Pros

• Most incredibly packed POI database anywhere
• Accurate map database
• Right on the money GPS positioning
• Amazingly super sensitive GPS antenna
• Excellent voice prompts

Cons

• Little on the large side
• Poor battery life
• Inability to offer compass direction names for streets if not entered by user (i.e. N. Main St must be entered instead of entering Main St. and N Main St and S Main St show as choices.)
• No automatic night mode

Desires

• Bluetooth integration for sharing information (such as Address Book) and GPS signal with PDA or Smartphone devices
• Wi-Fi locater with hotspots marked on map (ultimate wardriving!)

The Bottom Line
SvenOnTech really enjoyed this unit. In fact, we really struggled to find a list for the Cons below because outside of the poor battery life, there really aren’t any cons to the Navman iCN 750. Sure, there is room for improvement but that can be said of any product available in the consumer market. That’s why manufactures continue to release newer units. We have faith that some of the short-comings of the iCN will be fixed in future releases and thus we really won’t make issue about them and make them reason not to purchase this fine specimen.

Having reviewed many GPS units in the last few years, we think we have a pretty good feel for this guy. We used it and abused it and drove all over Northern California with it for nearly two months and this thing just didn’t fail on us. No surprises, no mistakes. It’s rock solid and while a bit pricey, it really may well be worth it’s weight in gold. Yes, it’s really that good.
In a world of such uncertainty, the Navman iCN helps quiet your heart at least when you’re driving off to your next destination.

Overall:4/5 - Ease of Use:5/5 - Battery:2/5 - Usefulness:5/5 - Durability:4/5 - Price:4/5

Recommended
Yes

Full Review
Navman has been doing in-car GPS (global positioning system) for nearly a decade and with each passing year and new product, SvenOnTech has seen amazing improvement. When we first reviewed Navman’s Palm offering a few years back over at our sister site, MyPalmLife, we liked what we saw. Not being a push over, we told it like it was and made some suggestions. Strike us silly if the good folks at Navman didn’t listen and take notice and added them to their later offerings.

We were sent two units, an entry line model and a top-of-the-line model, prior to public release and instead of taking the hype-road of getting some fluff review out before anyone else, we took our time with these puppies and are able to tell our readers if either one of these are worth the money.

This review will focus on the top-of-the-line model, the iCN 750, as it’s just too darn cool to keep you from. We’ll be sure to get you the review on the iCN 330 soon, too, because we’ll tell you this much, it ain’t a “bottom-of-the-line” model by any means.

Clocking over 2,000 miles on the iCN 750, we think we have a pretty good amount of data to know if this has what it takes to get you to your final destination. With trips to California’s largest lake, Clear Lake, as well as to a town I never even knew existed until July, Oakhurst, California — it’s just south of Yosemite National Park — to more famous places like San Francisco, SvenOnTech really put the iCN 750 through the ringer. Now find out if it rang our happy bell or not.

Packaging

In the years SvenOnTech has reviewed many different products, we’ve always been impressed with two manufacturers when it comes to packaging. Navman is one of the two.
The box is a wealth of information on the outside noting most of its functionality and features. Anyone could go to Best Buy, Circuit City, or any other fine electronics store and know immediately what this will do for them by merely picking this up off the shelf.

Once purchased and brought to your vehicle for immediate use, you’ll be impressed with how everything is packaged as much as you’ll be impressed when its out of the GPS is out of the box and guiding you to your next destination. Everything is packed in a nice and orderly fashion. Right there on top is the main event, the iCN 750, all by itself ready for your removal. Under the flap you’ll find more items such as software and manuals. Dig deeper and you’ll see the mount and power supply. A nice touch to all of this is the accompanying case with a soft cleaning cloth for the screen. Nice. Very nice and all very well packaged.

Features
The Navman iCN 750 is filled with features. The first feature you notice is the gorgeous high resolution screen that measures a large 4 inches. Turn the unit around and you’ll find an interesting peep hole of sorts on it. That, my friend, is the 1.3 megapixel camera that allows you to share pictures of places you have been with others or just to keep them in your own library for quick “Go to” accessibility when returning to your destination. You’ll also notice many little holes which are for the built-in loudspeaker that produces very good – loud – sound. Moving down more to the other side of the unit you’ll come to a flip-up object that is the SiRF Star III Generation 2 GPS antenna. Don’t worry about the flipping part, this bad boy is so powerful, we NEVER bothered!

