Jensen NVX225 GPS
Jensen is no stranger to aftermarket car tech, but we’ve mostly looked at its in-car stereo units rather than the company’s portable navigation systems, so we were pretty anxious to take the Jensen NVX225 out for a test drive when it arrived at our office. On the upside, the NVX225 has a pretty affordable price tag of $299.99 and offers all the navigation basics for getting from point A to point B.
However, we found that it couldn’t compete with other similarly priced and featured GPS devices, so we’d have to recommend the Mio DigiWalker C230 and Garmin Nuvi 200 instead. Both of these systems have more user-friendly interfaces, better-looking maps, and even better, the Mio C230 offers text-to-speech functionality and costs less.
The Jensen NVX225’s design isn’t anything to write home about–not that we’re saying it’s ugly, just a bit ordinary. With a squarish shape and black-and-silver color scheme, it’s simple but lacks the attractiveness of a Mio C230 or Garmin Nuvi 200. Still, it’s light and compact at 3.6 inches wide by 3.1 inches tall by 0.8 inch deep and 6.8 ounces for easy portability between cars.
The NVX225 is equipped with a 3.5-inch diagonal TFT touch screen. The QVGA display is decent for viewing maps, but we felt colors were slightly washed out, making it difficult to see in bright sunlight, and text wasn’t quite as crisp as other systems.
The Jensen NVX225’s design isn’t anything to write home about–not that we’re saying it’s ugly, just a bit ordinary. With a squarish shape and black-and-silver color scheme, it’s simple but lacks the attractiveness of a Mio C230 or Garmin Nuvi 200. Still, it’s light and compact at 3.6 inches wide by 3.1 inches tall by 0.8 inch deep and 6.8 ounces for easy portability between cars.
The NVX225 is equipped with a 3.5-inch diagonal TFT touch screen. The QVGA display is decent for viewing maps, but we felt colors were slightly washed out, making it difficult to see in bright sunlight, and text wasn’t quite as crisp as other systems. You can change the map colors under the Settings menu, and the system can automatically switch maps to night colors if you choose that option.
The NVX225’s lackluster interface leaves much to be desired and it isn’t the most user-friendly, especially once you get deeper into the menus. For example, there were a couple of instances where we didn’t know how to get back to the previous screen. As such, we recommend giving the user manual a quick read before setting off on your first trip with the Jensen NVX225.
You will find the power button on top of the unit, as well as a shortcut to the Main Menu page. The left spine has an SD expansion slot, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a reset hole, and a mini USB port, while there’s an external antenna jack, a volume rocker, a master power on/off switch, and a power connector on the right side. The speaker is located on the back along with a stylus on the lower left side for easier text input, which is a good thing since the onscreen keyboard is pretty small.
The Jensen NVX225 comes packaged with an AC adapter, a car charger, a vehicle mount (windshield and dash), a USB cable, a soft carrying pouch, a companion CD with Canadian maps, and reference material.
The Jensen NVX225 is a basic, entry-level navigation system that comes equipped with a SiRFStarIII GPS chip and preloaded with TeleNav maps of the United States. Jensen includes a companion CD with Canadian maps if you need them, but it’ll require that you transfer them from your PC to the device or an SD card. To start planning a trip, tap Find & Go to enter an address, input coordinates, and select from your home and work addresses or a recently visited location.
The NVX225 can calculate directions by fastest, shortest, or most economical route and with or without toll roads, ferry ways, U-turns, and so forth. There are also different settings for different modes of transport, including car, bus, bicycle, and pedestrian mode. Alternatively, if you don’t need guidance to a specific destination, there’s a Follow tool that will simply track you as you drive around.
The system supports multistop trips, and contains a 3.75 million points-of-interest (POI) database. All the major categories are represented, including gas stations, lodging, and ATMs. You can search for restaurants by cuisine type, and there are more specialized interests, such as concert halls, amusement parks, and nightlife. We found the entries to be slightly out of date, as we searched for POI around San Francisco, and discovered several establishments that we knew to be out of business.
The Jensen NVX225 offers turn-by-turn, text-, and voice-guided directions but unfortunately, unlike the Mio C230, it does not support text-to-speech functionality. This means the system won’t speak actual street names; instead, you’ll get more generic directions like “Turn right in 100 feet.” For audible prompts, you can choose six different voices supports automatic route recalculation in three different languages (English, Spanish, or French).
There’s a Fly Over option to get a running demo of your journey or you can view an itinerary of text-based directions. If you don’t like a particular part of the route, there’s an Avoid button where you can maneuver around a point by a predetermined distance. The system also supports automatic route recalculation if you get off course, whether by accident or on purpose.
Maps are available in 2D and 3D view with day and night colors, and you can change it so north is always at the top of your screen or the direction in which you are traveling. There’s a cockpit view for when you’re driving that shows you the name of the current street, direction and distance to next turn, the time, and so forth. Finally, there are several safety tools, such as speed warnings, icons to alert you to unpaved roads, tolls roads, and more.
Because the Jensen NVX225 is such a basic GPS unit, it does not have a ton of cool features to speak of. There are a few, though. This device comes equipped with the SiRFStarIII GPS chip, which is the best chip available. The maps are from TeleNav, and they cover both the United States and Canada. The Canadian maps are not loaded into the device, but Jensen has packaged a CD ROM with all of the Canadian maps in with the device, so you will just have to get the Canadian maps from there.
One of the key features in this device is one that is becoming standard in all portable GPS units: the ability to use the GPS device to get driving directions as well as walking, biking, and bus directions. Since this GPS is so small, it would be great to use it while on foot. The difference between driving mode and pedestrian mode is that driving mode follows only streets, while pedestrian mode will give directions based on distance and not take roads into consideration.
The NVX225 contains a nice size database of points of interest (POI)–3.75 million of them to be exact. The POI feature is typical compared with other GPS units. You can search for things like gas stations, lodging, ATMs, restaurants, amusement parks, and more.
The navigation screen can be viewed in either 2D or 3D mode. This device will give you voice-guided directions, but not TTS functionality. The voice feature can be changed to either English, Spanish, or French. While navigating a route, this device does a pretty good job of picking the best route, based upon the user’s choices; it also does a nice job of quickly recalculating a route when you accidentally go off course. The navigation screen displays your course, directions, and some warning icons such as a speed warning, unpaved road warning, and others.
This unit does take 3-5 minutes to get a satellite fix from a cold start, which is a little high, but not bad. It holds a signal relatively well, although you may lose a signal while driving through big cities with tall buildings. Those problems are typical of GPS units, though, so I wouldn’t worry too much about that small issue. All GPS devices need a clear path to the sky in order to work correctly, which is why GPS units do not work well indoors most of the time.
Tags: bright sunlight, car stereo, GPS Guide, navigation basics, portability, portable navigation systems, qvga display, speech functionality, test drive, text to speech, touch screenRelated posts
Posted on August 4th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: GPS Guide
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