Newsflash! Sony sat-nav “still an absolute piece of shit”
[photopress:nv_u50_cw_m_im.jpg,full,pp_image]
This little beauty is Sony’s NV-U50 sat-nav system, which you can buy right now. Don’t. After extensive testing, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s still an absolute piece of shit.
Back in May, I posted about the problem with the Sony’s maps: driving around Ireland, I spent most of the time with the sat-nav telling me that I was in the middle of a field because its maps were out of date (some bits of Glasgow are affected too – one-way systems that have been in place for a while that the satnav doesn’t know about). Sony promised to update the maps in August and of course, didn’t.
But that pales into insignificance when you look at the more fundamental problem: the system’s bollocks. It doesn’t let you enter street numbers and only accepts the first half of postcodes, although you can make it more precise by telling it which street junction you’re going for – which is handy if you ALREADY KNOW WHERE YOU’RE GOING AND THE NAMES OF THE SIDE STREETS. If on the other hand you’re using the system because you’ve no idea where you’re going, it’s about as useful as a roller-skating pig in a tu-tu.
The postcode thing is just crap: for example, Glasgow’s Great Western Road is approximately two and a half million miles long, and narrowing it down by half-postcode means you can get within, ooh, at least seven hundred miles of your destination. The other week I used the Sony to help me find a hotel on the Strathaven Road near East Kilbride, which again is a billion jillion miles long. I ended up hopelessly lost in the middle of nowhere, with the sat-nav telling me I’d reached my destination.
In the bad old days, to get anywhere new and unfamiliar you needed two things: a map, and a telephone to call for directions. Now, thanks to technology, all you need is a £200-plus sat-nav system, and a map, and a telephone.
Sony’s current advertising tagline is “like no other”. Yeah, other manufacturers’ sat-nav systems actually bloody work.
krem on August 7th, 2007
hi
I’ve been grant with a nav-50, friends gifted it to me, almost a year ago for birthday. I think it’s a crap tool.
sometimes it take 30 min to find satellites. same car, same position few days after that works fine.
it lack several roads in france too.
last month datas get self-erased, the nav-50 didn’t tells me the map wheren’t available. the sony support tells me to reinstall the software using my PC’s. my laptop & my desktop were using office 2007 that is not compliant with the soft provided. with no consideration for my garanted, Sony Support didn’t help. I had to find a computer with older office soft to fix my problem.
since, the home adress didn’t register and the calculation option is set on TMC, i didn’t have this option. so i had to change it on every calculation ! otherwise the system didn’t complaint it does as if i didn’t click!!!!!!
The POI that interest me for my professional use are the TOTAL GAS STATIONS, i owned a buissness card to refill at those stations only. The GPS print them on the screen, in 3D mode, only when they are at my side, not before ! that’s totally unuseable.
G.R. on August 10th, 2007
Dick,
I would be VERY interested in the firmware and map update.
And how about this: http://www.navu.sony-europe.com/navu/consumer/showProduct.do?reloadProduct=true&productId=1110
Anyone have that? I’ll rather pay anyone other than Sony for a copy…
Contact: gr at milk . no
Dick on August 12th, 2007
[removed by Gary]
Paul B on August 18th, 2007
Just sold my Nav u-50 today. The money I got will go towards the new Sony Sat Nav Model NV-U92T. I had a good experience with the Nav 50 and can’t complain too much about it; it never let me down too badly. I quickly installed newer firmware and after that it was fine. It had excellent signal acquisition and hold, even in town and wooded areas. The maps were out of date of course – there’s no such thing as an up-to-date map after all. I didn’t begrudge paying £42 for an update – it must be a mammoth task to keep these maps as current as possible, and the US government spent billions putting the GPS system into the sky, so smile and pay up! It doesn’t take people very long to start taking amazing technologies such as GPS and mobile phones for granted…
I will let you know how the NV-U92T performs soon.
mupwangle on August 19th, 2007
Surely, by now, this conversation must breach about a billion new laws on copyright. I would’ve thought that offering to give free copies of obviously copyrighted material on a public forum would be, for want of a better description, dumb-assed.
Gary on August 19th, 2007
I agree. I’ve removed the offending posts and disabled further comments.