Sony Portable Navigation System - NV-U83T

Very dissapointed with this sony product. Wouldn't purchase this product again Unless soft is rectified Cannot find my home address.

I like the size of the screen.

It quickly computes new route if I deviate from Soney's direction.

I RETURNED IT.

I'm using 3-year-old Garmin iQue3600 and looking for a newer GPS unit. Accidentally I ordered Sony NV-U83T and just received it 2 days ago. Unfortunately the unit is far below my expectation. First of all, the menu arrange is not reasonable. When you press the Menu botton, you can see several icons (tabs) at bottom, which are compass, cabinet, briefcase, and return. In campass, the choices are Enter Address, Find a Place, Take Me Home, and My Places. In cabinet, the choices are Phone (operation), and Traffic Information. In briefcase, the choices are Route Planning, Address Book, General (setting), Map (setting), Route Profile, Guide (setting), Traffic Information, Phone (setting). Ok, can anyone tell me what's the relationship between those icons and actual related sub-menu? Those icons seem to be trivial. Second, after it got signal, it showed the place I'm at. Good, but why I only see street lines around the neighborhood, but no street name on the map. If you zoom out a little bit, it only marks the town hall place, big landmark, and some street it "thinks" worth to show. I still can't see what the road name around me. If you zoom out more, only the major roads or state highways are displayed. Zoom in? you will only see the street lines without name. My 4-year-old Garmin iQue3600 can do this and I can't image the new released (3/1/2008) Sony can't do it. And even interesting, when you zoom out, the response is almost instant. But, when you zoom in, it's about 3~5 seconds delay to show the map. Ok, go to the next one. I tried to put my company address and I hesitated a while when it prompted me to enter city (town) name. Could someone tell me what the difference is between "Fairhaven" and "Fairhaven, Town of"? Anyway, I tried either one and it found the right place. After I received signal, it took about 13~15 seconds to finish route calculation, which is about 65 miles away. I tried couple my friends' addresses and most of them can finish calculation in 10~15 seconds range. For most GPS, I believe it is still in acceptable range even it is not great. Now, I'm on the road. Ok, it's great to see the split screen to forecast the detail turning map and the highway lane recommendation (that's the most attractive part for this unit). However, it only pops up lane information in big intersections (two interstate or state highways), not every exit. The good thing is the voice notice is pretty accurate and fluent. Hold on, I found something annoying. I needed to be on I-495 for about 60 miles and it showed the next turn would be 8 miles. Oh, it's the intersection for I-290. When approaching the intersection, the split screen came up and told you to stay on left 3 lanes. After passing the intersection, the next one is 13 miles, which is I-90. After this one, the next is I-95 in 23 miles. After this one, the next is RT-24. Come on, it's a 3-lane highway all the way to my destination exit. Can't it be smart enough to find out or only wants to show off split screen feature? Next annying fact is that I would like to see the near road around the highway. Yes, zoom in. I mentioned earlier it takes several seconds delay to show the map. After less than 5 seconds, the it zoomed out back to the original level. I retried several times and the results were the same, and nowhere to change setting to disable "automatic zoom out". Later, I found that the "automatic zoom out" fact is only for highways or during navigation (with destination defined). Next, I looked into the POI function. First, I searched on the dining place. Yes, it can get good result as another guy said, who gave rating 9. However, he didn't mention how slow it is to get the searched result. It took at least 5~10 seconds to show the first record and still showing "searching" after 3 minutes. I believe it searches from the nearest match but it is too slow to get result. My Garmin iQue3600 may only have 1M POI but it can find the result much faster than this Sony one. And also, Sony didn't release the information of the number of POI for this unit. I tried the PIO again. I found it has "Auto Dealer" category. Hmmm, it sounds good. I had a vehicle appointment. I put toyota. It searched, and searched, and 3 minutes later it told me "no record found". What a #!@$%&. I tried to use "Search by name" and it came back after 1 minute with the dealer I needed to go. If it can't find the brand name in Auto Dealer category, I can figure out why Sony wants to create that category. Did I mention the response time for this unit? Everytime you press keys or bottons in menu selection, it's at least 1 second delay. If the vehicle is moving (map changing) or it's doing some heavy calculation job such as (search), it could be more than 5 seconds to get a key responsed. How will I know, because the pressed botton has become inverted but the actual function can't be performed. How about bluetooth? That's another joke for this unit. The voice is noisy and toutured. My wife and my boss can't recognize my voice. I can't figure out what they said either. Even if I took it off from suction cup and attached it to my face like cellphone, the situation didn't get better. Also, I can't synchronize phonebook with my cell phone. I borrowed a Garmin Nuvi660 last week from my friend. The voice and phonebook synchronzation worked fine. What I can say is that the product is a shame for Sony. Except the big display, split screen map and super suction cup, I can't find anything good for this unit. Maybe the one gave it rating 9 is a Sony employee or the designer. I am definitely returning it now.

