Customer Reviews

Sanyo Easy Street NVM-4370 4.3-Inch Portable GPS Navigator

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

Buyer Beware: Know what you are getting into:

I wish it was possible to give a producet a 0 rating

Cons:

FM transmitter is terrible

Speaker is terrible

There is absolutely no support on the web for this product. You cannot download drivers, software, or manuals .

You have to exit navigation mode to do anything else, like listen to music, view pictures, or change any settings such as adjusting the brightness.

The maps are on the CD ROM, my CD ROM was defective, and kept receiving data read errors on every PC in my house when I tried to read from the CD ROM.

MUSIC: There is not playlist or auto add. You can only play the files in one folder, if you have multiple folders you cannot go to the top level folder and play all of the files in the sub folders...so using it as a music player is not really a viable option, unless you have all of your music in one single folder and almost no desktop music player (i.e. windows media player, itunes) arranges music files into a single folder

Video Player: is ok if you can figure which mp4 video files it will play, because it won't play most of them...don't bother looking in the instructions for details because you won't find them. Just like the music player you will have to have all of your videos in a single folder if you want to be able to have anything similar to a playlist. This doesn't represent as big a problem as the audio player as long as you are watching TV shows or movies because they are longer so you are trying to find a new track every 3 or 4 minutes.

Navigation Screen: The maps are little plain, pretty plain, there isn't a lot of difference between the 2D maps and the 3D maps. You won't find anything for trips like you find on the manufacture's devices like GARMIN, so there is no Odometer, Tripometer, or Speedometer. That is a pretty depressing point for me

Bluetooth connected pretty easy on my AT&T Tilt phone, but was unable to use the contacts function via bluetooth; also the SMS messages function does not work either.

Pros:

It has video

It has audio

Navigation works pretty well. It is pretty easy to use, but you need to spend some time getting to know the setup.

Voice is clear and pronounces most street names pretty well, although the speaker is so poor it is hard to hear a highway speeds.

Overall:

I would not recommend this product, it's a shame because it has a lot of features but none of them work well enough to be a selling point. Really disappointing is the fact the speaker is so poor and that the FM transmitter is pretty much worthless because that is something that should have been pretty obvious during product testing.

If Sanyo comes out with a firmware/software update, I might change my recommendation; until then I would navigate away from this GPS.

Reviewer Background:

*34 year old male

*Masters Degree

*10 + years in computer electronics industry

*Previous GPS owner

UPDATE:

After 3 days the unit suddenly stopped working. It will power on with a "SANYO" logo and that is it, did all of the resets that the manual called for. Nothing.

Tried calling customer support----unable to get through. Sanyo has a very simple phone tree that gives you two options. 1 for if you purchased walmart cameras and 2. for all other Sanyo products, when you press 2, it starts the phone tree all over again.

Update 2: Finally got in touch with the Sanyo Helpless Desk, told the them all of the troubleshooting I did and the pretty much told me to take it back where i got it.

STAY AWAY FROM THIS PRODUCT !!!!

The features this products boasts look good on the surface, however when you get it out of the box and start using it, you find some strange limitations.

Pros:

* Maps seemed to be up to date and the routes were efficient for the time I had the unit.

* Menu was pretty easy to use and was intuitive.

* System seemed to be stable (No crashes)

Cons:

* You are forced to leave navigation mode to use a Bluetooth phone, (Returning to navigation takes a few seconds)

* Bluetooth communication was bad, you could hear others but they could not hear you, (Could have been a defect)

* FM transmission was pretty much useless, signal was weak so you had to turn the volume up a lot, you could hear the background static, and if you changed channels it would blast you if you forgot to turn the radio down first.

* It was pretty clear that updates to the maps and software were not available and I could not get support to answer me if they would become available when the current maps become obsolete.

* Customer service was unresponsive.

* Screen brightness wasn't connected to the day and night settings. Going to night mode the screen was still very bright, again you must leave the navigation mode to change the brightness settings. Same problem returning to day mode.

* POI's seemed to be somewhat dated, there were a couple of Whole Foods stores that were in northern California for at least a year, yet they were not included

* Searching for POI's near your location or along your route did not allow you to search for a POI name, you must look though the entire list. The only POI search available is when you look up POI's in a city. Was very annoying when you are unfamiliar with an area.

* Zooming out the maps lost detail very early. Looking at a route between LA and San Francisco did not show any roads or city names, was just a pink squiggly line on a overlay of California.

