Sony NV U92T Review

The NV-U92T comes from arguably one of the biggest manufacturers of electronic gizmos around today. Sony is well known for their leaps in technological advances so high hopes for this bit of kit.

The first thing you notice is that the touchscreen is really wide at 4.8 inches - a whole half inch bigger than most, especially in this price range. It also comes with a whopping 2 Giga Byte built-in flash memory.

Navigation is using the SiRF star III GPS receiver with mapping by NAVTEQ. Maps of 21 countries in Western Europe are available. This has all the makings of a really excellent sat nav. The maps are clear and well designed, views are 2D and 3D and spoken instructions are direct and concise. Having the big screen and the correspondingly big touchscreen buttons made it easy to navigate through the menus. With a 300 MHz Intel processor, calculations are fast and accurate.

An innovative feature is that the cradle is integral to the unit itself. A fold away soft gel based suction cup that lets you stick it anywhere - windscreen or soft dashboard, without leaving a mark and without fixing anything to your car that a potential thief may find of interest.

The unit measures 145 mm by 87 mm and is only 20 mm thick which makes it nice and slim. It weighs 250 grams which is quite a lot to rely solely on a suction cup (see above), but it seems to work OK.

One of the great features is the access to the Traffic Message Channel although a fee is charged for the service in UK and France. When one is on the road, this really is the only thing that is important - media players such as MP3, can be construed as gimmicks when all one needs to know about is traffic and the road. Of course this opinion may be old fashioned. It is surprising however that Bluetooth has not been incorporated, especially for a company such as Sony with all their high tech abilities.

A feature that is really specific to navigation as in days of yore, is what the manufacturers call Position Plus but non-techies will just refer to as dead reckoning (nothing to do with being dead of course, the term stems from deduced reckoning). By means of pressure sensors and acceleration sensors, the navigator can deduce from your current speed and direction where you are positioned even if the satellites go down for a while.

Battery life is a bit skimpy at only 2.5 hours, but this unit, although portable, is really meant for driving and the unit comes with a cigarette lighter style power unit.

Dynamic routing, massive database of points of interest (POIs) and postcode searching are some of the regular requirements covered in this unit. All in all a very good device built and usable for the purpose for which it was intended without diversions into the entertainment world. A good buy.