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36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sanyo NVM 4070, October 6, 2007
Sanyo NVM-4070 "Easy Street" Portable Navigation System, Piano Black
We have had this item now for almost a month. It is feature rich, and the features really work. The special features of note are:
- blue tooth
- fm transmitter
- plays mp3, wav, wma files (but not wma with DRM security)
- real time traffic updates with automatic or manual re-routing
It is very fast, re-routes quickly without announcing, "off route." You can generate route alternates by clicking three buttons from the map view for an alternate route. Address selection is easy. Creating Via's is easy.
You can switch between functions relatively easily - there is a menu button. From there you can open other functions each with a soft menu button on the screen. Yes, you can control the music while you navigate, and it will lower the volume to give you directions. It will not give audio directions if you are in a phone call but the onscreen navigation will continue. Some features are mutually exclusive, but you can navigate and call, or navigate and listen to music easily. It does not include access to the book services, and my library offers free book downloads with DRM - the unit does not support DRM security.
Car FM transmitters are touchy, but the FM transmitter works fairly well. If you are not familiar, the idea is that the GPS transmits to you car radio so that you can hear the music, navigation, and phone through your car radio. In my Prius, it works best when mounted directly over the radio. It easily allows you to select the frequency to use, but it some frequencies work much better than others.
The Blue tooth imported my phone book - it does not do voice dialing, but has lists of recent numbers called. Once uploaded, the phone book (contacts) is easy to navigate. The blue tooth recognizes the phone, and automatically links - unless your phone is already actively linked with another device - you must then intercede to disconnect one and reconnect the other. The blue tooth set up was a bit touchy to start, but once set up it worked well. It can store configurations for several phones, and will identify on the screen which connection is active. (it can connect to only one phone at a time but if you have more than one phone, it will store the setup for each).
We just started using the Navteq realtime direction service. You can see the routes covered at http://www.navteq.com/rdstraffic/index.html
I have not yet determined the threshold for when it will reroute you - but it does put up a message that the route is being changed because of traffic conditions, and you can view the traffic alerts. It comes with a 90 day free trial and I have not yet determined the actual cost.
It is head and shoulders above the Garmin iQue 3600 we have used till now, but there are a few things the much older Garmin did better.
The Garmin POI's are more expansive, but the Sanyo shows rest areas. I miss the ability to view POI's along my route - a selection option in the Garmin. But the Sanyo with Blue tooth, does something really nice - while viewing the POI - you can touch a button to call the POI. (I suspect that the issues reported here are common to all newer GPS units).
The Garmin had a very nice interactive - real time - turn by turn display - the Sanyo shows the waypoints, but it is less clear.
I found that it is easier to use if I use a pencil eraser to navigate the screen.
It is easy to move the map display by touching the edge of the screen to change the center of the map. It is a bit touchy about zooming out and in.
The mounting kit attaches to the windshield easily and comes down easily. (Garmin used a bean bag to anchor on the dash - I had liked that a lot.)
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good Product with Room for Improvement, June 23, 2008
ORIGINALLY I RATED AS A 4 ON 6/08, BUT HAVE DOWNGRADED TO 3 (WHICH IS GENEROUS) ON 10/09
REASON: the unit crapped out on us when it was only 18 months old. Got an error when navigating that "bluetooth radio could not be found." Customer Service's response (after 2 tries and 45 min wait) was that the unit needed to be replaced, but since it was no longer under warranty that we needed to buy it. I know most Amazon users like Garmin but I might do Magellan due to being able to get a 2 year warranty as a AAA member.
BELOW IS ORIGINAL REVIEW FROM 6/08
I often rely on Amazon reviews before purchasing products, so here is our turn to contribute.
We have owned & used this product for 6 months.
We had read some good reviews of the product earlier & were motivated to purchase it for many of its features, including the traffic service. I liked that we did not have to purchase an extra antenna as it was already included. (the funny thing is that we haven't turned on the service yet....so can't comment on it)
My husband is an actor with lots of auditions all over the place, so thought it would be helpful to have a navigation system (& it has been!). Also his greatest nightmare is getting stuck in traffic & being late for a performance (hence the desire for a traffic service).
We had become accustomed to Hertz's Neverlost prior to buying this system & possibly would have stuck with that had I known the manufacturer (which is Magellan)
I'll list some of the pros and cons that we have experienced and then I will comment on some of the other reviews. (Please note that this system comes with many, many features, that we have never used.....the Bluetooth, MP3 player, downloading of books, etc.)
