Sony NVU44 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator with Text-to-Speech (Silver)

by Sony

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 7.5 x 2.8 inches ; 1.6 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 7 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B001EYU6NW
• Item model number: NVU44/S
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #176,988 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)

Product Description

Amazon.com

Manufacturer's Review (September 2, 2008)
Easily portable and offering power on-the-go navigation features, the Sony NV-U44 Portable GPS Navigator makes folding maps a thing of the past. First and foremost a portable navigation system, the NV-U44 offers Sony's POSITION plus solution to difficult GPS reception conditions for navigation assistance even while under dense foliage or tall buildings. But it also features a photo viewer and Memory Stick Duo slot for uploading photo slideshows. Other features include pre-installed maps for North America, over 5 million points of interest (POIs) with quicker searching, an anti-glare 3.5-inch screen, Gesture commands to help you stay focused on the road, text-to-speech capabilities, and stylish silver coloring.

The NV-U44 portable navigation device features a brightly colorful 3.5-inch screen with gesture controls and text-to-speech capabilities to keep your focus on the road.

GPS signals can easily be distorted by tall buildings, very dense foliage, or blocked altogether when underground, and when this happens a GPS device can easily give a false location. Sony's POSITION plus feature is a unique, hardware-based solution that consists of an acceleration sensor, a pressure sensor and a gyro sensor that together can calculate the vehicle's current position based on the last known GPS location. The result is a more consistent and accurate position that helps provide interruption-free guidance under the most difficult of GPS reception conditions.

Enjoy powerful, portable navigation out of the box pre-loaded map content covering North America--Canada and all of the United States (including Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico)--as well as over 5 million POIs. During address searches, the device can automatically complete partial entries of states, cities and street names. The new Sony nav-u device also offers a revised search algorithm for quicker POI searches and the Quick Link search features that provides a one-touch search for your favorite POI. For example, you can save a favorite coffee shop destination to a Quick Link button and perform that search any number of times without having to retype the search string. Brand icons help users quickly and easily identify their favorite restaurants, hotels, gas stations, stores and other locations while traveling through unfamiliar cities. And this Sony nav-u unit now have 30 percent more brand icons than previous models (more than 150 brands).

With the new Gesture Command feature, you can jump to commands with one touch on the display. For example, you can advance to the next picture in the photo viewer with a swipe of the finger from left to right across the screen. Commonly used commands such as "take me home" may be accessed by gesturing an inverted "V" on the screen versus paging through numerous menu screens. Other gesture commands include zoom in or out and call home.

Stable and secure while driving, the NV-U44 can be easily removed whenever you want to take it with you (black model shown).

Using the included Super Suction Cup, mounting the NV-U44 to either the dashboard, console, or windshield in virtually any vehicle is quick and easy. Stable and secure while driving, it can be easily removed whenever you want to take it with you.

Other features include:

• 3.5-inch anti-glare LCD touchscreen with 4:3 standard aspect ratio
• SiRF star III GPS receiver with POSITION plus
• TTS (Text to Speech): The device utilizes spoken commands ensuring you are able to follow the directions by street names.
• 3D Junction Guide: The device's dual view capability displays dynamic route information, in addition to the conventional map view, to provide an even clearer view of what's at the next turn or in a highway merge scenario, which junction to take.
• The new photo viewer feature turns the screen into a picture frame. You can view your digital images by inserting a Memory Stick into the Memory Stick Pro Duo slot.
• Battery life: Up to 2 hours
• Battery charging time: 3 hours when on, 1.5 hours in standby mode
• Dimensions: 3.7 x 2.1 x 4.3 inches
• Weight: 5.5 ounces

What's in the Box
Sony NV-U44 (silver), car cradle, car battery adapter (XA-DC6), USB cable, quick start guide

Product Description

The Sony nav-u portable satellite navigation system is more than basic digital maps; it is the system that gets you where you need to go quickly and efficiently with intuitive features that help you along your journey. The latest Sony navigation system brings Photo Viewer to an already packed and helpful unit.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

58 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A very able GPS, December 19, 2008

By 

Janine Koller (Calgary, AB Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sony NVU44 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator with Text-to-Speech (Gun Metallic) (Electronics)

I bought the Sony NV-U44 a few days ago on an impulse buy, as it was on sale at a local electronics store for $138, regular $250. I had thought about buying a GPS before, but I decided I needed one now because my son just began driving and he is not very good at navigating his way around! So after buying it I looked around and heard about the mediocrity of sony's other GPS units and I was a little worried about my purchase. I am happy to say however that this unit does not suffer from any of the issues that the bigger Sony GPSs face. It's touchscreen is snappy with almost instant loading of screens, the POIs are numerous and I haven't gone somewhere yet that wasn't in the GPS. It finds the satellites almost exactly after you turn it on, and route calculations are very swift. If it has to recalculate the route it is almost instantaneous and it is amazing! Also, the searching of addresses is very quick and when I went into the store to play with the other GPS units after I purchased this one I found none of the other GPSs I played with to be as responsive and quick as this one. I find that to get the best navigation you need to set the route mode to "shortest route" away from general and it is more consistent that way. I couldn't find any reviews of this GPS on the internet so I hope I helped, as if you are buying this unit you do not want to buy in the Dark! My only gripe is that the physical buttons are sometimes hard to press, but it is not like you will be pressing them very much, so it's something I don't mind really.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent GPS unit for price, January 5, 2009

