Navigon 8410 Review

At the IFA 2009 in Berlin Navigon released their new navigation systems: The Navigon 8410 and the Navigon 8450 Live are Navigon’s top products at the moment. MobilityMinded had the chance to review the 8410 and take a good look at the new possibilities of this Navigation device.

What’s in the box

First of we’ll take a look of what’s in the box. The version I got to review luckily was no pre-production model so what I found in the reviewed version should be in the retail version too.

Here is what’s in the box:

• Navigon 8410 navigation device
• screen protector
• pouch
• windscreen mount
• USB-cable and a wall-connector
• 12V charging cable (with a built-in TMC antenna)
• 2 GB Micro-SD card (The SD-card has around 490 MB of free space)

The windscreen mount is of a very good quality. The device can be connected secure and safely in the windscreen mount. And the suction cup sticks very well to the windscreen. Besides that the windscreen mount also has a mini USB connector. It is possible to connect the 12V charging cable to the windscreen mount.

The 12V charging cable has an built-in TMC antenna and when the charging cable is connected to the windscreen mount you’ll receive current traffic information. The TMC-antenna isn’t really perfect. The TMC reception sadly wasn’t stable all the time and I got the feeling that the fact that there isn’t a separate antenna is the cause of the lack of the quality of the TMC reception.

Specifications

Design

Top

The top of the device has a longer than normal power button. This button does not stick out of the device and therefore is a little bit hard to push.

Bottom

The bottom of the device has a micro-SD-card slot. The micro SD card that was shipped in the 8140 was 2GB and had a little bit over 490MB of free space. Right next to the Micro-SD-Card slot there is a reset button. The bottom also has a 3.5mm headphone jack and a mini-USB connector.

Left

The left side of the 8410 has a connector for a DVB-T antenna. The DVB-T antenna is not included and needs to be purchased separately.

Right

The right side of the device is left completely without any buttons or connectors.

Back

The back of the device has a connector for the windscreen mount.

Front

The front of the device has a 5″ touchscreen display. This screen is really large and crystal clear. The front has a nice, brushed steel border.

Putting the Navigon 8410 to the test

I’ve used the Navigon 8410 a little under 2 weeks. In these two weeks I drove quite some kilometers to get a good impression of the device. When the device is booted there are 4 options in the main menu: Navigation,TV, Media Player and Phone. Sadly, because the DVB-T antenna isn’t included I could not test the TV functionality of the Navigon 8410. The other functionalities will be reviewed in this chapter.

Navigation

Navigating with the Navigon 8410 is really great especially because of the 5″ touchscreen display. I own a Navigon 5110 myself and there is just a big difference on screen size between the 5110 and the 8410. The screen is not only very large but also crystal clear.

Entering a destination is very easy with the smart recognition keyboard. When entering a destination the complete keyboard is displayed. If you’d like to navigate to “Breda” for example and enter the “Br” – Irrelevant combinations are grayed-out.

When the destination is entered Navigon calculates different routes and let you choose which route you would like to drive. The difference in these routes is normally the length of the route in kilometers compared to the length of the route in Minutes (of Hours). When you select a route the Navigon 8410 gives you directions of the selected route.

While driving towards your destination you have some options. The Destination tab gives the possibility to add an interim destination or add a POI on your Route.

The Route tab lets you change the route profile, block a closed road, change to a different route or give a turn-by-turn list of your route.

The Services tab also gives you information about your route. For example the traffic information (which is retrieved via TMC) or a parking near your destination.

The General tab shows options to change the view from 2D to 3D, change the day and night view and go to the general device settings.

Navigon has some nice features build-in while navigating. Some of these features can be found in any navigation device like speeding camera’s, speed assistance (gives you information when you’re speeding) and Reality View. But there are also some features included in this device that I haven’t seen in any other device yet.

Clever Parking: One of these features is Clever Parking. Clever parking  gives you parking possibilities near your destination. Pushing the “Parking” button gives you a list of parkings near you and let you navigate towards this parking.

Real City 3D: The maps on the Navigon 8410 have Real City 3D. This means that mainly buildings are 3D rendered while navigation trough a city. Unfortunately I didn’t have the opportunity to make some decent screenshots of the Real City 3D, but I can tell that this functionality is really impressive.