My wife and I just returned from a 3,100 mile driving vacation from Ohio to Georgia and Florida and back to Ohio. Before our trip, I called the Sony customer service phone number and emailed the Sony Style website regarding purchasing a second mounting base for the NVU83T so we could use it in our two vehicles. The sticky mounting base is not intended to be moved on a weekly basis. Both Sony sites refrerred me to each other but each eventually said the mounting base wasn't available as an accessory. Other GPS manufacturers such as Garmin and Magellan sell their mounting bases/cradles as accessories. Using the NVU83T is frustrating compared to other GPS's I've used. When inputting destination data such as the city of "SARASOTA", the keyboard does not gray out those values not found in its database. The Sony NVU83T requires you to input every character correctly or you get a "Not Found" error when you click on the Done button to start the search. The routing of all GPS's is sometimes questionable but the routing of the NVU83T is always questionable. It picked routes that no one would ever pick. We ended up using our low technology printed hardcopy atlas to plan the route and then turned on the NVU83T to find the last 15 miles. The NVU83T is very slow when asked to display the turn by turn directions after it has calculated a route. This should take seconds after the route has already been calcualted but it can take minutes. Even GPS's that are 2-3 years old display turn by turn directions after the route has been calculated faster than the NVU83T. The manual for using the NVU83T (from the PDF file on the DVD disk that came with the NVU83T) is mediocre at best. There is a yellow box that appears when there is a traffic message regarding your route. The yellow box typically displays a colon followed by some two digit number. The manual gives no hint as to what the two digit number means. We were not able to figure it out. I bought the Sony NVU83T GPS because of the larger 4.8" display and my past experience with other Sony audio and video equipment but this product does not live up to the Sony name.

New software updates in April, will make it even better, check it out www.sony.com/navusupport

I always loved sony products ,this just top off all the sony gear i ever bought. Plus i think for the price you cant go wrong!

I also had great hopes when I received this GPS today. It's the first GPS device I've tried so far. The manual that came with it was confusing and the software installed on my computer was useless. Two weeks later I'm still trying to figure out all the features moving through the menus. Route selection is not the greatest, however it does update itself quickly when you go off it's selected course. Hands free is not good at all, I've stopped using it. Clearity is the big problem with this unit, also you have no route/voice directions when using the hands free option. Overall, if Sony did some updates (software) on some of these problems I think it would be a good product. Expected more from a Sony product!!

I have had great hopes when I received this GPS today. It is the worst device I tried so far. In the past three months I have had a chance to try TomTom Go 920, Magellan 4250, and Garmin Nuvi 660. The Sony can't hold a candle to any one of these when it comes down to navigation. You will regret it if you follow the directions this GPS gives you. The routing engine is simply crazy. I have no idea why it wants to route you through towns and cities while there is a much faster route. The device looks great, Text-to-Speech commendable but routing is a nightmare. It is simply not up to the job. Please avoid it until Sony works on the routing engine.