Sony NVU94T 4.8-Inch Widescreen Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator with Traffic and Text-to-Speech
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List Price: $ 399.99
Best Price$ 399.99
Please check price update price will lower or up.
- 4.8-Inch Anti-glare/Anti-fingerprint touchscreen Display
- Pre-installed Maps of the US, Canada, and Puerto Rico
- Supports Memory Stick Duo Media
- Car cradle with Traffic information RDS-TMC3 capability
- Bluetooth hands-free calling with built-in microphone
The Sony nav-u portable satellite navigation system is more than basic digital maps; it is the system that gets you where you need to go quickly and efficiently with intuitive features that help you along your journey. The latest Sony navigation system brings Photo Viewerand multi-media playback capability to an already packed and helpful unit.
List Price:$ 399.99
best Price :$ 399.99
Please check price update.
Sony NV-U94T gps — good deal,
I’m a relative newcomer to GPS, but I’m learning quickly. I’ve tried out several, compared notes with friends and read dozens of reviews. The NV-U94T received uneven reviews – some liked it, and some (like CNET) were luke warm. My first reaction, however, when seeing it on display at Radio Shack was very positive, so I took a closer look.
Sony doesn’t have the same reputation for GPS that companies like Garmin and TomTom have. I believe that this factor, combined with the initially high price for this device ($399 list until recently), and slightly flakey routing with the first firmware release, all led to this being a somewhat ignored model this fall.
Although the NV-U94T was just released this fall (August 2008?) as the top of the line for Sony’s fall lineup, Sony decided to drop the list price from $399 to $199 just last week. While I was admiring the device when it was selling for $299 at Radio Shack before Christmas, when I went back there a few days ago and saw it at $199 (with a 30 day return option, and 90 day exchange option), I felt that I had to take a chance.
In short – it’s been great so far.
The display is spectacular. At 4.8″, this is the biggest, brightest, clearest display I’ve seen for anywhere near this price. The processor seems to be very fast: the user interface is crisp and responsive, route calculation is very fast, as is re-calculation when I drive off the recommended route. The unit boots up and acquires satellite signals in seconds.
The user interface is quite good, easy to navigate, and generally requires very few taps to get me to the desired function. Having dedicated menu buttons on the left of the screen, regardless of the display, means that I can always get to a top level menu with a single tap. The 94T supports a number of finger gestures (that got a laugh out of my teenage son!), such as swiping a large roof shape on screen with a finger to indicate that you want the device to navigate home, drawing a clockwise circle to zoom in or counter-clockwise to zoom out (both to presets that you select and set).
The feature set is pretty huge. Bluetooth can be used several ways: the device has a built in media player that can stream through your bluetooth equipped car audio system, and it can also act as a handsfree bluetooth speakerphone for your cell phone (works great). Text to speech is excellent, and you have a choice of voices and languages. There’s a built in 6-way accelerometer and some kind of pressure sensor that help to keep track of your position if you briefly lose contact with the GPS satellites. They call this “position plus”.
Sony’s “super suction cup” mount works incredibly well. It’s a fairly typical suction cup, but with some kind of gel disk on the bottom that’s a bit tacky to the touch. It’s not a true adhesive, so it leaves no residue. But it allows the mount to faster to a textured dashboard securely in seconds — and can be removed just as quickly without leaving a trace. I like the ability to quickly mount it on my dash and remove it as well: my current car is leased and I’ll be returning it in less than a year — no way I’d put a permanent mount on the car. Also, being able to mount it on my dash is excellent: it’s truly NOT obstructing my view out the windshield, and I’ve heard stories about the police in NJ ticketing people lately for having a GPS on the windshield blocking the view.
Not sure if this next point is common to all wide-screen GPS’s, but the 94T goes into a split-screen mode as you approach intersections, showing you a detailed close up of the intersection on the left side of the screen, and the normal map on the right. The close up shows you all the lanes that are available to you, and which ones to use or avoid. Works quite well so far.
The device doesn’t always pick the same route I would, but I imagine that no GPS will read your mind and always choose a route using the same logic that you would. However the routes it picks always seem to be within a mile of the same total trip length that I choose, with total trip time within about a minute or two of the routes I might choose in favor of the ones recommended by the GPS. It’s actually got me reevaluating the routes I’ve used for years — and it seems to be choosing well so far. Additionally, if you keep ignoring a recommended route in favor of your own, I read that it will start to apply a greater weight in its routing algorithm to your preferred routes, and eventually start using your preferred roads.
The unit I picked up this past week as recent 2008 NAVTEQ maps of the US, Canada and Puerto Rico installed with something over 5 million points of interest included. I’ve read that recent Garmin’s have something like 6 million POI’s — not sure what I’m missing, and so far, it’s found all my local restaurants, gas stations, etc.
The 94T also has a…
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|Best GPS For Us!!!,
Everything that it says it does, it does. Wonderful! We bought a Magellan 4250 before and it was slow, hard to use, and if we wanted to check out POI’s we had to cancel our route first. Not user friendly at all. But the new Sony is everything we need and lives up to our expectations of a GPS system.
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