Navman iCN 520 Vehicle GPS Navigation System

by Navman

Product Details

• Item Weight: 5.9 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B000B8AJ34
• Item model number: ICN520
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #132,874 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: August 31, 2005

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Get in your car with the Navman iCN 520 and enjoy fast, accurate, and simple GPS navigation features. With its contemporary style, pocket-friendly design, and precision-built quality, the iCN 520 offers an outstanding wireless navigation system with leading-edge features to make your driving experience easier, safer, and more enjoyable. This successor to the award-winning iCN 510 is ready right out of the box to take you where you need to go.

A 3-D view helps you find your way quickly.

Take it along when you're on foot.

Find destinations using a variety of search modes.

The iCN 520's easy-to-use interface makes navigation second nature.

The best feature of the iCN 520 is its user-friendly interface. Simply type in your destination on the touchscreen and let the iCN 520 plan the best route for you to take. All information is displayed on a 3.5-inch landscape LCD with 320 x 240 resolution and support for up to 65,000 colors. During the journey, you'll also receive clear voice instructions to guide you, letting you focus on your driving. The iCN 520's 12-channel GPS receiver is driven by Navman's SmartST 2005 software, which contains highly detailed maps for your region. The maps offer you all possible information including nearby cross streets, emergency service locations, or your preferred points of interest (POIs). SmartST 2005 is packed with other outstanding features, including 3-D map view, zip-code search, back-on-track rerouting (for when you take a wrong turn), area avoidance (so you can dodge the traffic hotspots), and an extensive POI database. The Active POI function allows you to set an alarm to tell you when a particular POI is approaching, and it also allows you to navigate to your closest POI, such as a gas station. SmartST 2005 also provides ongoing journey information, including ETA, distance to go, time to go, and remaining miles/km per hour.

The Navman iCN 520 comes complete with North American maps, including Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico and Guam, on CD-ROM, so you can easily download your preferred region to a portable SecureDigital (SD) Card (a 256 MB SD card is included). As a convenience, the SmartST 2005 navigation software provides navigation and voice guidance in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Danish, and Swedish. Thanks to an internal rechargeable battery and an easy-to-use windshield mounting unit, you can move the iCN 520 from car to car with ease. You can even use it outside the car as a handheld device to help guide you to your final destination on foot with street-level maps.

What's in the Box
iCN 520 GPS receiver, SmartST 2005 3-D navigation software with preloaded TeleAtlas Mapping Data, vehicle windshield mounting bracket, 12V vehicle power cable, AC adapter, USB cable, carry case, quickstart guide, and CD-ROMs (user manual, Adobe Acrobat Reader, SmartST 2005 navigation software).

Product Description

Features: 3.5" automotive TFT colour display. Fully automatic operation when driving. "Avoid Area" feature for traffic avoidance. Integrated SirFXTrac enabled GPS receiver. 3D map view - so you can see the road ahead. Landscape LCD 320 x 240 resolution with up to 65,000 colors. 12 channel parallel, automatic selection - excellent satellite pick up at every angle. Estimated time of arrival, distance to go, time to go, and miles per hour calculated. Built in secure digital or multimedia expansion slots for map data storage. Ideal for in-car operation with intuitive touch-screen. Route planning with "Back-On-Track" re-routing. 32MB internal memory for application storage. Extensive POI database with import option. Voice and visual navigation commands. Voice and visual route instructions. Maps for the US preinstalled. Concise simple directions. Easy-to-use Interface.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Functionally fit, and informative., March 16, 2006

By 

Jayson Klein (Winter Garden, Florida United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Navman iCN 520 Vehicle GPS Navigation System (Office Product)

This GPS system works well, especially for those of us who have no proir knowledge to get to specific places.

If you have to punch in the address, there's a menu that you type up the city, the street, and the number, and it'll make a list of closest matches to where you need to go. You can also save destinations as favorites, or you can save your home address as "Home".

And directions are done quite well, i must say. When you have to get bare left/right to get into/off of a parkway/freeway, it tells you to do that, giving you enough time to do so. It'll tell you approximately when you need to turn and what to do immediatly afterwards (ex: "In 0.2 miles, turn right", or "turn right, then go straight"), and if you were to, say, miss your destination spot, or go in a different direction, it'll recoordinate new directions in a relatively speedy fashion.

Now, it also comes with a brightly-lit, and easy to access touch screen and a stylus that allow you to select items fast.

With all it's functionality, and blunt directions, there are a few small things about it that annoy me.

