Customer Reviews

JVC eAvinu KVPX9B 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

PROS:
1. Solid build quality
2. Play video & MP3 (though I haven't used these features since I bought it mainly for the GPS functionality)
3. Good price (when it's on sale and when they fix all the bugs below)
4. Uses NAVTEQ map data

CONS:
1. Too thick and too heavy due to the 20gb hard drive inside
2. Too slow, everytime you try to move the map it reads the hard drive and then updates the screen, this process takes like 1-2 seconds and in computer terms it's a life time
3. You can hear the hard drive spin up & down, kinda ennoying
4. The POI feature sucks big time, you would need to enter a state and then a city first, what if you only know the name of the restaurant and don't know exactly what city it's in ???
5. There's no AC adapter, you would need to go to RadioShack and get one if you want to charge it at home and not in the car
6. It takes forever to LOCK on sat signal and this is even outdoors in the car driving, even when it locks on signal it would from time to time lose the signal, what good is a GPS navigator if there's no signal ???
7. It can get warm due to the hard drive
8. Update firmware requires a SD card not less than 128MB and not bigger than 512MB, nowadays people use 2GB cards so this is a big hassle
9. It doesn't display all the street names, only the one you're driving on and if you're lucky maybe a few other ones around your current position


In short, this is such a waste of money but luckily I didn't buy it online and the store I bought it from has a 30-day money back return policy, I also bought the Mio C310x at the same time I bought this JVC and the Mio is such a wonderful GPS, it beats this piece-of-junk JVC in each and every category (the mio doesn't play video unless you get the C710) and I paid 70 bucks less than what I paid for the JVC

I bought this unit just because it plays videos and it is inexpensive. I am not happy with the product. I used Garmin2610 before and this unit is inferior compare to Garmin. The major problem with unit is: "it doesn't catch the signal properly". I went to New York city and moving around all over the streets and it never get the Satellite signal. It only detected the signal on West Side Highway. Garmin didn't have this problem, it loses the signal in New York often but Not like JVC which never receive satellite signal. I went to Florida and I was not happy with it's perfomance.

I too purchased this unit from CompUSA when it was recently reduced to $199. At that price point, this is a great GPS unit.

When I received the eAvinu, the first thing I did was run a routing and performance test between this unit and my Pocket PC's CoPilot Live Bluetooth setup.

The satellite acquision time was about the same for each. The CoPilot Bluetooth receiver (a branded EMTAC with the 12 channel SiRF III chip) was actually slower in a couple of heavy overcast situations. They both locked onto a similar number of sats, but not always. In fact, as I write this the CoPilot is locked on 6 sats, the eAvinu 7! Not bad from the "inferior" 8 channel JVC.

In my in-car tests, both showed random routing quirkyness. The CoPilot refuses to correctly identify the position of my house on the street, has trouble with elevated freeways, sometimes showing you on the surface street beside it. The eAvinu sometimes tells you to make a strange turn when it attempts to reroute. Both got me where I was going with little fuss.

The eAvinu's touch screen is very bright. The buttons are big, no stylus needed. It offers a number of map views, 2D and 3D "through the windshield." The voice choices are limited, and there is a very limited text-to-speech. Most folks say the eAvinu doesn't do TTS, but my unit advises me to take "US-50" or "I-80," just no TTS street names. It doesn't display speed or altitude, but it does display an "ETA." The POI file on this thing is wonderful, really large.

I love the mp3 player. It attenuates the music to give driving instructions. The movie player is a little particular about its file types. I can only get .wmv files play. You can only watch movies while stopped, natch.

In the package you get the unit itself, a very beefy windshield mount with a dash disk for us unforetunates in CA, a car charger and a carrying case. No AC adapter included in mine. But, my CoPilot unit came with a "Y" cable with a 4mm positive charging tip on one end and a mini-USB on the other. So, I can charge the PDA and the eAvinu from the same cable. You can buy a wall plug adapter and a cigarette lighter plug for this setup for a very few bucks to make a complete car/home kit that fits in your pocket. The battery charges in about 2.5 hours on AC, same for the car. I've used it on battery for over fours hours with the mp3 player and GPS working and still had 40% battery left.

I'm keeping mine. I paid about the same for just the software and GPS antenna of my CoPilot setup. They work well together. As soon as some wiseguy hacks this thing, it'll be really cool.

I picked it up from CompUSA for $199.00 and it was up and running right out of the box. it actually gives you an overview/tutorial of the device as soon as you power it up and lets you select your timezone. It has different map view options and the display is clear. Touch screen is nice and the menus are easy to browse thru. lots of POI. I found starbucks in different towns and it displays phone # too. great storage space, 5 gigs allocated to music and video. SD card is detected easily and lets you increase the memory. its a little heavy and thick too, but so are some of the TOMTOM and GARMIN devices. overall and a great value for what I paid. I read on CNET that people had problems with this device and I did some more reading about it. JVC has a firmware update that fixes most of the problems. however, I havent had any problems so I havent updated my firmware.

Just like a few previous reviewers, I got this for 199 from CompUSA. It's actually CompUSA's fault that there was confusion about AC adapter, they ship KVPX9BN, not KVPX9B (which comes with AC adapter). Overall the product is pretty good, I drove from NYC to Philadelphia with this JVC along side with it, I had a Garmin 330 that my friend owns. The directions on both were almost identical except for a few side streets at the end. But both led you to the destination without errors. I'm not sure if it depends on the location, but I never lost the GPS signal on the JVC. The main difference that I saw between Garmin and JVC, was the fact that JVC doesn't tell you if you you miss your exit, and just recalculates the new directions, where Garmin actually tells you that you went the wrong way, but even here the result is the same, both recalculate the new directions rather quick. If you can get this unit for uder 300, it's a good buy. If you plan to spend more, then I would do some more research.

