Customer Reviews

Harman Kardon GPS-510 4-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator and Media Player

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Nice looking device, fits perfectly in hand. Touch screen is slick and very responsive... menus are easy to navigate and a home key is always present to take you back to beginning.

Charged it up and took it outside... was surprised when it locked on the instant i powered up... it had our spot on the map where it should be, so we started walking to end of street and the 510 tracked almost instantly when we were walking, as well as when we turned direction and headed back other way. Spent the next few days having it on in car and GPS function worked extremely well... never had any mistakes or weird routes (keep in mind only tested over a few days)... said names of streets clearly. Seemed to perform very well as GPS device.

Now for media player review:

OK, first of all -- the screen on it is very sharp and crisp... demo movies, and movies i loaded on to it, display very nicely. converted some dvd's to .avi or .xvid (cant remember which right now) and it played with no problems.

Anyway the biggest disappointment in the media department is that there are virtually no basic options/controls for mp3 or video playback. On videos there is absolutely no options to select from (zoom, full, etc.)... but they played well, so not a big deal.

MP3, however, is a different story. There is no "now playing" feature, nor the ability to create playlists from the player. (and of course no equalizer options or anything else.) So say you have a bunch of pop songs on the player and a bunch of classical and/or comedy tracks -- if you are in your car and you want it to shuffle through all of your pop songs there is no way to do that unless you have made a playlist on your pc comprised of only pop songs and have downloaded that playlist to the player. VERY restrictive. You can sort by artist/track/album in the player.... but you can't choose it to select more than one specific artist/track/album at a time. So if you want to listen on shuffle -- it's either shuffle through EVERY song on the player, or shuffle through one artists tracks. you can't specify more than one of any category to play through the player. Big bummer.

Add into all of that the fact that you are restricted to a max of 4GB of storage on an SD card -- so a couple of movies and you are going to have to buy another card if you want to carry around a lot of songs at the same time. Oh and no ability to view pictures either in case you wondered.

Summary: If you are looking at this as the perfect device to include mp3,video, gps -- i would pass. Personally the restrictions of the audio playback, along with no pics and 4 gb max just wouldn't cut it for me. I use my mp3 player (creative vision w) all the time in car, in house, etc. and need those basic mp3 controls. The extra price of the 510 for the media capabilities isn't justified IMO. For the same price of the unit ($400ish) i can get a nice gps only device and a solid media player (creative w for instance) with 30 - 60 gb of onboard storage.

Now if you aren't a big mp3/video user, then perhaps you would be satisfied with the limited media options as a trade off for the convenience of having it all in one package instead of having to carry around 2 units.

Hope this helps someone.

Some of the bad reviews almost scared me away. I bought this unit anyway. I like it. Easy to use, and it is easy to program in destinations. I'm impressed with the software. Solid unit!

The Harman/Kardon gps 510NA is a GPS that gets the job done and more. The navigation is really intuitive and easy to use. I live in the Midwest and seems to me that I get a GPS lock really quickly even from a cold start. The text-to-speech is a great feature, I love it for when I have no idea where I am. When I do know where I am I like to change the voice to the British person, it just sounds cool.

After reading some of the other reviews I was a little worried about purchasing this device expecting the navigation to be lacking. I've used a TOMTOM before and this works just as well as a TOMTOM it goes to the same places it even gets lost in the same places. Yes it does it lost, but all GPS's get lost, roads change. If you have ever driven before you should be able to figure it out by just reading the road signs, so don't worry about it getting you lost it rarely happens if at all. The maps on the device are still really good, just as good as TOMTOM. I am surprised by how many POI it has. I was really impressed by that, I would buy for that ability alone. I only wish you could save the spot you were currently at, otherwise the navigation is great.

I use the music feature every time I go on a long trip, I plug the device into my car system and listen that way, it sounds really good. One downside is the playlists don't work. You can create playlists but they are never in the order that you created they sort alphabetically in the device. Whenever I get some where before I have to, or if I have to wait for someone, or even just sitting around at home I use the movie feature. I like to always have at least two movies saved on my memory card to watch whenever I need to. It did take me awhile to find the right AVI format that looked the best and worked.

