[5 of 6 customers found this review helpful]

Sony NV-U83T 4.8'' Portable Navigation System Review

Shame for this product with Sony mark

"I'm using 3-year-old Garmin iQue3600 and looking for a newer GPS unit. Accidentally I ordered Sony NV-U83T and just received it 2 days ago. Unfortunately the unit is far below my expectation.



First of all, the menu arrange is not reasonable. When you press the Menu botton, you can see several icons (tabs) at bottom, which are compass, cabinet, briefcase, and return. In campass, the choices are Enter Address, Find a Place, Take Me Home, and My Places. In cabinet, the choices are Phone (operation), and Traffic Information. In briefcase, the choices are Route Planning, Address Book, General (setting), Map (setting), Route Profile, Guide (setting), Traffic Information, Phone (setting). Ok, can anyone tell me what's the relationship between those icons and actual related sub-menu? Those icons seem to be trivial.



Second, after it got signal, it showed the place I'm at. Good, but why I only see street lines around the neighborhood, but no street name on the map. If you zoom out a little bit, it only marks the town hall place, big landmark, and some street it "thinks" worth to show. I still can't see what the road name around me. If you zoom out more, only the major roads or state highways are displayed. Zoom in? you will only see the street lines without name. My 4-year-old Garmin iQue3600 can do this and I can't image the new released (3/1/2008) Sony can't do it. And even interesting, when you zoom out, the response is almost instant. But, when you zoom in, it's about 3~5 seconds delay to show the map.



Ok, go to the next one. I tried to put my company address and I hesitated a while when it prompted me to enter city (town) name. Could someone tell me what the difference is between "Fairhaven" and "Fairhaven, Town of"? Anyway, I tried either one and it found the right place.



After I received signal, it took about 13~15 seconds to finish route calculation, which is about 65 miles away. I tried couple my friends' addresses and most of them can finish calculation in 10~15 seconds range. For most GPS, I believe it is still in acceptable range even it is not great.



Now, I'm on the road. Ok, it's great to see the split screen to forecast the detail turning map and the highway lane recommendation (that's the most attractive part for this unit). However, it only pops up lane information in big intersections (two interstate or state highways), not every exit. The good thing is the voice notice is pretty accurate and fluent.



Hold on, I found something annoying. I needed to be on I-495 for about 60 miles and it showed the next turn would be 8 miles. Oh, it's the intersection for I-290. When approaching the intersection, the split screen came up and told you to stay on left 3 lanes. After passing the intersection, the next one is 13 miles, which is I-90. After this one, the next is I-95 in 23 miles. After this one, the next is RT-24. Come on, it's a 3-lane highway all the way to my destination exit. Can't it be smart enough to find out or only wants to show off split screen feature?



Next annying fact is that I would like to see the near road around the highway. Yes, zoom in. I mentioned earlier it takes several seconds delay to show the map. After less than 5 seconds, the it zoomed out back to the original level. I retried several times and the results were the same, and nowhere to change setting to disable "automatic zoom out". Later, I found that the "automatic zoom out" fact is only for highways or during navigation (with destination defined).



Next, I looked into the POI function. First, I searched on the dining place. Yes, it can get good result as another guy said, who gave rating 9. However, he didn't mention how slow it is to get the searched result. It took at least 5~10 seconds to show the first record and still showing "searching" after 3 minutes. I believe it searches from the nearest match but it is too slow to get result. My Garmin iQue3600 may only have 1M POI but it can find the result much faster than this Sony one. And also, Sony didn't release the information of the number of POI for this unit.



I tried the PIO again. I found it has "Auto Dealer" category. Hmmm, it sounds good. I had a vehicle appointment. I put toyota. It searched, and searched, and 3 minutes later it told me "no record found". What a #!@$%&. I tried to use "Search by name" and it came back after 1 minute with the dealer I needed to go. If it can't find the brand name in Auto Dealer category, I can figure out why Sony wants to create that category.



Did I mention the response time for this unit? Everytime you press keys or bottons in menu selection, it's at least 1 second delay. If the vehicle is moving (map changing) or it's doing some heavy calculation job such as (search), it could be more than 5 seconds to get a key responsed. How will I know, because the pressed botton has become inverted but the actual function can't be performed.



How about bluetooth? That's another joke for this unit. The voice is noisy and toutured. My wife and my boss can't recognize my voice. I can't figure out what they said either. Even if I took it off from suction cup and attached it to my face like cellphone, the situation didn't get better. Also, I can't synchronize phonebook with my cell phone. I borrowed a Garmin Nuvi660 last week from my friend. The voice and phonebook synchronzation worked fine.



What I can say is that the product is a shame for Sony. Except the big display, split screen map and super suction cup, I can't find anything good for this unit. Maybe the one gave it rating 9 is a Sony employee or the designer. I am definitely returning it now."