Cool Yule rating: 3.5 stars $399Description: The Delphi NAV300 is a portable GPS navigation system that also plays music and movies, and also has Bluetooth connectivity. Mapping data comes from NAVTEQ and includes more than 1.6 million points of interest. The device supports MP3, WAV, MPEG-4, Xvid, AVI, GIF, JPG and PGN media file types. The 3.5-inch display has antiglare coating and comes with a 16-to-9 ratio and 320-by-240-pixel resolution.
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The biggest problem I had with this device was the small size of the display. At times I had trouble reading the estimated time of arrival display, as well as the names of the next street to turn. The small screen also made it very difficult to navigate through the menus and type in addresses. While the device comes with a stylus, I didn’t find it practical to use while in the car
The navigation system did work very well, though, routing me quickly to my destinations and recalculating easily when I missed a turn. I could program some favorite destinations and even plan a route through voice activation after recording the destination’s name vocally. After programming a home address, I could press the “Take me home” button from the main screen to return home. I could use the device to watch movies or play music, but not at the same time as the navigation. The built-in Bluetooth capabilities made it easy to make and answer phone calls through the device. These features were very useful and worked as advertised.
I also tested the $200 traffic receiver that connects to this (works with the NAV 300 and NAV 200 devices), which makes you aware of traffic conditions around you. The receiver obtains traffic conditions via the FM radio band and can automatically switch to a different frequency when necessary. When traffic conditions were reported, I received a message describing the problem, and given the choice to Ignore or Detour. The couple of times I received a report of bad traffic, I chose Ignore and when I got to the location of the traffic jam, nothing was there. This indicated either that the incident had already been cleared, or it was a very old report. While it was nice knowing that traffic conditions were up ahead, the incident data needs to be removed quicker from the system when they are cleared.
