough to, for example, find bars or cafes that are showing the sports event of your choice in the area. That exception aside, the Sony has a generous database of restaurants, gas stations, attractions, parking and other utilities, among others. Credit here surely goes to database builder Navteq, which supplies data for most in-vehicle navigation systems sold in North America and Europe. The company prides themselves in building a database from a driver’s point of view. A company called Navigon, meantime, provided the software, which, admittedly, could offer some more features.
The basics work well, and perusing the menus is quite simple and very logical. A Home button is a quick, convenient, one-touch step to take you to whatever address you’ve saved there from wherever you currently are, provided you have a GPS signal of course. This feature is handy for its speed and getting back to familiar surroundings quickly from an unknown area.
Otherwise, the could certainly prove useful on a vacation, but along well-known, oft-travelled routes, like in rush-hour traffic, it could stand to be more aggressive and intuitive in its guidance. For example, when we missed our highway on-ramp, choosing to take the city into the office, we were told to perform a U-Turn, but not right away where traffic conditions were ideal for such a maneuver, but instead a kilometer farther. This is easy enough to ignore, but it took a little longer than we would have liked for the system to get the point and plot a new course. If you’re lost in a city you haven’t been before, this could add up to a few delays. We wished there was a “Not Lost” or “Recalculate route” button so you can get back on your way.
In the downtown core, surrounded by large skyscrapers, the GPS signal would fade in and out, which could make getting to your destination a bit tricky at times. Relying on the map is a pain, as it takes too much scrolling and fiddling, but this is true of all satellite-dependent systems, Sat radio included. Just to be clear, unlike Sat Radio, GPS navigation systems don’t have a monthly fee associated with them.
Summing It Up
A few more toys such as the ability to save an entire route instead of just points along it would be welcome, but we understand that’s not what the is all about. Instead, it’s an effective, simple and quality backseat driver with all the virtues and none of the faults. If you are looking for a convenient and user-friendly navigation unit, the Sony is among the top choices in our books.
Reprinted with permission by Performance Auto & Sound Magazine
