NaviGadget

Sony Personal Navigation System NV-U 70 Review

Apr 20, 2006 gps navigation, reviews, sony

Bottom Line

Sony NV-U70 (aka u-nav series) gets 3 out 5 star from PCMag UK. Good GPS unit with many nice features, but other competing products offer more features at a lower price.

When you think of major players in the portable GPS navigation market, Sony doesn’t come to mind. Sony is hoping to change that perception with the introduction of its nv-u Portable Satellite Navigation System.

The nav-u features a 3.5-inch (diagonal) touch screen with a special coating to make it both glare- and fingerprint-resistant. It has a built-in light sensor to adjust the screen automatically for optimal viewing in any lighting condition and includes both a day and night mode. Even in bright sunlight, I found the screen easy to read.

Installation and setup, as with most portable GPS devices, is quite simple. The nav-u arrives pre-loaded with Navteq’s street-level maps for the 48 contiguous states (excluding Alaska and Hawaii) and a respectable database of 1.6 million POI (Points of Interest). All this information fits into 1GB of solid state memory. The nav-u mounts to the windshield with a suction cup or to a supplied plate that you can mount with screws. The mounting bracket is one of the better brackets I’ve seen; it’s sturdy and easy to adjust. The bracket has a set of contacts that mate to contacts on the bottom of the nav-u, making it easy to snap the device in and out of the bracket. You can connect both power and an optional GPS antenna to the bracket, and not have to fumble with cables each time you snap the nav-u into or out of the bracket.

via