Customer Reviews

A clear winner for me
I ordered my Navigon 7100 at the end of August and received it on September 7th. In the last few weeks, I have been all over .... New York City, Washington, Northern Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, San Francisco/Oakland, California, etc. For most of those journeys I have had my Nuvi 660 next to the Navigon 7100. Both have their strengths and weaknesses. Overall, my personal conclusion is that the Navigon 7100 is for me the way to go. I will be packing up my Nuvi 660 in a few days and sending it off to one of my kids.

Below I will list some Pros and Cons of the 7100. The 7100 has not by any means been flawless. But its strengths far outweigh its weaknesses. And most of my complaints are easy software fixes. I feel that Navigon has gotten the message from those of us in the USA and is attempting to address our issues. They won't be here long if they don't. They may believe that they have the superior product but they may go the way of Beta in the Beta / VHS competition, if you remember that from years and years ago.

I have spoken to higher ups at Navigon and they could have brushed me off. Instead, once I got that far, I found someone willing to listen, acknowledge their shortcomings and say they will fix things. So far they have done so with the 4 GB fiasco. The rest remains to be seen. I am hopeful. I believe that they will now do what it takes. The people I have dealt with struck me as sincere and willing to do what it takes.

By the way, while I adjusted the route profile based on recommendations on forums and even from Navigon to the Optimum setting, I have found the Fast profile setting works best for me.

I also have turned off the Menu animation setting which seems to work better for me.

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Pros of 7100

Excellent screen and info. I like info and I get all I need with the 7100. I especially like the upcoming turn arrow showing up if it is a close turn to the next turn you are taking.

The 7100 adjusts for your time zone automatically. You need to do this manually on the Nuvi 660. In California my 7100 showed the correct time while my Nuvi was on Eastern time. I was only there a day and didn't bother to change it.

The 7100 makes it easy to engage the night/day mode, as well as 2D/3D mode. Though an auto setting for day/night would be a nice add-on, it is too easy to do manually to make a difference for ME. And I like the color scheme of the night view. Very cool.

Ability to block portions of route and have trip recalculated. Makes life easier if I want to avoid certain roads.

Seems to lock onto 1 or 2 more satellites than 660 when I was able to check, not always though, but a lot of the time which may help explain my next observation.

Its position in relation to the road in my observations was a bit more accurate than the 660. I would be just about passed the exit ramp when the 660 would show me just entering it.

I found the refresh rate to be a bit more frequent than the 660. While it may be an optical illusion, it seemed to be moving more often than the 660. Again, this is my personal observation and might help explain the above observation.

Reality View is excellent. It has helped me on countless highways. Once though it showed one more lane than the highway had. But it helped me navigate the right way anyway. This is probably the number one feature for me.

Lane Assist is not visible when Reality View is on, but if you hit the screen to disable Reality View (quick feature and easy to do) I often see the Lane Assist present there. Helped me getting to Oakland, Ca. airport as I exited and needed to turn left by showing me both lanes were left turn lanes way ahead of the pavement markings showing me that. Helped me to decide what lane to use for the upcoming turn.

Speed warning (caution) has helped me keep my speed where I want it to be. Though I got used to it and needed to remind myself that it isn't always there, especially on the local streets.

Time of arrival is more accurate for ME than 660. The 7100 would on short trips show 5 to 10 minutes longer to get there but ended up being closer to the actual time of arrival than the 660. On a 5 hour trip the 7100 showed arrival to be 35 minutes longer than 660 at the start. Ended up being closer to actual arrival time than 660. Nuvi kept adding time, even though trip was going smoothly. Much prefer a more conservative approach. Again this is what I experienced in my journeys.

Fairly fast recalculation of route when turn not taken (I did that intentionally at times to test it out). Though once it seemed to take forever.

Traffic info reception is excellent. External antenna not needed in major cities, but helps in outlying areas.

Windshield mount is easy to put on and take off. Stable and secure. Wobbles on occasion but not noticeably an issue for ME. Brings the 7100 closer to you than any other system I have used that I mounted on the windshield. And I found it has lots of adjustment options to get the view I wanted. Had my doubts at first, but love how it just floats near you. My Nuvi mount would fall off until I started using water on the rubber mount before attaching. Even then once or twice it came off.

Easy to spot a McDonald's on your route and by turning in its direction get to it fairly easily rather than search the POI database.

