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Navigon 2100 max 4.3-Inch Portable GPS Navigator with Text-to-Speech

Navigon 2100 max 4.3-Inch Portable GPS Navigator with Text-to-Speech

Customer Rating: 
Total Reviews: 27

Best Offer: $185.00
By Supplier: BESTSELLER21

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Navigon 2100 max review
To keep it short and sweet, the 2100 max unit was returned. I bought it for my spouse who is not technically inclined. I feel that she was a good test subject for this review, which wasn't my intent as I only wanted her to have an easy to use personal navigation device (PND). The Navigon 2100 max has many great features for the price, but also too many issues and wasn't worth the frustration. Using it made me feel like I was beta testing a development product. Maybe a firmware update will fix the problems. I need a PND with a better user interface (UI), more Points of Interest (POI) and reliability. Each person is different, so I recommend that you always get a PND from a store with a good return policy.

Pros:
- 4.3" touch screen.
- Free life-time traffic updates, but must activate the service online
- Traffic information antenna built into the auto charging cable, so not external antenna required (also a downside).
- Spoken street names via text-to-speech.
- Lane Assist is a view that helps with choosing which lane to be in for the upcoming intersection.
- Reality View is a more realistic view of the upcoming road changes.
- Route planning can add multiple stops to your route.
- Predictive Text helps to speed up typing with text that guides you, but this had a downside.
- Optional Fresh Maps is a paid for service ($80.00US) that provides quarterly map updates for 3 years.

Cons:
- Documentation online, no CD in the box. Remember this when you're on the road and need help with the device.
- Crashed the first time it was turned on that required going online for the documentation to learn how to properly reset the device.
- The user interface is less than intuitive. You will need to learn the "navigon" way of UI navigation. This can be frustrating. Oh, and with no printed documentation to reference, well you get the idea.
- The UI icons, text and buttons are very small and therefore difficult to see.
- Points of Interest database is pathetic and no way to update.
- Traffic information is not incorporated into a route, you could still be routed through a closed road or exit, which happened to me.
- Traffic alerts kept appearing for problems not on the route.
- Traffic service didn't work outside of the metro areas.
- Route planning feature doesn't optimize the route path between route points.
- You must use Navigon's USB cable or you will get a "Sync" screen on the device. Better get a spare from Navigon.
- The battery life is dismal, my unit constantly displayed the low charge warning after only 30 minutes, and then would die shortly thereafter.
- Satellite acquisition indoors was miserable.
- Crappy speaker gets more distorted the louder it gets, and you need to turn it up because the volume is very low by default.
- Predictive Text would not let me enter a street number or name if it wasn't in the device database, which happened on several occasions. My spouse just gave up when the streets or addresses couldn't be entered.
- After a week the device started to frequently lock up, requiring a reset.

Overall I feel that Navigon is on the right track with it's feature list and pricing. I may have got a bad unit, but with the number of issues it wasn't worth the frustration. I will pay a little more for something that just works. When I have to fight with the technology, it's going back.
2008-11-17
Navigon??
We purchased the Navigon for our travels this winter and am very disappointed. It will get you to the town you are going to but if you follow the directions you will not arrive where you are intending to.
Would not recommed the purchase of this product, if I can find a way to return mine I will. Certainly not worth the $$.Navigon 7100 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator
2008-11-13
Worst GPS! Not Recommended
Real quickly I just want to point out that the device is good as it completes what it says it is supposed to. The problems start immediately it is ridiculously slow at making a route. If you go off track via different road or highway recalculating time takes about 45 seconds compared to 3 to 5 on the Garmin. The system is very sluggish and updates at about 1 frame every 2 to 3 seconds which makes it very inaccurate. Everything seems to be so cluttered and text is very small so you can't see much even though its a 4.3 inch screen. I had a Garmin 3.5 and was able to see much more clearly. It has about 2 million POI which is very low considering Garmin and Tom Tom offer more than half of that. Reality View doesn't help much and no auto off feature means navigation must be turned on/off manually rather than automatically when you turn car on/off. Overall I think this device is a huge disappointment I give it 2 stars. 1 for value and 1 for working as it says it does.
2008-11-09
Don't Buy it Now - The Upgrade is the Same Price!
The 2200T is out and it fixes a lot of the problems people had with this thing. Why would you pay $190 for this when you can get the 2200T for basically the same price?

The only reason to get this is if you really want a navigon with 4.3 in screen and don't wanna spend $400 on it, but in every other way the 2200T is better.
2008-10-30
Lousy user interface design
I bought this because the price was great for the feature set, but the lousy user inteface offsets that. I found it very hard to use and was constantly making mistakes.

The wide screen is wasted on a lot of useless stuff I couldn't figure out how to turn off. I don't know if the screen is relatively dim or what, but I often had trouble seeing it in bright light. (I had no such trouble with a friend's Garvin in the same car.)

The routing was sometimes good (I learned a couple of new shortcuts), sometimes bad (e.g. telling me to turn right and drive around a block when turning left was three blocks shorter). Turning instructions were often at the last second, sometimes after I'd already entered an intersection.

The traffic feature was particularly annoying. It was constantly popping up alerts, some of which weren't even on my route. I couldn't find an option to set it to automatically reroute to avoid traffic. Sometimes the supposed backups weren't even there.

I'm returning it and buying a Garmin 265T instead.
2008-10-18
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