Software wise, you get the already mentioned NavPix which allows for touching a picture of a place and going directly to it without the need of entering state, city, and street address information. Standards such as turn-by-turn navigation, favorites, home (Get Me Home), and a healthy POI database are all here. If you get off track, then Back on Track will insure you are quickly put back on the correct road. As to the roads, you can either see them on your screen as 2D, 3D, or 2D turn-by-turn ala Google Maps style. Voice guidance stitches all this together in an easy to understand male or female voice.

Installation
Plug-in-and-go is the latest thing in GPS world and the Navman iCN 750 is more than on board with this philosophy by even naming it Drive-Away. The first time you turn on the iCN 750, you’ll be greeted with a nice little demo after you select your language of choice and some other minor options. The demo is short and sweet and really covers just about everything you’ll need to know on how to get going to point B in just a few seconds. If you feel a bit over whelmed with all of this new fancy stuff, you can leave the demo to run every time you turn on the unit until you’re comfortable enough to use this powerful handheld GPS device “free-flying”. Navman wants to ease you into this and not rush you down the street.

Mounting the suction cup onto your windshield is a piece of cake. Press the cup onto the window, press the lever down, let go. Done. Mounting the iCN 750 onto the mount can be a bit tricky the first time, but after a few trails at it, you’ll soon be doing it while driving – err – waiting at a stop light.

Okay, now you’re ready to go. Remember, this is a plug-and-go device, so all the maps for the U.S. and Canada are already on the built-in hard drive. Let’s drive somewhere!

Points of Interest
Points of Interest, or POI, have been one of the major stickler points with me and GPS. While previous versions of Navman have done well in this area, it had room for improvement. Our last unit didn’t even have McDonalds in its database, the largest fast-food chain in the world. Now it does. Other areas that seem to be ignored by many GPS units is tourist attractions. ATMs are another well needed item that seem to be a void in the GPS world. In short, most POIs that are in GPS units just aren’t things most would really be looking for. When one is on a road trip, food, gas, and parking are the biggies. Tourist attractions are another. ATMs (you know, you need money for all those other things) rounds out the list. These are POIs. Not marinas, police stations, libraries, and city halls.

Since POIs are one of the largest lacking features of nearly every GPS unit we’ve seen and reviewed, Navman was up against the heavy immediately with us. The first thing we checked was its POI database and yup, we check on the McDonalds, thing. As we already stated, they’re in now. We then looked for other common places like Home Depot, K-Mart, Target, Starbucks, and so on. Every one of them was found locally to us. Sweet. Curious, we then choose the Nearest POI option and not only did it find many things we had hoped it would, it even found things we didn’t even know were nearby. (Hey, I have no need for a nail saloon. Okay?) We were impressed…mighty impressed.

One really incredible feature Navman has brought out of the POI concept is quick POI buttons. Two buttons placed on the top right of the unit bring quick accessibility to nearby parking or gas stations.

I was able to test the gas station feature out first hand in a time of desperate need. You know how things are when you’re in a panic. You don’t think straight. Who’s going to be able to remember how to drill down a few menus to find your closest gas station when you’re freaking out that you’re car is about to putter out and you might have to walk to a gas station? Yikes! Man, that button with the gas pump icon is perfect. I just pressed on it and immediately came up a list of nearby stations. In fact, I had just passed one! No worries, though, I was able to pick the next one on the list and within two minutes I was pulling up into a Union 76 gas station most likely on my last tablespoon of petro.

Dang, did this feature pay off big time! The nice thing about the station the Navman iCN 750 found was that it was on the other side of the freeway and two blocks off of it. I would have never found it by eye alone. Again, I was on fumes and may have not made it to the next gas station on my side of the freeway. Navman saved me.