The unit we got had a defective car charger which was lucky so we didn't have to pay the restocking fee while returning it. We opted for a TomTom Go 730, since we had such good luck with the TomTom One 3rd edition.

I know it sounds weird, SANYO forgot to tell the users that they CAN use other functions during navigation.

To get the main menu during the navigation, press the top right button once, you'll get the main menu and you can listen to music files during navigation. If you want the main menu through the touch screen you'll be forced to leave the navigation mode.

I used four functions at a time in one of my long trips:

Real Example:

1. I keyed in my destination and the GPS started the trip guidance.

2. I pressed the top right button once (not the touch screen) to get the main menu.

3. I turned on my FM transmitter to hear all the voice guidance and all the audio output through my car radio.

4. I paired my cell phone through the Bluetooth.

5. I inserted my SD card to listen to my MP3 audio through my car radio.

And it worked like this:

"Feel the city breakin and every body's shakin"

/////DING....IN ONE MILE TAKE EXIT 43 ////

and we're stayin alive, stayin alive".

The GPS voice guidance will stop the music, announce the coming maneuver and start the music again.

And during that, I received a phone call, the phone call took over and stopped the music,and I listened to the caller through my car stereo, I had to disconnect the Bluetooth because the GPS voice guidance was interrupting me.

Two things you can't use during the navigation mode

1. Picture slides show.

2. Watching JPEG4 movies.

and that make sense for safety reasons.

Another good thing... the GPS accepts ZIP codes, no need to enter the city name.

I couldn't use the rear view camera feature.... Well the camera is very pricey!!

I own the predecessor model of this device. It is the Sanyo 4070. It was feature rich - the same features as the 4370. It became quickly apparent that the maps needed an update, and that the POI's were inadequate. (the 4370 advertises more memory and more POIs). There is no way to update either for this model. Look at how you would update maps, O/S and POI's for any GPS before buying. Also, wouldn't it be nice if it integrated with your PC address book to maintain your bookmarks?

* Can't navigate to anyone in contacts list.

* Route home went through country club parking lot and also added a needless sidestreet forray to get to my street.

* "Hands free" Bluetooth does not connect to verbal command center of phone. Phone number has to be typed in by hand or selected from contacts.

* Could not download contacts from my LG enV which has a slew of Bluetooth features (more than any other phone at Verizon)

* FM option is worthless in crowded LA spectrum (not their fault though)

* High capacity SD only goes to 8 GB (according to manual)

* Level of detail couldn't be controlled (how many street names you see)

* Manual not available on their web site or I could have avoided this purchase which cost me a 15% restocking fee.

Have been a loyal Garmin user for over 5 years, You can tell I was a little skeptical on Sanyo. The main reason I bought it was, it's on sale for only $100 and it has video input port which I need for my rear-view camera.

Well, Turns out it was a happy surprise.

Nowdays most GPS have similar functions, they all do their job ok, it is the interface really make a few GPS stand out, and the Sanyo is one of them.

Here are some nice things I found really useful on Sanyo:

* You can easily switch from 3D to 2D North up to 2D Driving up (Not available on Garmin), This is the single best feature of the unit.

* Easily touch screen to make it repeat the next turn(Garmin has the function but it took me a while to find which button to press)

* It has a main power switch and a hibernate button, wake up from hibernation is almost instant, very fast.(OK, garmin has it too, though not two power switch)

* The screen is bright enough even under bright daylight(same brightness as garmin)

* Support SDHC up to 8GB(not all Garmin support this)

* Rear-view Camera input(Only Garmin 5000 support this)

* Very intuitive, clear interface, most useful data are right on screen where you would expect them to be, much better than Garmin

* Above all, only half the price of a garmin 255w

But I have to admit, this Sanyo does have a few things need fine-tuning:

Two major issues:

* The map detail washes out way too fast when you zoom out.

* Point of Interest database design is awkward. You can't do a global search, say, find me the nearest "postoffice". Instead, you have to navigate through different level of categories, in one case, there are over 130+ categories to go through.

Other minor things that's annoying but not too bad:

* The screen does not automatically adjust the brightness

* Battery could be stronger(but not anything worth than a garmin).

* FM Transmit is full of static, almost useless, the built-in speaker is no good either, this partically offset the benefit of supporting SDHC card.

* The on-screen keyboard is sorted base on Alphabet rather than following the layout of a normal keyboard. Which is not too inconvinent but very very weird.

