A solid, reasonably priced GPS

Category: Review on Navman iCN-520 In-Car GPS Navigation Unit

Posted by: 15-Oct-2006

Strengths: Small enough to take from car for pocket use, long-lasting battery charge

Weaknesses: Small touch-screen that's hard to use

The Navman iCN-520 is fully portable because it’s small – less than 5 inches by 3 inches, and only an inch thick – and it’s very light, weighing less than six ounces. The internal battery is good for about four hours, allowing you take it from your car for handheld use whenever you want. It slips in and out of the mounting bracket easily, and has a bright, colorful 3.5 inch touch screen, and comes with a stylus. It’s reasonably priced, and come ready to use straight out of the box. The unit will estimate your arrival time at your destination, which is a nice feature for the chronically late.

The touch screen is small, and using the stylus is pretty much mandatory, especially if you have chubby fingers – and poking the right spot with a stylus while driving isn’t always easy. The screen can be difficult to read in bright sunlight, and the time lag for Navman iCN-520 to locate a satellite can be long – up to five minutes, depending on your location. You can plan multiple destinations, but there’s no function allowing you to add waypoints and routes, and the SmartST software isn’t full GPS software, serving only to load maps onto the unit, and the unit has to be connected to the computer to do that.

Essentially, You get what you pay for. The Navman iCN-520 is inexpensive compared to a lot of other GPS units, but you miss out on the features and superior usability of bigger, better GPS systems. This could be a great starter GPS unit for someone who wants to try one out, or who just doesn’t have the money to spend on a higher-end unit.