As to the parking feature, I don’t live in a metropolitan area where people are stacked up upon one another in the thousands (read: sky scrappers) so parking isn’t an issue for me. However, I did try it out on a trip to San Francisco and like the gas station, it pointed out a good selection of high priced parking options for me to take if I had chosen that route. Lucky for me, I didn’t need a parking garage.

Lastly, before we move on, we wanted to point out how one of our largest complaints for POIs has been heard by Navman. We have always desired to have a powerful search utility and Navman has answered that with the iCN 750. The first selection that you have when going into your POI or Nearest POI is the search selector. With it, you simply search for what you’re looking for. No need to figure out if your favorite grocery store is in Shops or whatever category because the search feature searches them all. Looking for a favorite place to eat is also made easy with this powerful search utility. Boy, has it paid off on finding me many a Starbucks while traveling home tired on late evening trips. This feature alone is worth ignoring the competition and just grabbing the iCN off the shelf to take home.

Road Test (Clear Lake, CA)
My wife’s mother has a summer home with her husband in a Northern California town called Lakeport. It sits just on the south end of a very shallow but large lake. Because of the lakes mass of kelp like vegetation and thin layer of water, the lake is usually warmer than most pools. This makes water skiing and waverunning very enjoyable. Heck, the warm water makes you want to munch out!

This year, like last, we stayed in our time share in Nice, just twenty minutes west of Lakeport. I tested another GPS brand to get us to the same location last year and it was off by an amazing five miles! Thankfully I knew where the place was (unlike last year) so I wasn’t too concerned if Navman had the same map data. Fortunately, it didn’t.

Navman mapped out the quickest course to our beautiful lake-front time share in no time and off we were to a weeks full of water, sun, and fireworks. Sitting on the same Interstate for two hours is always the tough part of this trip but once we jumped onto the state road and headed east, things started to become interesting. But just before we went off into the sun set, literally, we needed some fuel for the body and the POI database was able to find a restaurant that our entire family would enjoy.

The trip into Clear Lake isn’t a difficult one. Basically you take an Interstate and a state road. In fact, our time share is on that state road so there really isn’t much room for mistakes, other than just short changing your checkered flag by a few miles like last years GPS did to us. The twisty road through the hills and the few fork splits do add some uncertainty to your trip so having a GPS show you your route right before your eyes is very helpful and comforting. The iCN was a comfort the whole way through the hills of Wine Country of California as we neared our summer vacation spot. Never losing its signal from the handful of satellites tracking our journey, the Navman was rock solid the entire trip down to the glorious words uttered by Ms. Navman, “Destination to the left.” And it was to our left.

We used the iCN our entire week while at Clear Lake and traveled to many lake-side towns and never once had an issue. Our addresses were easily found and POIs such as K-Mart and a movie theater found without a hiccup. Hitting that “Get Me Home” soft-button that final morning at Clear Lake as we left our time share was pressed with confidence that we would be home without any problems. We were right.

Road Test (San Francisco)
When SvenOnTech gets a GPS to test, I like taking it to the concrete jungle known as San Francisco. With the high buildings and confusing streets, there really couldn’t be a more perfect test track.

I entered my destination, a new Starbucks on Third and Market, first by entering the ZIP Code (man, this is my favorite feature as I no longer have to dial in long city names!) and then the street , and finally the “house” number. Within a few seconds, I was off.

When I entered the toll-plaza on the Oakland side of Interstate 80, I wondered if Navman would be able to get me to Starbucks in the most efficient manner. Truth was, I could take an exit, make a left at the off ramp and travel up the street and then turn onto busy Market Street. But sure enough, when I did finally get off I-80, Navman took me the “back” way and I avoided the mess on Market Street. Brilliant!

Going home wasn’t as graceful. I had parked in an alley off of Third Street as I was performing some services for the Seattle-based coffee house. The alley was a one way street, so I was forced deeper into the back-streets of San Francisco. While routing me home, I quickly looked at the map and noticed that I could make a left onto Jessie St in front of me which would taken me straight to New Montgomery Street. That in turn would have gotten me closer to I-80 and onto the Bay Bridge. Instead, Navman had me continue down Annie Street and make a right on Mission. The iCN was making me perform a four block U-Turn and ironically using Market Street as part of that U-turn. Ugh. I followed for the sake of the review and I’ll tell you, I lost my enthusiasm for the Navman’s quick routing to Starbucks earlier that morning. But hey, it’s not the end of the world…just the slowing of it.