Let me start by saying that if this device worked as intended, it would score a 4 stars. It is feature rich albeit extremely proprietary but for the price (under $100) I can see past that problem and adjust.

The problem with the unit is that it is broken out of box. So far, my family and friends have purchased a total of 4 of these units and so far all have been broken down with the "cannot load bitmap" error. Some took longer than others to break for instance, my friend had this error only the 2nd day of operation while mine took about 60 days before seeing the same error. My parents broke in about 2 weeks and my sisters in about 1 month.

Thats not the worst part...

We all had our devices replaced by Sanyo. Unlike other reports they were actually very friendly with us and all I needed was to register the system with them and send them a copy of a receipt to get a replacement. But the bad news is that all 4 replacements have broken down as well. I was the last to replace my own and on the 2nd day of operation i started getting an application error: contact.exe and after that I got the "cannot load bitmap" error. Everyone but my sister and myselt have return their gps's because they were within the 30 day return period but unfortunately I cannot return it nor can my sister.

This thing would be fantastic if they just fixed their memory error problems.

Also, none of our systems could read a 8gb memory card. The instructions clearly state that it should be able to read them but none of the units could access them at all.

Lastly, you cannot access the memory card slot through usb. In other words you need to prepare your memory cards using other devices before inserting them into the gps because you have no way to transfer music or videos to the card using this unit alone.

This is not a bad GPS as reviews suggest. It has MP3, video, blue tooth, etc. But only one thing can be used at a time. If you use only as a GPS it is a better GPS than Magellan and many others. If you use other features they are good too. To switch an application you will have to close it. Because of only this inconvenience people have rated worse than every thing in the earth. I.e. other GPS are rated better which don't have extra features and are worse than this GPS.

After our beloved garmin was stolen we picked up the Sanyo. It had an impressive list of features for a great price at the time (Nov 2008). While it does have many features listed we bought it as a GPS and that is all we cared about.

Unfortunately, even compared to our 3 year old Garmin this thing was a disaster. Problems encountered:

1. Took a long time to acquire satellites.

1. Couldn't find streets even in older parts of the city.

2. Unintuitive entry for addresses. Would not find the address you were looking for unless you used the exact format it had stored. For instance 115 South Street would not show up unless you put in 115 S. Street. Seriously? Even then sometimes trying all different permutations would not pull up the address.

3. Cross streets would not show up on the map as you drove. The Garmin had a great layout where you always knew what street was coming up. This thing sometimes had the name of the street off the viewable screen. Not helpful.

4. Inefficient routing. Even with all roads enabled it would tell us to take a long route totally out of our way instead of the HIGHWAY that went striaght to our destination.

5. Broke. Yep, after 10 months the car charger broke. Two months later the unit itself would shut off as soon as it gave you the first direction. Has not worked since, just outside of warranty, how nice.

We basically hated this thing from the moment we got it, but we thought it was just growing pains and we would get accustomed to it. Nope, we hated it until it died. We eventually started gettting Google map directions before getting in the car to make sure the stupid thing wasn't sending us 50 miles out of our way.

If you buy this thing you are stupid, like us.

I'm very happy with this GPS. For the price around $100, I think it really worth the price.

As the other reviewer said, there is no need to left navigation mode to play music. If you don't know how to do, please read the mannual. I used music player, blue tooth and FM, I'm very satisfied. I didn't have much expectation with FM, but it also performs better than I expected.

Here are somethings I don't really like:

1. It seems don't know the address in Flushing, NY. The street address there are like 43-07 Main Street, I tried this address but it said no information available. However, for the same area, it can find with cross street information. I believe it's about the strange address format like 43-07, I'm not sure if it's b/c it can't handle it or there are some tricks to enter an address like this.

2. I really don't see much difference from the so called 2D view and 3D view.

3. I'm unable to use the video play function yet since I tried many files, none of them worked. It seems only play a small portion of mp4 files, that's too limited!

4. It seems no way to update map. The map is version 1.00, which means the initial draft.

5. No speedmeter.

6. It supports only English, French and Spanish. I hope it supports more languages.

7. The USB connection is very slow. Good that it use SD card, so there is no need to copy files to it. However, if there is update in future, it will take forever to copy about 3GB data.

I hope Sanyo can have map and software update sooner. If they can do good on this, I believe Garmin, TomTom will go bankrupt tomorrow!