I bought this product becaue it was CHEAP. FOOLISH ME!! Right from the time I was a kid, I'd hear people say "if anything's too cheap, there's bound to be a catch". Exactly the case here and I was too lured by the low price to see reason. I was also assuming that since this is a JVC product after all, it is bound to be good due to the brand recognition. Boy, was I WRONG!

Basically, EVEN AFTER B0TH THE S0FTWARE UPDATES, it constantly keeps losing the signal, even in subarban areas with zero tall trees, no tall bldgs. Once lost, it takes too long (15-20 minutes) to recalculate. Voice guidance is inaccurate, inaccurate(Example: it says "turn right in 300 feet when actually you should be turning right in about 25-50 feet") but trust me when i say this product is pure junk.

What you really need is a GPS that latches on to 12 satellites with WAAS. This uses very old technology, hence the signal loss and cheap price. Since this uses the old technology, it is simply unable to pinpoint the location of the car resulting in it being off by 250 feet on average.

I returned the product for a full refund. Other GPS devices with similar features (that have good reviews) are going for $475+. This is priced at $220. That's enough proof this product's JUNK.

Well, I'm glad I sold this unit years ago right after I bought it (and purchased a different one). The value is just going to get less and less on this. I just wanted to warn other buyers planning to buy this now--DON'T! At the time, I bought this for $200 thinking that was a great deal... This GPS is honestly not even worth $100.

If this is your first GPS, the whole GPS feeling might seem cool at first, but once you actually use this and compare with other GPS units out there, this is complete garbage. It's absolutely useless.

- It takes a long time to lock on to the satellite. (only a few satellites built-in too, which means less reliability.)
- The unit is very fat because of the hard drive. Hard drive is prone to more failures. Makes additional clicking noises, like most hard drives, when accessing anything.
- POI, address searches takes forever. Worthless. Very very low processor.
- The unit cannot turn on right away. It takes awhile to boot-up every time.
- When navigating through the maps, it has to preload each area. It takes forever; it's like having a 28k dial-up connection or less and trying to drag through the maps in Google Maps. Very limited zooming/viewing options.
- Route calculations takes forever. If you go off course, recalculation is completely out of the question.
- Video playback is a gimmick. This is a GPS. It's not even worth it for the video capability because it is strict on the video resolution and file format (I believe it was something really low like 320x240 and XVID) AND because of the slow processor, it can't even keep up with most of the video -- even if you meet the minimum requirement/video bitrate, etc.

This is outdated technology. GPS is getting cheaper, since it's becoming more common, and you can get much better features/portability for your money. Even if this is selling really cheap on Ebay, I suggest you don't waste your money.

I got this GPS in June 2008. It is very slow catching the signal and very hard to follow the directions. For every exit automated voice mentions to be on the left. I generally don't try to write bad reviews unless the item is horrible. One positive aspect is JVC customer service has done repairs and sent me back while I complained. Even after the service it's slow but works better. Invest your money on Mio, Magellean or Garmin. I used these 3 brands and they are pretty good.

I also bought this item from compusa in $199. when i received the item, it was not charged. i took it immediately in my car to test the unit. it worked very well. now i tried to test its mp3 player but there was no ac adapter to charge the unit. i found 1 ac adapter which came with belkin wireless router. it was 5V 2 amp and it fits in gps. I already had usb cable. I hooked up the gps in my laptop. hooking to laptop took some time. My laptop did not recognise the unit easily. i tried different port and ultimatly my laptop was able to recognise.still i face the same problem sometime.I think that is the problem with gps unit. ultimately i was able to copy the mp3 song. it plays the songs very well. while using the gps unit, i never found that it lost the signal. it was always getting the signal.i drove from detroit to cincinnati and it took me to right place.its manual is so so. jvc should have print good manual with proper explaination and pictures.

pros:
1. cheap as compared to others.
2 20 gb space.
3. gps works as expected.
4. nice mp3 player. i did not check the movie and picture.

cons:
1. not good manual.
2. no usb driver
3. no ac adapter. if unit is not charged, you can not copy mp3 on it.

overall unit is ok. i will recomend if you can get it under 200.

I was very pleased to have one, especially at the price. Regretfully I had the following problems:

a) It hung up often, especially after being in operation for over two hours. When it hung, the only thing I could do is disconnect power and/or hit the reset button with a pin. Nothing else worked, i.e. the touch screen was dead.

b) It played wav files well, but mp3 did not play well. As the player transitioned from one song to another, the device created awful sounds similar to scratching a record!

I called customer service to exchange it, and the gal told me she has had many complaints and I would be better off getting my money back. She told me that those who contacted JVC did not get a timely or helpful customer service experience. Hence, as I wqas still within the "get your money back" period, I decided to get my money back.

This is too bad, I was very happy at the thought of owning a "music/movie/stil pix" playing GPS at the below $200 price.

PS. from a "gps" perspective, I guess it was not great, i.e.:

a) It did not tell me to take street names, just to make a right or left or bear right etc. Hence, in a crowded metropolitan setting, the directions were useless.

b) The route it decided to take was not always optimal.

c) The instructions are "absent", the "manual" (a folder over skimpy piece of paper) refers you to an on screen tutorial which is great for an overview but not more. This kind of device mandates a "thick" manual, with full instructions, especially for those who have never owned one.