Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Affordable GPS that works well out of the box., December 30, 2007
I picked-up one of these as it was 50% off on after-Xmas sale at a local store. I've used other GPS systems on rental cars, but could never justify buying one for normal use. But at this price, I thought I'd give it a try. So far, I'm very glad I did.
Nextar is an unfamiliar brand name to me, and thankfully I haven't had an urgent need to contact the company. I made sure it was returnable at the store where I bought it, so if something was wrong I could get a full refund.
Personally, I found it a snap to just get it working. Just pop in the SD card and turn it on. Initially, I noticed it wasn't acquiring the satellite signal very quickly, but I know the GPS satellites are constantly orbiting overhead, and I figured I needed to enter the correct date/time and time zone to get started. As soon as I did that, it acquired a good signal in about a minute. I think the longest it's taken for a signal lock is about 5 minutes so far, but I'm sure it varies based on a lot of conditions. I get a strong signal inside my home, but couldn't get anything inside a large parking garage. Changing user-settings and picking destinations is easy. But I found the manual to be helpful in learning how to fine-tune your routes (choosing detours and stop overs). It is written succinctly, but is definitely intelligible and is easy to follow along due to the many screen shots included.
The map data seemed reasonably up to date. I live in a relatively new subdivision, and I've encountered GPS devices that didn't include it, but this one does. I estimate that the map data was accurate to about 2005 or 2006, which is acceptable to me. I'm sure it takes a while for all the street data to trickle down to the consumer.
The P3 unit runs the IntelliNav software version 1.1.6.0 (on Windows CE) and uses NAVTEQ digital map data. There's very little mention of map data on Nextar's web site. The SD card contains the US only (while some of their other GPS units also include Canada as well). I'm hoping that at some point Nextar offers upgrades to include more current map data and/or Canada and other countries. I'd say that's the main reason I'm not giving this unit 5 stars is because Nextar doesn't seem to have impressive support for it's products, but that's based primarily on their web site FAQ being so sparse and no indication whatsoever of future software or map upgrades or improvements.
In general though, I was very impressed with the finish on the unit, and the usability (for the price). It seems very sturdy and has a nice simple design. And it has an internal battery (but it's not user replaceable) that lasts about 5 hours on a charge, so it can be used handheld as well. The accessories are also of good quality. You get an easy to use suction cup mount, an auto power adapter, and a USB cable. It can also play MP3s, but you have to remove the Map SD card and insert another with songs on it--so the usefulness of that capability is limited in my opinion. They also sell an AC outlet power cable accessory, but I think they wisely left it out of the box. Instead, the USB cable can be used to charged the unit by plugging it into a USB port on a computer. I also found it charges fine when plugged into the USB port on my Apple iPod AC Power adapter.
There is a stylus included (that stores very inconspicuously on the back), but my fingertip works almost as well. I was very impressed with how easy it was to enter addresses. Just enter a state name, city, street name then street number, and it will find the address. You can add up to 300 favorite addresses and give them personalized names. That makes it very easy to quickly locate destinations. It also has a very impressive built-in database of points of interest (POIs). So it's very easy to locate nearby restaurants, shopping malls, gas stations, hotels, hospitals, ski hills, and more. You can easily search for them by name or categories (even food type in the case of restaurants) and it will display them by proximity or alphabetically based on your choice. They also appear as icons on the map as you drive by. Just click on them and the address and phone number appears. Apparently it's got a database of over 1.6 million POIs, so NAVTEQ has packed a lot of data on that 1GB SD card. And while I've encountered a few discrepancies, I was impressed by the wealth of locations included and again I estimate the POI data is accurate to within two years based on what restaurants it listed.
While driving a route, the unit speaks the turn instructions with a reasonable amount of warning and accuracy. It speaks highway names and distances to turns, but it doesn't have text-to-speech capability, so it doesn't speak exact street names. However, the display lists street names rather clearly, so I didn't find the lack of spoken names much of a disadvantage. It also recalculates routes very quickly when you go off course--usually within 2-5 seconds in my experience. And the IntelliNav software seems fairly intelligent. When driving on alternate lanes in construction zones, it could tell I was still following the main route even though I was actually off the trail by a hundred yards or so.
After three days of use, I haven't encountered a single problem, and have been generally impressed with it's performance. While I'm sure there are much more functional GPS units out there, in my experience they all cost at least $100-200 more than what I paid. So for the price, this seems to be a very good choice, and I'm definitely going to keep it.
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21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Better than expected, November 24, 2007
Based on the stock photo and the picture on the box, I was expecting a cheap looking brick, but instead got a shiny, sleek, and relativly thin/portable GPS/MP3 player. I tested the MP3 out right away and it worked smoothly with simple, intuitive menus (It's not a Ipod, but it is much better than any MP3 player I've seen built into most MP3 capable cell phones).
As for the main funcionality, GPS, all the points of interest I could think of came up easily. I didn't read the manual but was able to figure out all the basics right away very easily (adding 'home,' favorites, changing volume, views, etc, etc, etc). Even has the option of warning you if you are going above a certain speed limit.
The one dissapointment was the initial GPS positioning took longer than expected, but on subsequent tries the unit was much faster. Overall this unit seems great and again, is much thinner, portable than expected.
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
The company is a joke, December 28, 2007
If and when I get this product working, I will update this review.
The Nextar P3 did not work out of the box. The device could not read the map data files on the SD card. There is no mention of this issue on the Nextar tech support web site. Their web site is so slow that I wonder if they have a 56K modem connection to the internet.
I called tech support. After 20 minutes on hold, the person who answered the phone told me I have to call customer service and request a new SD card for the device. He said he could not order one for me.
I called customer service and was put into voice mail after a pre-recorded message stating they had a high call volume. The message said I should leave my name and a call back number and someone would contact me in 48 HOURS. After 5 seconds, voice mail stopped recording my message. Needless to say, I couldn't leave my name and number in that short period of time. I called back and was able to leave a message.
Not a good start for dealing with this company. Any product that does not work out of the box is a problem. But the bigger problem here is working with Nextar tech and customer support, and finding the patience to navigate a web site that is extremely slow and unresponsive.
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