In my ongoing romance with the Sony brand, the folks at Rocket XL sent me the Sony nav-u™ portable navigation device (NV-U83t) to review.
Ironically, I had just purchased a Navigon 2100 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator
Paul is very happy with his Navigon, especially after using it on a recent business trip to the East Coast. I’ve only used it once and there are some features I love it on that the Sony nav-u doesn’t have. First it warns you when you go over the speed limit. (Paul promptly disabled this. Then again I have more speeding tickets than he has and need these warnings.) It also has 3D Reality View™, which gives you the feel of driving into the city. (When we drive into Denver we see a realistic silhouette of the city skyline on the GPS unit.)
However, I don’t want to compare the Navigon to the Sony GPS too much. The Navigon is a wonderful unit for the price, but it’s much smaller (3.5” compared to Sony Nav-U’s 4.8”) and has less bells and whistles.
The Sony GPS comes with some amazing features like:
- Bluetooth hands free communication so you can make and receive calls on the go.
I don’t use Bluetooth and don’t talk on the phone and drive, so I didn’t use this feature. However, if this is something that is important to you, and your car doesn’t come with a Bluetooth function in the radio, it’s certainly worth paying extra for this feature.
- Position Plus so when GPS signals are temporarily interrupted, such as when driving through a tunnel, the nav-u NV-U83T will keep you on-track by using multiple sensors to monitor your position relative to the map.
I didn’t go up to the Eisenhower Tunnel to test this, but if you frequently travel tunnels or places with many large overpasses, this feature may be a necessity.
- RDS-TMC Traffic Messaging Channel, which gives you real time traffic information radio reception so you can monitor traffic conditions. It also automatically re-route you around trouble spots. (This is a subscription service. You get a 90-day free trial. A yearly subscription is $49.99.)
I didn’t use this much either, since I don’t travel during rush hour. (One of the advantages of working from home). However, it did identify some of the construction on the roads and highways, though not all of them like the major overnight construction that we have here in Colorado.
Other Sony nav-u features I liked were:
Dual view - 3D Junction Guide. This gives you more information about highway merge scenarios. (See picture to the right.)- Detailed maps. Since it’s has a larger screen, the Sony unit can include more detail like surrounding street names.
- Text to speech technology. It’s almost as good as the computer talking to you on Star Trek. However, I wish Majel Barrett (the voice of the Enterprise’s computer) was hired by Sony to do the voice on the GPS. The voice was a little flat. Our friends’ GPS in their Land Rover has a British accent, which is charming and makes me think that Q from the James Bond movies will jump out of the boot any second.
- The main map view shows an estimated time of arrival. This is great to know, so when your kids ask, “Mom when will we be there?” you can tell them with pinpoint accuracy. Or you can use it to figure out how late you will be to your next appointment, so you can sweat bullets accordingly.
My problem with ALL GPS units
Having a GPS unit in the car gives you peace of mind especially when you’re traveling and don’t want to be bothered with printing out Google maps. I really love the Sony NV-U83t and recommend it especially if you need the Bluetooth and Traffic Messaging Channels. (If not, look for a cheaper unit.)
However, I have a big problem with GPS units as a whole because they are STUPID, meaning they don’t learn and they give you odd ways to go places. What I’d like to see from Sony and other GPS manufacturers are smart GPS units. The way I envision this is that you register your GPS online and then login to give the company input into you daily routes, your home area, and where you recently traveled. In return, companies should reward participation with discount coupons or goodies, like carrying cases or other GPS accessories.
For example, I live in a small but growing town. However, our post office is in the bigger city next door, and was our formal mailing address until the US Postal Service changed it four years ago. If you don’t know that our address is under the neighboring city, you’d have a tough time finding us on a GPS unit. (Both the Navigon and Sony units had this problem.) It would be beneficial to give Sony this information, so they can update their maps. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a means to do so on the Sony support site.
Also, we avoid certain roads because we know that there are speed traps or traffic lights that take a long time to cycle. Other roads have trains that go by every afternoon at 4:00 or are very busy in the morning. Again, if we could input this into a Sony product website, then Sony could update their GPS “databank” to make their units smarter during the next software update.
Finally, there are stores that have opened or moved more than six months ago that don’t show up at all or give the old address when you look it up on the GPS unit. I’d like to see Sony update their map and address data more often as well.