Voice Recognition: Navigon likes to call this feature “Voice Interaction Pro”. Sadly in my opinion it doesn’t work the way it should work.
With the Voice Interaction Pro it is possible to enter a destination by speaking to the device. This might sound good, but I think Navigon should leave it out. The Voice recognition just isn’t stable enough and doesn’t find the destination I say. Is that any problem ? No absolutely not.

In my opinion voice recognition should either work well, or should not be implemented. There is a very good way to enter a destination with the smart recognition keyboard and that is more than enough. Anything else should not be implemented in a device unless it works extremely well.

Overall navigation:

Overall, navigating with the Navigon 8410 is a real pleasure. The large, clear screen gives enough information and displays the information very well. The calculated routes are accurate and the estimated time of arrival is also calculated well.

There’s one downside of the screen while navigating and that when you’re driving around 100 KM/h or more the screen refresh isn’t as frequent as I had hoped for. When you’re driving slower, the map zooms in and the screen refresh is normal again.

Media Player

From the media player it sadly wasn’t possible to take any screenshots. I’ve been testing the Media player with both pictures (JPG) and sound files (MP3) and I must say I am a little bit disappointed about the overall possibilities of the Media Player. It seems that the development of the media player is in an very early stage and doesn’t work yet the way it should work.

Displaying pictures in a slideshow luckily was no problem, but playing an MP3-file simply wasn’t possible. I’ve tried several MP3 songs which I copied over to the SD-card and sadly none of them played on the Navigon. Playing them on my computer wasn’t a problem at all.

Phone

The Navigon 8410 can  also be used as a Bluetooth Handsfree Carkit. In these days where driving and calling just really don’t go together, a built-in Bluetooth Handsfree kit in a Satellite Navigation System is a really good option. In the screenshots below I’ll describe  the functionality of the Bluetooth Hands-free kit in the Navigon 8410 in detail.
First it is important to know that the device I connected to the Navigon 8410 is an iPhone 3GS.

First you have to do is turn Bluetooth on your device to “on” and set up a connection between your phone and the Navigon. When the connection is established, the Navigon copies all the phonebook contacts to the Navigon’s internal memory. The fist time this took me around 12-15 minutes (I’ve got around 300 contacts in my phonebook). That sounds a lot, but I didn’t have any problems with that, because all my contacts were transferred perfectly.

If your phonebook is loaded into the Navigon you have multiple options to make calls.

You can choose to dial a number with the on-screen keyboard, via the phonebook, via recent calls or via Voice command. In my opinion the Phone Book option or the Recent Calls option are the best and fastest ways to dial a contact.

The Phone Book has the same intelligent keyboard where irrelevant options are grayed out and that works really well.

When a contact is selected it is not only possible to call that contact, but also navigate to their home or work address.

When you’re on the road an you’ve got an incoming phone call the Navigon asks if you would like to accept or reject the phone call. When you’re  in a phone call you see the contacts name with telephone number and a few options. I had to set the volume to 100% when in a call and driving on the highway. The sound from the Navigon could be a little bit louder.
It is also possible to mute the phone call so that the person on the other side of the line doesn’t hear what you’re saying. When the conversation is a little bit longer you can also go back to the navigation screen during your phone call, but you don’t receive any vocal driving instructions while you’re on the phone.

Overall I liked the Phone capabilities of the Navigon 8410 very much. Everything works really well. The Navigon 8410 is a really good alternative especially if you don’t have a Bluetooth carkit in your car already.

Overall thoughts and wrap-up

Overall I think the Navigon 8410 is a really good device. The large, crystal clear screen is one of the best features of the device.

Navigation

The Navigon 8410 does what it needs to do. Navigating around with the Navigon 8410 is a real pleasure. The Navigon 8410 calculates the routes correctly and gives very good and detailed instructions. The 3D reality view is very good

Media Player

You shouldn’t buy the Navigon 8410 for it’s Media Player functionality since this doesn’t work the way it should work, but in my opinion that is just an “extra” – feature which this device doesn’t need to have included. The picture-display options work ok, but playing an MP3 file is almost impossible.

Phone

The other extra feature – using the device as a Bluetooth carkit luckily does work very well and can be used for anyone who doesn’t have a Bluetooth carkit built in his car.