I did notice, after I missed my turn back to Third Street, that it took the iCN a bit to reroute me. I understand that it was basically re-calculating my entire route instead of just small section of San Francisco to get me back to I-80 but when you’re in a large city with a vast amount of streets that are passing options for you as you drive, this can become a little nerve racking. My advice when this occurs, drive slow.  (Note that I reviewed my notes from the last Navman we reviewed and a similar problem occurred near Market Street in that review and it took between 30 to 60 seconds to reroute me then. So, looks like they’ve improved it a bit.)

The San Francisco trip was the final trip we took in our testing with the Navman iCN 750. During our testing, we never flipped up the antenna and I was curious how that would do in the City. Just fine; as it had any other environment. In fact, on the way out of San Francisco while traveling east bound on the Bay Bridge, I never lost the signal to the GPS satellites. I only lost my tracking when I entered the tunnel at Treasure Island but regained it only seconds after losing it. Unfortunately, my externally mounted XM radio antenna couldn’t say the same. I had to wait until I was back in Oakland before the smooth jazz of Watercolors returned to my JL speakers.

Road Test (Central Valley, California)
One trip I took the Navman on was a long business trip through the Central Valley. Leaving the Stockton area, I traveled to a place called Oakhurst. Until a week prior to that, I didn’t even know of this town. It’s a small tourist town just south of world famous Yosemite National Park. The iCN navigated me there just fine while I listened to my Podcast from iPod in my car system. The drive was long, so I got to listen to two episodes of This Week in Tech that morning.

After Oakhurst, I was off to Visalia. This is a “sub-urb” of Fresno just about an hour south of it. So I started my morning going deep south-east and now I was going even further south but headed back west. I was far from home at this point. Once again, I had to travel curvy, two-lane, narrow highways. It was long yet not bad as my Podcasts where well loaded.
When I concluded my job for Visalia, I headed up north to Madera which is just north of Fresno. The trip took over an hour to conclude but like the previous two destinations, I arrived to my job site without a hitch. Getting home was just as easy.

I offer no specifics in this trip log only because they would bore you. With a lot of open California highway, the most difficult part of this eight hour road trip was insuring I got where I needed to town I had never heard of and back to other larger towns from it. Navman succeeded perfectly with this. This cemented my faith in the Navman. That’s why I found it worthy to mention.

Map Accuracy
Navman is using the latest Tele Atlas map data in conjunction with its SmartST 2006 software. The SmartST will estimate where an address should be if it’s not in the Tele Atlas database which helps for new homes or business located on a street that’s been around for some time. Overall, we found the maps database to be pretty darn accurate though we did find some homes as old as two years missing from the maps.

One really odd encounter was when we entered an address and the street name did not appear in our list after completing the ZIP code of our pastor’s house. When we used city name instead of the ZIP code, there it was. Having already entered more than hundred addresses using the ZIP code and never having this issue, we reported this to Navman. What we found out was that the ZIP code was basically zoned incorrectly and that carried over into the map database. In short, it wasn’t Navman’s fault, but rather Tele Atlas or even the U.S. government that creates these zones. Hope the mailman knows where he’s going.

Navman really attempts to simplify things; however, its heavy use of exit numbers on highways is done in a poor manner. Navman relies too heavily on exit numbers as in most cases as it’s the only name being shown for your next turn. This is not very good in California where the use of exit numbers has just begun being used and thus those very exit numbers are usually indicated by a sign at the exit itself which gives a driver little time to react to safely exit the highway at such high speeds. Why the street names are not used most of the time, I couldn’t say. Sometimes they appear yet most of the time they don’t.
One example I can give you is while testing the unit around town, I entered in the Old Spaghetti Factory as a destination from the Nearest POI one night on the way to grab a to go order. I took Interstate 5 north as I always do and Navman was on board with me on the route. Since OSF is right off the freeway, there’s not much Navman could have done to deviate from my regular route. But there it was on the display, my next turn was EXIT 476 and that’s it. No EXIT 476 / MARCH LANE as it should have been. March Lane is Stockton, California’s most major through way in all of the city and for it on to be shown by name as an exit really surprised me. Again, this is just one example of many times this kind of lack of street naming appeared. (Also note, county and state roads seemed to be effected by this abnormality.)

