Sony NVU44 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator with Text-to-Speech (Red) Review
September 20th, 2009
Sony NVU44 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator with Text-to-Speech (Red) Review from Jawad Khan jwdkhan. Excellent GPS unit for price, I have had this GPS unit for just over 2 weeks now and must say I like it quite a bit. This was my first GPS unit but it pretty much has everything that I need at the moment. I had been looking at GPS units the last few months, seeing prices drop and finally jumped at this one, seeing it was a Sony and had the text to voice feature. I’ll list some of the pros/cons below based mostly on the features I found useful in this unit for it’s price.
Pros:
1. Text to voice. Voice prompts volume can be changed easily and also muted completely if desired with just a few touches.
2. You can zoom in/out of map view with a few touches. Set a trip route and get an advance idea of how much the distance is, view of destination and also estimated trip time (which changes as you travel based on speed, stoppage etc.).
3. 3D view is helpful when you come to a busy intersection with multiple lanes. It will split the screen with the regular map view on the right side of the screen and a slightly larger frontal view of all available lanes and the ones you should be taking (highlighted), in the left side of the split screen.
4. Similar split screen with bars in the center to the next turn at busy junctions. The bar indicators reduce as you get closer to the turn, in addition to voice prompts saying how many miles/feet left to your turn.
5. If you miss a recommended exit, it recalculates fairly quickly where you need to turn next to get to your destination.
6. Lots of pre-loaded Points of Interest. I have enabled ‘Banks/ATMs’, ‘Costco’ & ‘Shell’ gas stations under my general settings and they regularly scroll by as small icons on my map as I pass them by. You can also type in ‘Walmart’ and it will list the closest Walmarts to you.
7. Fairly good design. Very simple and sleek, no flashy strips or jagged edges. The glass mount is also very nicely designed and sticks well to front glass.
Cons:
1. The touch screen could have been a bit more responsive. It is not very easy to touch the screen and scroll to others points on the map. Not that it is completely un-responsive, but would have been better if it flowed with more ease. Helpful if you want to trace the map to get an idea of route.
2. I have added ‘Walmart’ as a Point of Interest under my grocery store indicator general settings. However for some reason, none of the WM stores I drive by show up on my map. The Shell gas stations and banks show as small icons as they should but I have to search for Walmarts.
You will have to play around with the unit a bit to get to understand where to make changes to your settings. For example, you can change general settings so that your route is calculated for the shortest possible path by default, or that you avoid toll ways completely every time. Or you can leave it to look for standard routes by default, but make specific changes on the fly during a trip to look for the shortest route (options button) or avoid toll ways on this specific route. Reach a destination and save it for future navigation under different folders (can be renamed/added/deleted).
I bought this for our upcoming trip to Florida where it will be tested for what it’s worth but at the moment, it is doing quite well at home. I am sure a lot of other GPS units will also have the above pros/cons but based on what I have read about other units, and what some friends have, I think this is a very good GPS unit, especially at this price (bought it from local Sonystyle store for $79.99). More updates after Florida trip if I find anything that needs to be added.
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