PC Mag has a review up of the Navigon 7100 that takes a look at this widescreen navigator that on top of offering some pretty standard features found on other GPS devices, it comes with a couple of innovative ideas that aren’t found on most navigation systems all wrapped up in a pretty stylish package. The Navigon 7100 is a widescreen GPS powered by SiRF star III, with North American maps (US+Canada+Puerto Rico), and Bluetooth Handsfree. The Navigon 7100 also comes with subscription free TMC traffic. I like the idea, as it seems to spread the good word of TMC traffic, and it would seem to lower the overall costs if the GPS manufacturer negotiated a bulk contract vs. all of us getting our own subscriptions. No idea if I am right here, and yes, it’s not that great if you don’t live in a place where traffic coverage is available, but if a few million more subscriptions were going out there, one could see their way to a lower fee structure for us all.
The Navigon 7100 also features Zagat reviews of restaurants and locations in about 70 cities. Search through a list of Points of Interest, and by punching an ‘i’ button while on a specific location, you can bring up the Zagat write up. Great feature is you are trying out new restaurants, or are looking for places to go while traveling.
Voice Commands
The Navigon 7100 includes the ability to assign a voice command to saved locations, giving you the opportunity to navigate simply and easily to your most frequently used addresses.
‘Reality View’
Navigon also gives you the option to preview complex intersections in photo-realistic beauty allowing you to see exactly where you are going with lane specific information and the confidence to navigate correctly. This type of feature is the future of navigation systems in some form or fashion. Eventually we will be navigating through either photo-realistic views or digital footage that is crammed onto the GPS unit sitting on your dash.
PC Mag didn’t love the Navigon 7100 in their review of the unit, as some interface changes are needed to truly make it walk among the giants of the market. The POI search features aren’t selectable to search near a certain address; not good for trip planning, and the Bluetooth pairing doesn’t pull in all of your phone’s information like Garmin line of GPS systems. When I reviewed the Nuvi 360, I thought that this ability to deal with phone calling on a large screen while driving, and calling handsfree was great. Magellan was recently knocked for this shortfall too. The true value is full functionality like Garmin, I hope that this capability is coming for all Bluetooth systems.
More at PCMag
The Navigon 7100 is available at Amazon
(Via GPS Lodge.)
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