Saturday, June 28, 2008

Navigon 5100 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator

Navigon 5100 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator

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DO NOT BUY THIS!

I bought my Navigon 5100 and was fairly happy with it for a couple months. Then one day it could not find my current location. I've tried rebooting it and restarting it at different locations, but it never worked again. now it just sits there and mocks me. The one thing that sold me on buying this product was the lane assistance, but it never worked well. It only comes on when there is light or no traffic. I don't really need lane assistance when all the lanes are open. It would tell me there was traffic even when I could see there was none. When the Navigon did work, it took anywhere from 3-10 minutes to start giving directions. When giving directions it does not tell you if the highways off ramp is south, north, west or east. It's terrifying when your driving and can't figure out which off ramp to get off on. I never understood why they put the speakers on the back of the product. It makes the verbal directions low and muddy. If they had simply put it on the front, it would have had great sound. Whenever a traffic alert came up you would have to touch a small box on the screen to make it disappear. Living in Los Angeles, new ones were coming up once every two seconds. Annoying and disrupts driving. Navigon is a bad product. DO NOT BUY!

very poor product overall

I bought this product after returning a Magellan to costco. I live in los angeles and I thought it is a great bargain to have traffic feature since half of the freeways in southern california are jammed most of the time. I used to think that all GPS are more or less same and I am educated enough to get used to any GPS, but this navigon 5100 broke my myth. This product has such terrible software that it is almost unusable. Only people who can rate it high are the ones who have never used a Garmin or Magellan. My unit is on the way back to amazon. I am giving it 1 star but my wife would acually give zero. The following problems. Audio volume is not just very low but also much poor in quality. I don't expect this from any $[...]+ product in 2008. This is the most fundamental feature of a turn by turn GPS. Hats off to its designers who hurried up in launching this product. GPS claims 6 million+ POIs but search is so poor that very popular restaurants such as Panera bread are not there. This is on top of the fact that search software is already very poorly designed. My previous magellan was so impressive that just type in a few letters and list will show up like a dictionary. To start GPS, hold the start button for 30 seconds. Anything less and it will not start. I knew this problem before buying and I did not rate this as a big problem but only after using, I realized how terrible this experience is. 3D lane view, which is supposed to be the selling feature of this GPS, is barely more useful than arrows shown by Garmin or Magellan. This feature looks decent but I rate this as very low value since I don't remember missing a lane or exit on magellan. Just replacing an arrow with 3D picture is not a great technology skill in my opinion. Worst of all is the useful ness of traffic feature, which was the main reason, I bought this. Traffic alerts are updated but never announced by GPS. I should know early enough that there is an accident on my route. Only way I learned was to look at the screen and guess, which of the accident events are on my route. Just imagine doing this while driving a car. It will make sure that you also cause one of those accident events. Worst part is that There is no difference in alert between a freeway running 5 miles an hour Vs 50 Miles an hour. That is the most important info I need to choose my route. Only if it is running really slow, I would choose to change the route. Traffic alert is just a nice toy feature but zero usefulness in real world. I cannot comment on routing since just one usage told me that this is worth returning.

A great GPS!

I've been looking at GPS units for a long time, unable to decide based on all the hype. Along came Navigon. The free map upgrades and lifetime free traffic service really piqued my interest. This unit is simply great so far. I tried it on two trips this last week, one a short 200 - miler and the other a 1300 mile adventure to Oklahoma. I had been on both before, sans GPS, so this was a test. "Miss Daisy" ( that's what I call her ) did very well on both. She got a little flummoxed when I took alternate routes locally, as I know my local roads, but the "recalculating route" feature worked very well. I really like the Reality View on major interstates - showing upcoming exits and lane changes that way is superb. The traffic alert worked great, even without the external traffic antenna. There is major construction ongoing around Indianapolis and she took me on the exact alternate I had already used before, no problem. The so-called "hockey stick" windshield mount is rock-steady and actually looks great - much better than all the other mounts that hang right in your vision next to the mirror, with ugly wires dangling all over. The only real negative so far is the volume on the voice alerts. Even at maximum loudness it's hard to hear with the radio on or any traffic noise. The pronunciation of some roads is a little off, but whose isn't? Every area has different accents and no computer-generated voice could ever perfectly duplicate regional speech ( think New York versus Georgia for example ). The battery is listed to last 4.5 hours and I got just under 4, but I think that after "exercising" the battery a few times it'll be fine. Even so, if you only need to plug in the DC cord every 4 hours I see no problem. I'm planning another long trip next week and I'm sure Miss Daisy will do fine. A note to those who don't read the setup instructions : you really should -- even if you "know it all" about every GPS out there. After setting my preferences ( POI, etc.), it does what it's told. All in all, I think Navigon has a winner here.

navigon 5100 is a good product.

The key features the make the navigon above other GPS's are the True View, a extreamly helpful tool, and the real time traffic reports which are free for the lifetime you own it. The only things i think could use improvement are, the speaker could get a little louder, although its plenty loud when on the mount it comes with. and the size of the buttons you need to use to enter address are too small but i haven't had any issuse of pressing the wrong one but i keep thinking i will. Also it includes the 2mb memory card and an extra external antena which I've never needed but nice just in case. Also the mount works great and is a great disign.

average product

This product is good but not very good. It always say take I-XXX, but it never says or never display North or South. Which leads into confusion many a times. Apart from that good thing is connectivity. Signal strength is very good. My apartment no is coming in the list. I tried many a times putting that but my apt no is not coming in the list which sopposedly one of the oldest building in the area.



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