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!
