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Sony NVU44 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator with Text-to-Speech (Gun Metallic)
 
Manufacturer: Sony
Customer Rating:
 
List Price: $249.95
Sale Price: $164.94
Availibility: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description

Sony NVU44 Gun Metallic

Manufacturer's Description (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 black 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.
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 (black), car cradle, car battery adapter (XA-DC6), USB cable, quick start guide

Product Details

  • 3.5-Inch Anti-glare/high-brightness touchscreen Display
  • Pre-installed Maps of North America
  • Supports Memory Stick Duo Media

Video Reviews

No video reviews found for this product.

Customer Reviews

Whats not to love?!
 
Review Date: July 1, 2010
Reviewer: itworks,
I have had this product for over a year now - more like 18 months, and it has come to be a part of my purse!! It is small enough to be unobtrusive and versatile enough to use for both interstate and local route quest. The most beautiful thing about it for me, is that it does exactly what it was designed to do - take you from point A to point B without a lot of navigational jargon...Awesome! Now, I wonder how I ever got around without it...(kind of reminiscent of the cell phone wave huh!!!) One thing though, it is not for the town car or cab driver who is looking for an alternate, faster, less congested and sometimes obscure route 'cos it may not have that(though you can upload route to it online - don't ask me how though!). Having said that, I think that if you are concerned about safety issues as a lady or a guy in a strange neighborhood, this is the GPS for you because it only plots well established routes and all those shady back hoods are conveniently left out....wonder if that was on purpose...hhmmmmm.
Way better than you know who
 
Review Date: February 18, 2010
Reviewer: Michael Nelson, Rockford IL
This is the best unit ive ever bought and it is so easy to use.
Some very useful features; But a few basic features missing
 
Review Date: February 10, 2010
Reviewer: Plantronics Fan, New Jersey, United States
Good:
1. Navigation voices aren't robotic.

2. When you search for a Point of Interest - for example Pizza - as you travel, it lists all the Pizza restaurants in the general vicinity and indicates their general direction in relation to your position with an arrow; I find this very useful.

3. As you drive, there will be a yellow triangle adjacent to your position. This triangle constantly points to the general direction of your destination, so you know if you are heading towards the right direction.

4. Good POI - both the data available as well as the search function

5. Reliable navigation and map

6. Quick Satellite fix

7. Announces how much time it took to reach the destination at the end of the trip; too bad it only announces it and doesn't store or display it.


Bad
1. No option to "Avoid Highways"
2. Three calculation conditions - Standard, Avoid Tolls, Shortest Distance - all mutually exclusive to each other. Which means it cannot navigate the shortest toll free route. It is either shortest distance or Toll Free, not both.
3. Not built to last; either that or you should be extremely delicate when handling this. The USB socket broke of the circuit board in mine.
4. Does not offer even a basic trip statistics feature.


As of this writing, I believe Sony discontinued its GPS products. And that is not surprising. I do not see their usual engineering or design in this GPS
Looks good, easy to use, BUT....
 
Review Date: January 23, 2010
Reviewer: raeliak, Long Island, NY USA
Bought this unit for $79 from Sears. Everything seemed great at first except I noticed that the selected route was sometimes bizarre. Occasionally I'd follow the bad route just to see where it took me - but most of the times it would just route me back to the original road.

The more significant issue was the quality of the unit. My first GPS failed to hold a charge very quickly. Strike 1. I sent it in for service and they offered me either a different colored unit (red) in exchange or a refund. I chose the latter and immediately bought another one at Sears. Well - this one held a charge at first but after a few months the charge would last for only for less than a day, so every time I used it I was forced to connect the cable. Strike 2. I sent this one back for service and got the same story - no exact replacements available but we'll upgrade you or give you a refund, which I gladly accepted to avoid an inevitable strikeout.

So I'm now back to using my Garmin E-Trek handheld in my car and much happier. Currently hunting around for a new unit but it definitely won't be a Sony!
Sony NVU44 Geat Value
 
Review Date: January 9, 2010
Reviewer: Lgraham - Coz, New Jersey
Performs well and is accurate. Clear voice and tried in different States and all worked well. Better than my built-in in another car.

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