Our final compliant with the map accuracy has to do with compass names of streets and entering them into the GPS. In previous Navman units, if one didn’t know the compass direction of the street, it didn’t matter as Navman would offer them up to you in a list. Not on the iCN 750. If you don’t know the full street name and it’s direction, you’ll be presented with a blank list which is a bummer since most people rarely give full street names. For example, when I called a new pizza joint locally and asked what their address was, they told me they were on Main Street. I entered that in and guess what? No Main Street in this neighboring town I sometimes frequent. Since I don’t live in this town, I didn’t realize it was W. Main St. and that’s why I couldn’t find it. When I later found out it was West Main St., I checked the Navman to see if was in the database and it was. If I had only been told the correct street name…or if Navman just would have not dropped the wonderful feature off its previous version, I would have found it.

Antenna
As mentioned in the feature list above, the Navman iCN uses a SiRF Star III Generation 2 antenna. It flips out from the back of the unit and has an option to connect an external antenna to the device.

There are two things that really and thoroughly impressed me with this unit and they were the POI database and this antenna. It is so strong — I mean mind blowing strong — that you do not have to flip out the antenna. In fact, when I pulled it out of the box and powered it up for the first time, I was stunned to find an active signal from my kitchen within my two-story home! Because of this strength, satellite pickup time is lowered and you’ll be rolling in no time at all.

Battery Life
Navman states 2-4 hour of battery use on its web site and this is a very accurate figure. We found that in one trip, our battery was nearly dead in two hours and on another just fewer than four.

To add insult to injury, we found that after leaving a fully charged iCN unit in the car for only two days, we only had 50% battery left! We couldn’t figure it out as we are certain that we turned off the unit and nothing seemed to be pressing on the power or camera button to activate it. Further, we did have the setting enabled to shut off the unit after five minutes of no use while in battery mode. So why it was nearly half dead in two days of nonuse, we have the faintest idea.
In short, don’t rely on the battery on this unit and always have your DC power cord with you.

User Interface (UI)
The most important aspect to getting you there is getting you there in a way that is easy and understandable. The iCN accomplishes both in a very well suited user interface that will have anyone be able to find a destination with ease…and then be able to understand what’s before them in the navigation mode.

The menu system is very easy to understand and quick buttons such as Recent Trips, Get Me Home, Favorites, and POIs are easily accessible with skinny and fat fingers. Getting around other aspects of the GPS unit, such as settings, is just as easy.
When pressing the soft buttons, I did notice a lag on some of them. For example, when hitting “Select Destination”, even though I saw the red outline of the button, indicating I had touched it, the next screen took some time to come up. This took some getting use to as when I first used started using this, I would repeatedly hit the button thinking I had not got it (there’s a lot to be said for tactical feedback) and then when the next screen did finally come up, but previous presses ended up pressing something in that spot taking me another selection I didn’t want. Why a “wait” indicator doesn’t come up, like it does in other areas, I’m not sure but it would be nice to have it in these cases.

You’ll find a soft-thumbwheel appear in many screens that contain more than a page of content. For me, this wheel just wasn’t my cup of coffee. It was slow to react to my movement and because of that, would over shoot my desired selection many times. The wheel on the right side for the volume would have been a better way to scroll through the list than this fake thumbwheel. But you know, it may just be me and others may love it.

One thing I would have liked to have seen was either an automatic night mode or an easier way to activate this. The screen is bright and sometimes out on country roads, it’s too bright and having to drill down three taps makes things a bit more difficult than it should be. Since there is a built-in clock that synchronizes with the satellites overhead, it shouldn’t be hard to program the iCN what hours are dark ones and automatically flip into night map mode or at least give a pop-up window asking if it’s okay to change into that mode.