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Cons of 7100

No feature to avoid HOV roads/lanes. I have an entrance ramp near me to a major highway that is open only during morning rush hours and is only for HOV use. The 7100 always wants to take me to that highway that way. I can never use it since it is only me in the car. And the times it tells me to go that way it is closed anyway.

I enabled the feature to avoid U-Turns, but the 7100 tells me to make them anyway, even if I could easily go around the block. I could understand it doing so if I am at a dead end but that hasn't been the case. There has been a clear view of the sky and good reception at the time.

My saved destinations do not show up on the map. It would be nice to see them as I go near them. The Nuvi shows all my destinations on the map as I go by them.

Text to speech needs improvement. While I have found that most streets are named, the pronunciation is awkward. If not spelled in a conventional way it is mispronounced. Centre becomes Cen-tray. Marble is Mar-blay. Stonefield becomes Stoney-field.

Toll roads are labeled as TOL for some reason. Even though there is plenty of space for it to be TOLL. As a result the text to speech says, turn onto xx "tall"... for TOL.

Battery life is not as good as I expected. It has a nice warning though to tell you that the battery is almost gone. Maybe Navigon should check with Apple and its iPhone for a better approach.

Finding a Point of Interest if you don't know the city it is in is difficult. The Nuvi will tell you all the POIs close to you, though you have a long wait as it loads them to get to the next screen. If I want a gas station nearby it doesn't tell me if it is ahead of me or behind me. The Nuvi would give me arrows to help me see where it was. Not knowing could mean circling back to get to it rather than hit something along the way. Its POIs on the route don't give you a lot of options. I would much prefer getting a list to choose from than the ones the unit selects to position on the route I am taking.

Long start up time. Though it is a breeze when I stop for gas and get going again. It took seconds for the 7100 to crank up the times I bought gas or had a quick lunch. My Nuvi was still loading as I headed on my way. Blocks away it joined the 7100. Most of the time though (other than the quick stop routine), the Nuvi was the winner here.

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Again, these are all MY PERSONAL observations. I know others have had different experiences on many of these observations.

All in all I find the Navigon 7100 to be an excellent GPS for MY needs. And even though I paid a higher price for it when I bought it than it sells for today, I think I got my money's worth.

Is it perfect? Not at all. It has many things that could be better. Is it the best GPS I have come across and owned? Yes, I can honestly say that it is FOR ME. I have owned the Tom Tom GO, the StreetPilot III, the Nuvi 350, 360 and 660. For now, this is the one for me. I change GPS units often. Buying the newer maps was not worth it for me since if I added to that price what I could sell my GPS on ebay for it would come close or fairly close to buying a newer model. And I need the latest maps, which are outdated when they are released.

All in all, I am sold on the Navigon 7100. For ME it is a clear winner!

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10-18-07

In the last few days I have been to Memphis and Boston. I must say I am happy to report that the start up time when I get into my rental car seems to be quicker. Also, while I didn't expect to get traffic info in Memphis and almost didn't hook up the external antenna to pull in traffic, when I did I got an alert quickly about a 2 mile congestion spot on a highway on my route. I hit avoid and got diverted to side streets which got me to the hotel fairly quickly. I passed over the highway I was to go on and sure enough it was stop and go traffic. Really saved me time and aggravation.

In Boston I noticed a few things.... one is that in the underground tunnels the 7100 kept moving along the route even though the speed i was traveling showed up as 0 (zero). As some may know Boston had a major construction project (The Big Dig) that put major roadways underground. I doubt I was getting any satellite coverage as I was under water for a time as well. I liked this feature. Reminded me of my old Tom Tom that kept moving as well. My Garmin would just shut down and tell me I had lost satellite coverage. And I had no idea what my next turn or exit would be. Not so with the 7100 (at least that experience the other night). One drawback though, when I got out into open space the 7100 told me to turn right.....there was no exit ramp, nothing but barriers on the highway. After a few seconds it must have gotten its fix and all was well.

I must say it really, really proved its worth when I exited the Mass. Turnpike for my hotel. The ramps and roads were so convoluted I would have never found my way at night. In fact, I just listened to the voice guide me and for the most part kept my eyes on the road. It was great!

I did have to turn off all the POIs since there were so many in the Boston area. I wish there were a simple way to do that rather than having to uncheck all 30 or so of them one at a time. Once I did, the screen was uncluttered and easy to view.

Regarding traffic, I got an alert for a Route 9 ramp being closed. I didn't expect that one since Route 9 is not a highway though it is a major roadway, but with lights all along it.

