Hirdetés
Introduction
Yeah, yeah. We’re testing a harman/kardon. And we’re testing two of them at once, 410 being the younger, while 810 is the older brother. As the two devices are much alike, we have thought to make a dual-test. The smaller was tested by my colleague pmd, while I was reviewing the bigger one, and then we switched them and had a test drive with each other’s navi. During the review we’ll try to interrupt each other as much we can.
The name harman/kardon might be familiar for those who have their blood running through diodes and measure their blood pressure in decibels. To put it short, the company is from the more aristocratic segment of entertainment electronics. It has been established in 1953 by Dr. Sidney Harman, and he made his first FM tuner already that year. Exciting years have followed: they have made revolutionary amplifiers and Hi-Fi devices, many “world’s first” high-end stuff was from them.
They weren’t really present on the navigation market until now, but the two devices we had for testing are a sign of their worthiness of this segment. With a smart pricing and a consistent product line they are condemned to success, mostly for those who also like exclusivity besides usability. Unfortunately the company’s website knows nothing about the subjects of our review, which is nothing good, as this determines the support that comes with them.
410
The elegant box is hardly different from the bigger brother’s, but I immediately observe from the picture on the external cover that the light silver colored piece is the one that comes to me. The package contains chargers of continental Europe and British standards besides a USB cable, a simple case (we can tell that it’s artificial leather only because it has no smell), a car charger, a TMC antenna and the passive holder. There is a disc too in the package, and I just couldn’t figure out at first what it’s used for, but after installing the device, its purpose has been revealed immediately. The holder is very short, hooray, at last I don’t have to nod my head with an amplitude of 10 cm in order to follow the route on the map, as I had to with my old navi (I might look really dumb when doing it, can you imagine? ;-)). The size of the holders is the same at both navis, but the 810’s also charges, as the charger connects to the holder, which is a much more comfortable solution I think.
So after some serious physical exercise I managed to install the gadget on the windshield of my Focus and then I hit the road, full of enthusiasm, of course with voice navigation (I just love that voice… sorry Sweety). Well, there have been no problems until I wanted to set something on the touchsreen. No man has been as envious of Jurij Dolgarukij (for the sake of those born after ’82: he was Longhand Jurij) as I have been in that moment. The 4.3”, 480 x 272 large 65k color display looked inaccessible, just like Sean Connery’s ring on a lonely night. Well, this was the time when that disc gained importance. Those lucky enough to have their windshield at a considerable distance from the seat can attach this disc to an appropriate place on the dashboard, thus having a chance to reach it while driving.
The display, that became accessible sooner or later, has a very clear, sharp picture, although it becomes hard to read in bright sunlight. We can play around a bit with brightness in the settings, but neither is this a perfect solution. I won’t reprove it, it’s visible and that’s what’s important. Around the screen there is only a frame of two types of silver-metallic colors and a harman/kardon label; there are no buttons, no switches, or nothing else that could ruin the big picture. On top of the navi there is the large power button, on the right we can see the SD card slot, and on the left there is a knob, probably the antenna is hidden under it. On the left of the device there is the keylock (oh my God, how do you call this on a device that has no keys?) and the TMC antenna port, while on the right the miniUSB, the headset connector and the volume control are placed. On the back we can see the speaker that has a fairly good quality and the usual connector for the external antenna, while in the bottom there is the tiny reset gap, but none should try pushing the button inside it with the tip of a pen, maybe some small needle will do. It’s quite a pleasant piece in its entirety, it reminded me of a small plasma TV. (pmd)
810
I was the one to test the bigger brother. Besides the device itself, the box also contained a data cable, a charger, the passive holder, a leather-like case, a car charger, an object I called “mushroom” and of course some papers. The mushroom is a very clever remote control that functions with a pill battery and can completely control the navi, it’s something like BMW i-drive. It has a wheel, a silver button for up-down-left-right directions and its center is an enter key. It’s very cool, but I still preferred tampering with the touchscreen. However, those who have a car where the windscreen is far from the driver, or have an extremely short arm will probably like the small mushroom very much. You just have to stick it somewhere close on the dashboard.