PROS: Watch movies, navigate while listening to music, text-to-speech, store media on large SDHC card, tons of POI, and it is easy to use.

CONS: No power saver, no new updates until 2009(says company), the manual isn't very useful, onboard speaker isn't great.

Overall: The navigation will get you from point A to point B while looking good. It sounds great using headphones or other speakers. The movies look great, and I can watch entire movie on one battery charge.

The GPS has worked in most occasions. The address entry is intuitive and easy to setup. I have seen the GPS not identify some fairly new locations , however. This has only happened once so I am giving the benefit of doubt to the product. With Garmin, you have the ability to update the GPS software. I will be investigating to see if the GPS maps can be updated with this unit as well. The other Media player capability though is nice. However, I rarely use that feature in the car. The unit comes with a protection for the GPS unit when not in use. That is very helpful if you take the unit of the car and store it in the car.

Works great. Recovers and resets if you take a different route. It has my house 400 feet down the street. It seems to always want to take me on longer routes than it should.

I bought the GPS on impulse as someone who has gotten lost in unsavory places. One day I had to get to a meeting , had no time to map quest. I ran out the door, entered the address and followed the voice the whole way, and it got me there easily. My only complaint is that is doesn't activate until we are in the street. But it estimates time involved in the travels and adjusts the time as it calculates the real time speed. Having a 17 year old driving it gives us both a level of comfort that he can get places easily. Great!

Bought this for my husband for Christmas. We've used it quite a bit and we're really pleased with its functionality. Frankly we've only really used the GPS function but I've played a bit with the others and I'm always meaning to investigate them fully but haven't yet. So far we have no issues with this unit and we enjoy having 'Fred' (that's what we call him) along for the ride. Of course one of our favorite games is to go a different way than Fred wants us to and listen to him get 'frustrated'....so we annotate his directions ..family fun in 2008 :)

It is a very bad GPS. First, it can not locate the best traffic route and alway let you go much far away. Second, it is very easy to die, such as no signal on the street at all or keep locking and can not open at all. Third, their service is very bad. No phone was be received when you call them. When you write emails, Mr. Le will reply you soon and agree replace another one for you. Their shipping is fast. But the replaced GPS is very old (nicks back) and can not work too (keeping locking). Never buy this brand GPS, Trash!

I bought two GPS from amazon one for myself and one for my friend. After opening package i followed the process suggested by Harmon Kardon to start the GPS for the first time. First GPS froze while initial setup only. Even after several resets it never completed initial setup. Second unit was also facing problems in initial setup but it completed initial setup after several resets. I used that GPS for a testing it lead to wrong destination. It asked me turn on dead end streets. I could never access its music and video functions. Then I tried to call HK for its firmware update but they asked me to return device to reseller.

Picked this up on a Gold Box deal for $200.

My wife was especially interested in the MP3 capabilities, but unless you happen to have a stereo with RCA input jacks, the only way you can listen to the songs you put on it would be using the little speaker on the GPS. (I guess if you have a mini-jack plug in, you might be able to convert the two RCA's to mini-jack and plug it in that way.) But if you have neither of these options, it might just be better to get a new stereo.

Okay, what about the GPS capability? I'd give it a 95% thumbs up. A few times it screwed up where it would "merge in the left lane, now prepare to turn right"??? Also, we took it on a trip to a concert in Manchester, TN. We stopped in Brentwood, TN for our hotel, and it took us to xxxx Lane instead of xxxx Street, and we had to stop and ask for directions.

On the positive side, it's great to have in a city where you have no idea where you're going, and don't have to stop a look at a map to figure out where you're going.

There's plenty of restaurants, stores, tourist site, etc. programmed into the unit too. Just type in an address, location, whatever, and you're ready to go. Plus, there's a battery so you can do all of this in your hotel room.

Something I would like to see on it is a better way to look at maps to plan a trip, and a way to say to it, "Hwy X is backed up, find a way around it"

For the price I paid, it's great, and the feeling of confidence it gives you driving around an unfamiliar city is well worth the money.