|
 - At least the price was low...Purchased the Navigon 5100 a couple of days back for $149.99. Not bad. It had free lifetime traffic which I was interested in. The Good: Didn't get to see much good, though the menus seemed fairly intuitive.... 1. Pretty fast sat acquisition (despite reviews to the contrary). Under a minute easily. The Bad: 1. Had to hold down the On button for somewhere between 11-13 seconds to get it to power on. About the same to turn it off. 2. First time out... almost. Put mount on windshield. Put 5100 on mount. Mount breaks. I go Grrrrr and say "well that's that." The Very Bad: 1. The touch screen was terribly unresponsive. Terribly. Very Very Frustrating. I was told that it must have been the unit. Regardless, I returned it and will probably just get another Garmin. Good luck. Rating:  - Rich feature set crippled by major shortcomingsI currently own a MIO that I purchased on Black Friday 06 and planning to upgrade. The Mio is a competent little unit, but I was hoping to get a unit with text-to-speech, newer maps, updated POIs, better interface, and better routing. Here comes Navigon 5100.. at $160 it came with Text To Speech, Lane Assist, 3d reality view, Zagat ratings, and Free TMC! Could it be the magical upgrade I was looking for? After 1 day owning the unit and using it to drive around, this item is going back to Amazon. And here's why. 1. First thing I notice was the HUGE windshield mount that looks cool, but it's a major pain to use. Rotating the device around was very awkward and I was afraid that it would snap off. Another annoyance: On highways the mount just shakes road vibrations! My Mio didn't do that. 2. You must HOLD the button for 10 seconds for startup and shut-down. In addition, you must click OK to the EULA agreement that you wont use this unit while driving ( you know what I mean ) etc etc. This makes the unit impractical for quick turn-on and go like my Mio does. 3. The keyboards (or any other buttons, for that matter) are TINY. I have relatively small hands and I'm having problems typing my destinations. 4. The UI are clunky. I was interested because I heard Navigon has a very pretty UI, but I'm disappointed. The 'Flash' menus are nothing to be excited about. The maps on most streets are plain white and hard to read. 5. It takes many taps to do the simple things I can do right away on my Mio. For example I can simply move the maps around with Mio while I was in 'navigation mode.' With this Navigon, I need to click on the little button on the bottom right which pops up a menu, and select the button for 'move your fingers around to scroll map' view. 6. There's a 'direct access' buttons for specific types of POI (which allow you to quickly see surrounding POIs with 1 tap) which is very nice, but then it directly routes me to the POI I selected ( I cant just view the phone number etc - to do that I have to do it through the regular POI screen) 6. The fonts are very small. I'm talking TINY small. 7. And here's the killer for me: The speaker is very soft. The unit when cranked all the way up is barely audible on highways, and the sound is already cracking. My Mio is way louder. So those are the reasons the unit is going back. It's too bad - I really wanted the unit to be the upgrade I had wanted. Just to wrap this review up on a good note, the positives (for me ) are: 1. The unit looks very pretty. 2. Navigation is pretty good and accurate. 3. Voice guidance (when you can hear it!) spells out street names pretty accurately. 4. It says which side of the road your destination is (this is very neat) 5. It can display speed limit, your speed, altitude, etc. Lots of information. 6. There's dedicated 'direct access' button which has its limitations, is a nice feature. 7. Route recalculation was pretty fast. There you go. I hope this review serves as a caveat emptor - Keep in mind that you DO get a host of features for a very low price, but it has its (for me, major) shortcomings. What that shortcomings amount for you is for you to decide. Rating:  - Downgrading origional review from when I first bought this.I've removed my original two star review from when I bought this. After 9 months of use I'm giving this a one star review. I'd give it less if I could. This GPS is so painful to use it sits gathering dust in my glovebox. Likes: Free Traffic. Attractive looking. Dislikes: 1. User interface is insanely convoluted. 2. Touch screen requires lots of pressure to work, very frustrating. 3. The buttons on the user interface are stupidly small, combined with a not so sensitive touch screen its barely usable. 4. Boot up time is stupidly long, 10 seconds of which you have to HOLD the power button. Guys, how about a simple on off switch switch! 5. Unit is slow to calculate and respond to user input. 6. Scrolling around maps is difficult at best. Nearly impossible to use for just mapping. 7. Traffic is not displayed in a useful method. Requires multiple button clicks while driving for traffic avoidance. I could go on with more dislikes, but I get angry just thinking about the frustrations of using this. Save your money and avoid this unit. Rating: - returned thisalready own a garmin nuvi, and returned this for a tom tom, both are easier to use, and straight to the point. Rating: - JunkI've had problem with this GPS ever since I bought it. I even called customer service for help and they never called me back. I wouldn't buy it if I were you. You get what you pay for.
|