PROs:
+ Great price
+ Traffic antenna included & a 3 month trial period of the service
+ No antenna is needed except for when using the traffic service
+ Announces street names (which gives a good laugh at times!)
+ Can broadcast on a FM radio or use an earset
+ Usually gets us where we need to be (but then again sometimes "she" gets confused....which is aggravating when my husband is driving in Boston as it takes awhile to get back on track)
+ Shows gas stations & other services along a route on a map
+ you have a choice as a 2-dimensional screen or a 3-d screen
+ it shows your speed, so depending on your car style, you can rest the unit on your dash, blocking your speedometer
CONs:
- It takes a long time to warm up, sometimes as much as 15 minutes (& sometimes it is immediate)
- There is no "key" or "screen" locking (due to the sometimes long warm up period, I want to leave the system on & keep it my bag when going into a store....I then hear `beep, beep, beep' as the screen gets touched accidentally) - not sure if this feature exists on other systems.
- The Point of Interest search is definitely not as good as the Magellan's Neverlost, which shows restaurants by exit number. The Sanyo lists all restaurants by distance as the crow flies, with only street names as detail. What this means is the restaurant could be in a direction that you are not traveling. In addition, you might think it is worthwhile to go the 2 miles out of the way to go to a restaurant, only to find that as you navigate to it, the restaurant is really 8 miles out of the way. Knowing the town at least would be helpful.
- The next might be more user error - Say I do a POI search, pick a restaurant & put it in as a stopover point, only to discover it is way out of the way. I haven't been able to figure out how to cancel that stopover point without cancelling the whole trip.
- Talking of errors, sometimes the system crashes with a system error. This would be in the middle of the trip, when I might be searching for a POI or something...but it is inconvenient. It seems like it happens right when my husband needs to be making some turn & I need to start nearly from the beginning (find the recent address & re-navigate to it).
- Once the distance is under 1 mile until the next turn, the distance is displayed in YARDS. I'd much prefer if the distance stayed in mileage...like 0.7 mi, 0.3 mi, etc. (who wants to do math converting yards to miles??? And I work as an engineer!)
- The traffic antenna is somewhat cheap...My husband pulled the suction cup off by accident within the first few days (not really repairable). He then dropped it on the kitchen floor another day & the retraction of the cord broke.
Comments:
1. As far as the low volume, you can broadcast on the radio or use an earset (it definitely was hard to hear when driving a convertible on vacation)
2. The final destination is marked on the map as whether it is on the Left or Right side of the street.
3. Good suggestion on the pencil eraser. We had wished it came with a stylus like Palm provides.
4. It is true that the system asks for date & time to be entered manually when you first turn on the system. I usually skip through this & what I found is that once I get a GPS signal, the time is updated to the correct time. The time is important as the system shows the time you are expected to reach your destination (whereas I believe the Neverlost system displays the expected travel time).
5. We don't use the mounting kit for 3 reasons: (1) it doesn't fit my husband's curved dash very well; (2) it reduces the risk of windows being smashed by thieves looking for the suction cup; & (3) we don't need it. We just rest the unit on the seat next to us.
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Sanyo customer support is the worst, April 28, 2008
If you want to run the risk of no customer supports with your expensive GPS navigation system, you can simply go to buy a Sanyo NVM-4070. Any questions you have, you can call 1-800-421-5013, after waiting for over 30 minutes, you can get the answer like this "Sanyo doesn't provide any updated software for fixing these issues, you can just use it as is or return it to the store." It is very surprised why Sanyo did release such kind of product to the market even if they do not want to provide any technical supports ?
The critical issue is that: there are only 3 so-called Voice Skins (English only): Female with Text To Speech (TTS), Female without TTS, Male without TTS. The fatal problem is that when you select the Female with TTS, the Volume is too low even if you set to the Maximum value. It is very hard to hear the prompts when you are driving on the way.
There also have following minor issues:
1. Compass display is too small and too low. Especially when driving to East or South direction, it is very hard to determine which direction is the North. It should be Bigger and Upper, and a little Right shifted.
2. When reached the destination, it is just said "the destination is reached." It should be better to say "the destination is reached on your right." Or "the destination is reached on your left." Like most of other GPS navigators do.
3. Date and Time should be added such kind of option: adjustable by GPS automatically. Especially the Time Zone.
4. the number of POI is a little small. It should be better to have more, and can be added by user.
5. It should be able to use an USB power adaptor. When I connect an USB power adaptor to NVM-4070, it always said "connected to a PC", then you can do nothing other than user it as an USB storage.
Again, please keep in mind that Sanyo does not provide any technical supports for this product.
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