Navigon 7100 - queer fish

We didn’t really review a Navigon navi before. We more or less know the software of the company form Panasonic Strada or the Samsung i550, i560 couple. I think we can agree that the software in these devices wasn’t a groundbreaking success. Of course we shouldn’t base on this, as these navis had a modified version. Still, it could have been good anyway.

The man in the street couldn’t hear much about the company in the region, and this has its reasons: they didn’t consider the region interesting enough to take it seriously, besides being simply present here. This is no unique phenomenon, as at last year’s CeBIT the representatives of TeleAtlas have summed up what the directions are: Wsetern Europe, than the countries where Western Europeans like to got for a holiday, and than the rest. Hungary, for example, is from the latter group, and it’s a great stroke of luck that there’s an iGO, or the country would be in the same situation as Russia: their map consists of Moscow and St. Petersburg, and the road connecting the two cities.

From the international site of the company we get to know that it has been established in 1991 and they distribute navigation systems since 1996. They are developing for Pocket PCs since 2000, while TMC support came in 2002. In 2006 they bought Navteq and with this they’ve started a serious expansion. The Chicago-based company has more than 400 employees today and they are a well-known supplier of solutions on the marker. 7100 is from the upper third of their range of models and has some serious features. Let’s see what these features are good for.

The machine comes in a nice box, which includes the device, a small bag (girl power!), a USB cable, a car charger, a TMC antenna and a very special passive holder. This latter one is almost as long as a forearm, it’s fixed and based on its shape it would really fit in a sex shop. I don’t know how many windshields does its shape fit to (besides the shaky accessories you can find in the aforementioned places), but I attached it to mine in a very ideal angle. The dial on its end has a label showing what kind of navigation system did we buy, until we cover it with the 131 x 92 x 23 mm large navi that weighs 195 grams. Agent 7100 traveled securely and without any swings in my car, and to tell the truth it looked really elegant.

The main feature of the front is the TFT display with a 4.3” diagonal, 4:3 screen ratio and a resolution of 480 x 272 pixels, having a really good picture and being readable even in bright sunlight. There’s no light sensor, but we can set brightness. The screen is surrounded by a shiny, dark black frame, that’s at least an inch thick. The shape of the navi resembles a rounded soap, it’s nothing full of fantasy, but to tell the truth, I couldn’t imagine much versions: or square-shaped, or rounded and that’s all.

On the top we can see the SD card slot, with a 4 GB card inside, having a full Europe map on it. The left side of the navi is quite desolate. On the right we can see a switch, which in fact is the power button and handles Bluetooth connection too. On the bottom part, from left to right, we can see the reset hole, a 3.5 mm headset connector (which is also the port for the TMC antenna), and then the miniUSB port, through which we can charge the navi. On the back, covered with a rubber plug, we can see the connector for an external antenna, under this the grating of the speaker is places, while in the upper left corner the stylus’ hole can be found. The stylus itself is really low quality; fortunately we don’t really have to use it.

7100 is the eminence grise of the navis, it runs on a 400 MHz Samsung CPU, in the company of 256 MB of Flash-ROM and 64 MB of RAM. This is the official data, but other sites mention 64-64 MB of each. Taking everything into account the result of hardware optimization is medium. Don’t take me wrong, speed is okay, but I wouldn’t call the machine a speeding maniac.

The navi has a SirfStar III antenna, which finds GPS signal relatively quick and keeps the connection alive even in downtown. Navigon’s map consists mostly of grey and orange colors, I found it quite desolate. Since TMC is only in its testing period in Budapest, I went off to the Austrian capital, in order to check the feature. Well, the Austrian map is much, much better than the Hungarian on, the navi reads the number of roads to be followed, but it doesn’t know street names. There is a band assistant, that worked great.

The POI database test had an interesting result. As I don’t know many places in Vienna, and I didn’t want to go to the usual ones, I tried to look up the holy shrine of all shopaholics, Shopping City Süd. My search had no results; the database doesn’t know such a place, either in Vienna, or in Mödling. It’s a plus, however, that it enlisted hundreds of wineries (thus it received a highly recommended award from our managing director, Parci). I started looking for a nice roadblock or traffic jam. Well, we can do this easily in Budapest; it’s enough to start the car’s engine. I had to wander about the streets of the Austrian capital for a while, but an accident “came handy”, the navi told me: “due to traffic information, the route is being replanned”. There has almost been another accident, I could hardly see from my tears…

Unfortunately the map cannot display buildings even in 3D view, but this is very fashionable nowadays, at least in the segment of which 7100 makes part, so this is a downside. I give a plus point for the Bluetooth handsfree, however, as it had really good sound quality.

The built-in battery had quite a poor performance; it went offline in an hour. I hope this gets much better after the first few charges, as this one hour is an extremely weak result.

I have mixed feelings towards the navi. The high quality assembly, the display, and the built-in TMC are the positive aspects, whiles downsides are the lack of 3D buildings and the user interface in a few parts, as for example it would be better to display a QWERTY keyboard when entering data. At the time of writing this review, the device costs about 380 EUR, which is a bit expensive, but the device is a bit different of what we got used to by now, so it’s a real queer fish. It’s cool anyway.