Sony NV-U82

Have been using this for a week now, got it on sale at Argos for £150, reduced from £250 which was a real bargain. Setup is very quick and easy, the unit works out of the box and requires only a couple of basic options to be set using the touchscreen before you can use it.

The cradle is excellent and is the best I've seen on any sat-nav unit, it is super strong at sticking to the windscreen or dash and it doesn't leave a mark on the ...
...thieves who now look for those tell-tale cradle marks on the windscreen.

The unit doesn't come with a mains charger but can be charged using a USB port on your PC (cable supplied). Not sure why you'd want to use this as it also comes with a car charger which you can leave plugged into your cigarette lighter socket. I haven't tried running the battery down fully but I've read elsewhere that you can get around an hour out of it.
... more

Have been using this for a week now, got it on sale at Argos for £150, reduced from £250 which was a real bargain. Setup is very quick and easy, the unit works out of the box and requires only a couple of basic options to be set using the touchscreen before you can use it.

The cradle is excellent and is the best I've seen on any sat-nav unit, it is super strong at sticking to the windscreen or dash and it doesn't leave a mark on the windscreen at all - handy to stop the sat nav thieves who now look for those tell-tale cradle marks on the windscreen.

The unit doesn't come with a mains charger but can be charged using a USB port on your PC (cable supplied). Not sure why you'd want to use this as it also comes with a car charger which you can leave plugged into your cigarette lighter socket. I haven't tried running the battery down fully but I've read elsewhere that you can get around an hour out of it.

Now onto the software itself. The map is extremely clear and directions are easy to follow. I set up some directions and then deliberately tried to confuse the unit by taking random wrong turns, however, the software always quickly adapted to my new position and re-calculated the route in a few seconds, then adjusted directions accordingly, meaning it was impossible to get lost. There are several levels of mapping available, and there is a lot of information available on screen if you need it, although the map is clear and uncluttered. You can mess around with the route profile, and change the route type (e.g. shortest, fastest, most pleasant!, etc). You can exclude motorways or block certain routes / roads entirely - handy if you like to avoid certain bottlenecks. The brightness of the unit can be controlled automatically which I found best, especially at night when the display dims down, although you can override this and set your own preferred brightness settings as well.

A nice feature is that the map will show points of interest near your route such as pubs, cafes, car parks, supermarkets, etc, although the list doesn't include for example every single pub in the area. It also has a comprehensive list of petrol stations which is very useful should your petrol light come on. You can add points of interest into your route using a single press of the touch screen if they are nearby - alternatively, you can search in the immediate vicinity for them, or near an address you specify.

Entering an address is very easy and can be done using postcode, or street name. The only niggle here is that, in order to enter a street name, you have to know the town first - this can sometimes provide difficulty if you don't know in which town a street is located. So the best bet is to use the postcode lookup which is always 100% accurate. If you do enter a town/street name, the unit has a predictive function which will automatically narrow down the town and street possibilities the more characters are typed, e.g. GLA will be narrowed down to anything beginning with GLA (Glasgow, Glamorgan, etc) - same for the street name.

The female voice of the unit is pleasant and easy to understand, and direction change warnings are given both well in advance (e.g. 200 yards from a turn), and again just before the turn is made. Street names are not read out, but major roads (A roads and motorways) are listed - e.g. "TURN RIGHT ONTO THE A57".

The unit comes with a free 12 month subscription to a speed camera warning database, although I've not activated this. I've not attempted to connect the unit to my PC either, although it comes with software to enable connection via the supplied USB cable.

The only real bad point so far is that the software crashed once, when I had parked up and was about to set off again. However, a quick press of the reset button and things were up and running again in around 60 seconds. Not sure what caused this but I was parked by some tall buildings so I suspect it may have lost it's GPS signal.

Overall - a great sat nav with a nice wide screen, very easy to use and a good value buy. After using it for a week, I'll never go back to printed maps again. 

...less