Firstly, if you have a lot of map data on your GPS, it will slow down its reaction time and how long it takes to load up directions, especially if you had set the map to show in 3D (I have mine always set in 2D, becuase you don't need to see a map in 3D to know where you're going, and it loads up faster in 2D, anyways)

Another thing is that the memory card given with th GPS (if yours comes with one) is relatively small in the data storage dept. (mine was 125 MB, if I remember), so you may need to buy a bigger one, especially if you want to travel some of the states (I bought a 1 GB Memory card for the Eastern Coast of the USA, and some of the Central part of it).

Also, the tiny, nonflexible D-pad on the lower right corner is a bit awkward, and a tad useless. selecting with it is easy, but you need to press the stiff center of the button, which may have you accidently move right and click, or move down and click. In short: Use the Stylus, religiously, for this GPS.

Apart from its minute quirks, the Navman iCN 520 GPS is a functional, and dependable piece of gadgetry that I will hold on to for quite some time.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars an excellent in-car gps unit compared to its competitors, July 24, 2006

By 

Y. Wang "St.Wang" (winston-salem, NC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Navman iCN 520 Vehicle GPS Navigation System (Office Product)

I think this gps unit is excellent overall, especially consider the low price tag (I bought it for [...], free s/h & no tax). I wanted a gps unit after playing with my friend's Magellan Roadmate 300, and I think this unit is overally slightly better.

After reading numerous reviews, I was initially really worried about the time it takes to secure a satellite signal: many users has reported taking up to ten minutes. The inital satellite lock took me less than 2 minutes (I live in a small town in NC). after you turn the unit off (such as at the gas station), it will find the gps signal in less than 30 secs usually and will resume your previous route. There's another switch to completely shut off power supply (like when you're not planning to use it for a long time), after turning the unit back on, it takes about 2 minutes to get a satellite signal again...but overall it finds the signal faster than Magellan 300. One thing you can do to reduce start up time is to only activate the state's map you're in. For example, I loaded all the SE U.S. states but only have NC activated, I think this makes finding a gps signal slightly faster.

The GPS is very accurate, it's never more than 5 feet off unless in really bad weather conditions. I really like the fact that it's portable (not much bigger than a PDA), it comes with a leather carrying pouch and has about a 4 hrs of battery life. It comes with in-car mounting unit and cigarette lighter power supply that works very well. The maps are excellent, you can choose many different styles of maps (2D, 3D etc) and the map will automatically zoom-in to show more detail before each turn. The menus are fairly easy to use, but not idiot proof, most people should not have much trouble with it. Looking up addresses and "points of interests" were very easy. However it might be somewhat difficult using the touch-screen if you have fat fingers, but it does comes with stylus to circumvent this potential problem. the LCD is 3.5 inches, bigger than most in it's price category, and I definitely don't recommend anything smaller (like some of the tom-tom). The software you need to install on the PC is easy to use, and hooking pc to the gps via supplied usb cable was a breeze. You can plan multiple stops on this gps, and this function was easy to use. If you make a wrong turn, it very quickly recalculates the route for you.

There are some things i don't like about this. First and foremost, the screen has a glare in sunny weather, which can be quite annoying sometimes. also the volume is low even when turned up to max (can't hear well when window is open). The map transferring process from pc to gps unit is extremely slow, it seemed like it took about an hour to load up southeast U.S. (about 240mb). my unit only came with U.S. English (both male and female), I wanted to change it to an english accent but i gave up because this would've been very difficult to do.

I'm overall very satisfied, I would've given it 5 stars had it not for the glare in sunny conditions. This unit is pretty complete with all the major functions average consumers seek for an in-car GPS. I would definitely recommend you to buy this unit!!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great value as the icn530 takes it's place, July 16, 2006

By 

Paul Van (Rochester, MI) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Navman iCN 520 Vehicle GPS Navigation System (Office Product)

I just bought this product, so the review is premature, but this is a great GPS unit, and it's a steal at half the MSRP. I doubt the minor updates of the icn530 are worth the additional $150. It has the biggest touch screen and best set of features available in this price range. It's better than the Magellan 360 because it is more compact/less ugly.

The fact that you have to load your detailed maps on the SD card is only a minor inconvenience. A 1GB card should hold all of USA.

I get a quick satelite fix everytime I turn it on, and route recalculation is quick enough so far. The interface is intuitive and responsive. The blue backlit buttons are sexy too.

Buy it before it's only available as a 90-day warranty refurb (roxorz!) on ebay or obscure online stores.