Electronics

Sony NVU73T 4.3” Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator Traveling to your favorite destinations has never been this easy. The Nav-u portable satellite navigation system has a sleek, 4.3″ touch-panel widescreen display and can be easily mounted in any vehicle. The brilliant, high-contrast full-color graphical interface is also intuitive and fun to use. Whether it’s a trip across town or cross-country road trip, the Nav-u satellite navigation system makes the perfect travel companion. The NV-U73T comes pre-loaded with Map Content covering the entire United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. Dual View capability displays dynamic route information to provide an even clearer view of what’s around the bend or in a highway merge scenario, which Junction to take. Commonly used commands such as Take Me Home may be accessed by gesturing an inverted V(R) on the screen versus paging through numerous menu screens. Step away from standard GPS mapping and towards a more complete navigation solution. Real Time Traffic Information radio reception allows the NV-U73T to constantly monitor relevant traffic conditions and automatically re-route you around trouble spots. TTS (Text to Speech) also eliminates second-guessing when making a turn; the device utilizes spoken commands ensuring you are able to follow the directions by street names. Using the Sony-unique Super Suction Cup, mounting a Nav-U portable satellite navigation system to either the dashboard, console, or windshield in virtually any vehicle is quick and easy. Stable and secure while driving, the Nav-U portable satellite navigation system can be easily removed whenever you want to take it with you. Interfaces - DC Input 5-5.2V Jack, USB Jack, External GPS Aerial Jack, and TMC Aerial Jack 87.5 - 108.0 Mhz Reception Frequency RDS-TMC Traffic Messaging Channel Dimensions - 3.7 x 2.1 x 4.3 (95×54x109mm) Weight - 7.4 Ounces (210 Grams)
Customer Review: Good concept, BAD implementation
So I am in the market to get a GPS unit for my car, so after reading some mixed reviews about the Sony NV-U73 I decided to try it out for myself. Now I am a Sony fanboy so I was hoping that this product would do very well for me, especially since it was on sale at the local Radio Shack.

Let me start with the good:

1. Beautiful display, bright with lots of contrast.
2. POI’s come up on the GPS as their logo…ie If I was driving past a Citgo, the Citgo logo was displayed on the GPS…very cool.
3. The unit will tell you which lane to be in for complicated exits/turns on the highway. When you approach an exit, it goes split screen and shows you which lane you should be in to take the exit.
4. Fairly accurate to tell you when turns are approaching.
5. Displays your speed.
6. Mount is very stick and can move in 360 degrees.

Now the cons:
1. SLOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW…slow to pick up a signal, super slow to re-calculate a route, and tooth-numbing slow to calculate an initial route.
2. It can’t handle hypens, ie if a house number is 28-44, your out of luck cause it can’t find that.
3. Minor gripe, but the RDS antenna is not built in.
4. Takes forever to search POI’s by name.
5. Mapping alogrithem is good, but not the best out there.

So, if this unit wasn’t so slow it would be great. But it was taking about 3-4 minutes to acquire the GPS satellites, and another 2-3 minutes to calculate routes. Not helpful if you’re in an unfamiliar location.

There are better units out there for the same price. Get one of those.
Customer Review: Looks can be deceiving
I had been leaning towards a Garmin nuvi when I first read about this unit, and after doing some research decided to give it a try. I must say that I really liked it for the first few days when I was playing with all the gimmicks that I haven’t used before (my friend has a nuvi 350) like the split screen and touch-gestures.

However, once that wore off, the 73T really boils down to a pretty aggravating piece of equipment. The frequent errors I experienced finding Points of Interest around town aside, it did an absolutely horrendous job on a 2 hour trip that I take almost every weekend. There are basically 2 ways to get there: One that follows the same route 7 through a ton of little towns (the slow way), and a faster path which takes two different roads (22A and 4 for those of you keeping track) to do the same thing.

I will start by saying that the nuvi 350 opts for the faster way to begin with. The Sony on the other hand, spent the entire 20 miles of route 4 telling me to take every exit and turn around so that I could take route 7. Then, when I had finally made it to 22A, it started recalculating ways to merge with 7 again instead of simply following the direct shot to my destination. I had to enter about 5 different “interim destinations” along the way before it would finally let me take 22A in peace (with an ETA 20 minutes sooner than the route it wanted to take).

Short story: I made a wide variety of trips with this GPS while I had it (I returned it today and will be purchasing a nuvi 260W) and more often than not, I found myself ignoring the directions because there is a decidedly faster route that it simply refused to calculate. It has some nice features, but nothing extraordinary. The bottom line is that when I end up driving somewhere that I am not familiar with, I know there are other units out there that will do a much better job picking the best route to take which is what I look for in a navigation device.

Tags: portable gps, gps navigation, gps systems, gps, gps reviews