The navi is made of a shiny, hard plastic; it has black and dark grey colors. The 4.3” TFT LCD on the front is readable even in sunlight. On the top we can see the power button, while the keylock is on the left. On the right there is a pot for setting the volume, under it there’s a 3.5 mm headset connector, than the SD card slot (SDHC-compatible, up to 32 GB). On the bottom there is the miniUSB connector and an extremely tiny reset gap, just like on the other one. On the back we can see an external antenna connector and the speaker, which has an exceptionally good sound quality.
The heart of the device is a 520 MHz Intel ARM processor; it has 128 MB RAM, while the GPS receiver is a SirfStar III, with very good sensitivity. The overall speed of the navi was completely okay. The map is stored on the built-in 2 GB ROM, so the memory card slot is free to use for music or pictures. We can listen to music on the device’s speaker, or with a headset, which has an outstanding quality, the one you would expect from the company.
Besides navigation, we can also use the device for playing back videos, viewing pictures or listening to music. All this multimedia content can be synced with Windows Media Player. We can create playlists, but we can search by artist or album. We can listen to music even while navigating (this is the most fun when the car radio is also turned on, and our passengers are talking to each other – this is a real test of our patience). 810 can also function as a Bluetooth handsfree car kit, and at a convenient quality. The box states that this is possible due to the fact that there is a microphone with double noise filtering inside the navi. It also supports voice calling and handles the phonebook too. (Gubro)
Other, summary
Which is very similar in the two gadgets is the heavily masked iGO-clone. Currently there is no information about the method of updating it. I can’t deny that I became quite addicted to good old iGO during the years, as it is completely comprehensible, clear and logic for me (even for me), and since I’m very much used to it, every small change is a huuuuge tragedy. For example I miss the great tabs in the bottom part, which I used to switch to the planned route, and my favorite was the “flight mode”, and I didn’t find anything like that here. Gubro told me that when I enter the destination than the simulation button has this function, but during driving this feature is accessible only by entering the destination address again. The most shocking experience, however, wasn’t this, but the “menu” and “source” buttons under the fullscreen map. Touching menu we can define the route we want, based on an address or a POI, which is called favorites. But for God’s sake, what on Earth is SOURCE??? And no matter where we are in the menu system, this label always laughs in our face from the lower right corner. If we touch it we get a screen split in two (410); the left side takes us back to the map (Navigation), the top right pops up the navi’s music files (Music label), which might be a pleasant background to the navigation voice, while the bottom right corner brings up the settings. On the 810 this is extended with the phone handsfree feature, the picture viewer and video player. I imagine myself watching the latest episodes of The IT Crowd on the small screen and laugh, while the mile long queue behind me is smashing the horn :-) And one more sentence about the software: “Guys, if you’re cloning, then why don’t you copy iGO8?” (by pmd)
The built-in batteries keep the gadgets online for 3 hours officially, but of course this depends very much on how much do we navigate or listen to music for example. This data is more relevant in the case of this latter activity, as usually we keep the navi charged while we navigate, of course if we’re not charging some other device already (phone, notebook, razor, hairdryer, other). One more thing I’d like to mention about charging: I don’t know why is it good that on 810 the car charger doesn’t end in a miniUSB connector, why did they have to put a custom connector there? So many other devices could have been charged with it, and now it’s only good for this, we can’t even charge 410 with it (although I think such freaks are quite rare like me, who have more than one navi at them at the same time).
The navis are quite friendly pieces of hardware on the whole. Pros are iGO, the full Europe map, the exceptionally good assembly quality, the long list of features, TMC support, the nice design, that I’m aware of the fact that there’s a harman/kardon gadget working in my car and the mushroom at 810. Cons are the fact that updates are quite questionable and the victims of the iGO redesign (for example iGO pops up a QWERTY keyboard at searches, while the harman/kardon shows a conventional ABC one, which has been much more uncomfortable for us). Taking into consideration all these, we think that 410 with its price of 265 EUR and 810 with its price of 395 EUR are quite appropriate, so we’ll give them both a recommended award.
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| harman/kardon 410 | harman/kardon 810 |
Gubro feat. pmd
Translated by Szaszati
The two harman/kardon devices were provided by PDAFutár. Thanks.
The devices can be bought online at www.pdafutar.hu.
Hahh, bonus picture: harman/kardon car charger connector!
