Navigon

Their graphics are very realistic, and for what I am assuming is an entry company they had higher prices than the Garmins..I dont know what maps they use., or what kind of Support they have. I will check around GPSmagazine

here is what they say
http://www.gpsmagazine.com/2007/12/navigon_7100_review.php?p...

They are based in Germany and use Navteq maps however they do not support custom poi's unless you pay about $50-$60 for 3rd party software. That's why I stayed with Garmin.

Ray

It may look real, but probably not exactly as you are viewing the real thing. I think I would spend too much time trying to compare the two instead of watching the road.

I borrowed a Navigon Palm PC GPS (bought in 2006) from my friend a couple of times before I bought my Nuvi650. It definitely has something better than the much more expensive Nuvi650. For example, it always followed the real location of my car when I chose not to follow the calculated route. Feels like the GPS signal was transfered several times faster than the Nuvi650 (remember using 56K modem vs 14.4K modem for internet?). It usually prompted you to take a U-turn, then it re-calculated quickly. I like the realistic graphics very much. I remember it even pictured some buildings quite accurately on the streets. These features nearly made me return the Nuvi650. But Nuvi650 came with better LCD, bigger display, street name. So I am still evaluating...
I got my 650 from CostCo, so hopefully I can get a few more months of evaluation time.

That's not really how it works. The Garmin is trying to keep your displayed location centered on the road and your active route and it is doing it more aggressively than many people think it should (including me). It has nothing to do with the speed of the GPS signal or the unit. Garmin needs to be contacted by everyone and told that the "road/route lock" feature needs to have some kind of user setting to specify how aggressive it should be.

Huh?? kidding right, it's not a TV camera, it's a GPS. It has reality view not the real thing. nothing to compare.

Bob

I picked up one for next to nothing to try out. It's graphics are more eye-candy than my TomTom. However, they don't have any way to update maps online yet - but looks like they will in Feb-March. The maps seem pretty up to date so far. We have a new exit on I-84 near Nampa, Idaho and it's on there....but POI's are very few.

Can't tweak it much. I'll have to see what their updates are like before I really decide how much I like it.

how is the user interface on the Navigon. It seemed a little confusing and not too user friendly in searching for an address or POI

Yea - it is not as user friendly as Garmin or TomTom. The touch screen buttons are very small and even hard to use sitting on the couch I didn't find the menu navigation very intuitive, but I guess someone could get used to it.

GPSPasssion has a number of discussion threads on the Navigon series here: http://www.gpspassion.com/forumsen/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=101480

The bottom line seems to be that despite a sleek look and the novel "reality view" display for interstate travel, there are some negatives such as the inability to download custom pois and the biggest problem with the Navigon series seems to be the efficiency of the routing algorithm (which is what you buy a gps system for) can only generously be described as "quirky" and seems to require a lot of tweaking of the settings in xml files to get the routing right for your individual geographic location.

Navigon just recently released a firmware update but from what I understand, it didn't improve the routing problems.

Was the firmware update for all the Navigon units?

We gave a 5100 as a X-Mas present and would let them know an update is available if it applies to their unit and the one in the USA.

Thanks, Tim