By 

Jawad Khan "jwdkhan" (Dallas, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sony NVU44 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator with Text-to-Speech (Gun Metallic) (Electronics)

I have had this GPS unit for just over 2 weeks now and must say I like it quite a bit. This was my first GPS unit but it pretty much has everything that I need at the moment. I had been looking at GPS units the last few months, seeing prices drop and finally jumped at this one, seeing it was a Sony and had the text to voice feature. I'll list some of the pros/cons below based mostly on the features I found useful in this unit for it's price.

Pros:

1. Text to voice. Voice prompts volume can be changed easily and also muted completely if desired with just a few touches.

2. You can zoom in/out of map view with a few touches. Set a trip route and get an advance idea of how much the distance is, view of destination and also estimated trip time (which changes as you travel based on speed, stoppage etc.).

3. 3D view is helpful when you come to a busy intersection with multiple lanes. It will split the screen with the regular map view on the right side of the screen and a slightly larger frontal view of all available lanes and the ones you should be taking (highlighted), in the left side of the split screen.

4. Similar split screen with bars in the center to the next turn at busy junctions. The bar indicators reduce as you get closer to the turn, in addition to voice prompts saying how many miles/feet left to your turn.

5. If you miss a recommended exit, it recalculates fairly quickly where you need to turn next to get to your destination.

6. Lots of pre-loaded Points of Interest. I have enabled 'Banks/ATMs', 'Costco' & 'Shell' gas stations under my general settings and they regularly scroll by as small icons on my map as I pass them by. You can also type in 'Walmart' and it will list the closest Walmarts to you.

7. Fairly good design. Very simple and sleek, no flashy strips or jagged edges. The glass mount is also very nicely designed and sticks well to front glass.

Cons:

1. The touch screen could have been a bit more responsive. It is not very easy to touch the screen and scroll to others points on the map. Not that it is completely un-responsive, but would have been better if it flowed with more ease. Helpful if you want to trace the map to get an idea of route.

2. I have added 'Walmart' as a Point of Interest under my grocery store indicator general settings. However for some reason, none of the WM stores I drive by show up on my map. The Shell gas stations and banks show as small icons as they should but I have to search for Walmarts.

You will have to play around with the unit a bit to get to understand where to make changes to your settings. For example, you can change general settings so that your route is calculated for the shortest possible path by default, or that you avoid toll ways completely every time. Or you can leave it to look for standard routes by default, but make specific changes on the fly during a trip to look for the shortest route (options button) or avoid toll ways on this specific route. Reach a destination and save it for future navigation under different folders (can be renamed/added/deleted).

I bought this for our upcoming trip to Florida where it will be tested for what it's worth but at the moment, it is doing quite well at home. I am sure a lot of other GPS units will also have the above pros/cons but based on what I have read about other units, and what some friends have, I think this is a very good GPS unit, especially at this price (bought it from local Sonystyle store for $79.99). More updates after Florida trip if I find anything that needs to be added.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great screen and Text to Speach but Routing gives longer paths, January 5, 2009

By 

A. Rinawi (Houston, TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sony NVU44 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator with Text-to-Speech (Gun Metallic) (Electronics)

Pros: Great screen, many POI, text to speech, touch screen. dual display at intersections. Easily picks satellite and starts quickly. Easy to carry in a pocket.

Cons: Routing does not give shortest distance even when setting routing option to shortest.

It is a very useful unit as it has many points of interest and gives you a list of these with their phone numbers. The search feature is easy and fast. Internally it has 2 GB memory full of data.

The main problem is that the route selected is often longer than what you would normally use. Another reviewer on CNET has the same observation. for example to go from Katy TX to College Station, TX it routes you thru Sam Houston Beltway 8 toll road. When selecting to avoid toll roads it routes you even further west through 610 loop. both are much longer paths than SH-6 or Barker Cypress Rd. There is no option that will make it select the shortest path even when you know it. Sony needs to add a feature that allows adding a street to current route to force it to go that way. They also need to give shorter and quicker routes.

Same happens when coming from Rosenberg, TX to Katy, it routes you thru Beltway 8 toll road instead of SH-99 (Grand Parkway).

I am using the updated firmware (1.1) released on 12/15/2008. I did not try the original firmware. The new firmware is supposed to fix this same issue.

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