NavPix
NavPix is the “go to by picture” feature of unit with its built-in camera. If you come to a spot that you know you’ll be returning to, pop your Navman off the mount and take a picture of it. Once you have, you can name it and save it . The next time you want to return to that picture perfect place, find the picture in the album and tap on it and then tap on to “Go to” and you’ll be back on your way.

The great thing about this feature is it allows you to share with other people the places you have gone. Navman has so wisely put a watering hole together for other iCN 750 users at it’s web site so the entire world can share in its pictures. Create an account and upload your pictures (the iCN takes care of the coordinates for you in the background) and then download others data for a place you’d like to maybe visit. The NavPix portal is even searchable. If you don’t have a specific place in mind, then browse. Either way, this feature expands the power of an already powerful GPS unit.

Interestingly enough, Navman doesn’t push another ingenious aspect of the camera and that’s ability for documentation. When many of us are involved in an accident, half of the time we’re all hard pressed just to find a pen let alone a camera to record the damage. But since you now have a GPS unit with a camera built-in, this is no longer a problem! The 1.3 megapixel resolution is more than enough to get an idea of what the damage is like for insurance and peace officers reports. Granted, there’s no flash so low light situations will be difficult to document, but again, that’s not what this was designed for. This is just SvenOnTech’s own added “undocumented” trick that you can also use this GPS unit for. (Maybe we’ll find a flash on the next version because of tip!)

Driving Blind
One feature GPS manufacturers are striving to perfect is voice navigation. Navman is excelling in this goal and when we received our pre-production release, we didn’t have the windshield mount in our package. No worries, we pulled what we like to call an Andrew. Mr. Golden, President of Golden Public Relations, told SvenOnTech at CES how he likes to, “drive around with the GPS on passenger seat next to me.” He was putting up a mighty claim of navigation without visual confirmation. Mmm, welp, we were kinda forced to do it, too, so we did. Guess what? Mr. Golden’s method works.

Navman’s iCN 750 (and the other unit we are reviewing for that matter) is so good audibly, that we were able to drive with it on the seat next to us. Heck, we turned it over so the screen was facing down to get better audio from it. That’s how confident we became with it!

Now I’ll be straight with you, I didn’t try this in San Francisco, but some areas I did do this in weren’t exactly the easiest of intersections, either. So, yes, you could use this blind if needed.

Etc.
We had to tell you of some things that just didn’t seem to fit anywhere else. For example, when you go to calibrate the screen, the instruction window informs you to use your “stylus” and tap the plus point. Mmm, the iCN doesn’t come with a stylus. This is obvious a built-in message of the operating system, Microsoft CE, being used by the iCN that Navman can’t change. Still, funny.

One thing we loved, as little as it seems, is the ability to disable the Navman CYA message warning you not to operate the device while driving. Every time you turn on the unit, this message comes up…unless you disable it. Thank you, Navman!
If your route contains a toll, you will be forewarned. For my San Francisco route, I had to go through the Bay Bridge Toll Plaza and I was warned about this several times. It is a nice little feature to have, though oddly enough when I went over the San Mateo Bridge a few weeks earlier, which also requires a toll, I received no such message.

The Christmas List (Desires)
We would really love to see Bluetooth integration on this unit. It would make file sharing easier and expand the possibilities even more of this already stunning unit. One would be able to send addresses to the GPS from their phone or PDA removing the need to enter it in by hand on the iCNs screen itself.

Also with Bluetooth, it could send the audio from the device to your cars speakers (if equipped) for your turn by turn to be heard clearly and easily on your cars stereo. Most such equipped cars would also mute the sound of music coming from the audio system as well.

And since this is a Christmas list, why not ask for a Wi-Fi locator? You know, slap in an 802.11 chipset and sniff as you drive. When it finds a hotspot, slap it somewhere on the map with an icon like it does POIs. Heck, just use the wardriving icon, )( , to fully legit.

Price: $799.95 (USD)

Product information

Tags: gps, navigation, navman, icn, 750, in-car