By the way, the Hertz gate agent noticed it on the windshield and said, "That is a nice unit. What is it?" I didn't expect that and was surprised to hear him say it.

All in all I continue to be extremely pleased with my experiences.

I'm not happy with this unit
Good:
1. Free traffic report with option to take alternate route
2. Bright and sharp lcd display
3. Lane-assist feature
4. Voice-recognition
5. Nice map display, you can see route few miles ahead

Bad:
1. 50-60% of the time it gives very long routes compared to other gps units. One time it instructed us to take an exit from the freeway and after few miles it pointed us back to the same freeway.
2. Sometimes the voice assist doesn't match with what is shown in the map. The map shows straight line and yet it instructed us to take a right turn and an immediate left turn.
3. Failed to find some well known POIs if do a search from your current location, but it did find it when you do a search by city.
4. The user interface is not very intuitive and a bit sluggish. The scroll bar for turn-by-turn is very close to the route list and you can easily hit one of them when you scroll up/down.
5. No auto Night mode.
6. The circular swivel is too loose.

When I tried to contact Navigon's customer support they wanted me to contact Navteq for the route problem. I mean c'mon why do I have to deal with multiple companies for a single product. Overall, I'm not happy with the unit. I will be returning this product. I might reconsider purchasing it again once they fixed all these issues.

Good device..But too early to buy
I've enjoyed this new car navigation system for a week and decided to return it. As you may expected this unit has very good graphical interface. In 2D and 3D mode, the displayed map is always beautiful. In the view of performance, this unit has a kind of reasonable performance. Recalculation of route is fast enough. At least the speed is same as that of its competitors. GPS reception is also good, I think it has the newest SiRF III chipset and it guarantees superb reception performance. Free traffic monitoring is one of the best features of this unit. I think lots of people (including myself) buy this because of the free TMC. It works pretty well. 3D view of freeway interchange point is also helpful.

But, in spite of these superiorities, I decided to give up using Navigon 7100 because,

1) Well known (?) memory issue. Mine has 2GB legacy SD card, instead of 4GB faster SD card. I've never tested the performance difference between the two SD's. But I think they will show difference. Even though I can assume the difference is very small, 2GB memory has too small free space for upgrading or user data. Simply, I don't want to buy 2GB with 4GB price.

2) Although the GPS reception is good, it takes too much time for it to initialize the system. It takes 3~5 minute to get the GPS signal after turning on the device. Even you are in the opened area. (If it gets signal once, it can keep the signal pretty well. That's why I think the reception is good.) This is too painful. I have to spend such a long time to start the navigation. You know, I can drive fair amounts of distance in 3 min. If I drive to wrong direction in this dead time, I have to spend more time to get back. This is very annoying.

3) The awkward routing algorithm. Sometimes, it makes me lot of turns even though there is a straight road connection. If there are several parallel roads, it always designates a specific road to drive, in spite of the efficiency. Because there is no traffic information for the local road, occasionally, it guided me to the most jammed road. if I drive away from the jammed road and take another parallel road, it always keep saying "go back to the jammed road" (even though there's no difference in efficiency between two paths and two paths are parallel) sometimes, it picked up a very weird route regardless of the routing option. It will make your travel time doubled.

4) The awkward rerouting by traffic monitoring. Free TMC is definitely the best feature of this device. But this feature sometimes makes the trip time doubled. Let's say you are at point A. You have to drive to point C, 10 miles away from A, through a freeway. But from point B, 9 miles away from A, there's heavy traffic and totally jammed. Then the fastest way to drive to C is taking the freeway and drive to B, then taking locals to C. -But if Navigon gets this traffic information, it will guide you just local road and avoid entire freeway sections. If the freeway is long enough, maybe it redirects you to freeway. But it guided me to locals from Santa Monica to LA downtown and avoided 10 miles whole i-10 section. That was 9:00PM and there was a slow traffic at very near the downtown. This is nonsense. To avoid this situation, when it notifies you the traffic, you have to check the map very carefully and decide to avoid or ignore. You have to do it, while you are driving, even in 60+ miles. That may kill you.

I think Navigon has tried their best, but still not enough. Definitely, it has some superiority over its competitors. But, also it has very critical bugs that can make you very nervous. I think you'd better wait though it's very attractive. You can buy this after they fix lots of bugs other users and I suffered. Don't be a beta tester of Navigon paying more than $500.