A leader in the field of navigation, Harmon Kardon continues to impress with its unique, powerful line of GPS units. Offering a wide range of functions from the flashy to the necessary, most of the devices in Harmon’s lineup are a joy to use. However, we were slightly disappointed with the 310, a no-frills device geared towards the budget-conscious.

A Dull Window

The Harmon Karmon GPS 310 starts out with a 4-inch color WQVGA (480 x 272) resolution touch screen display. The color left a lot to be desired, as we found ourselves occasionally having to discern among reds, yellows, and oranges.
The unit enclosure is designed fairly well, roughly one-half inch thick, or slightly thicker than the average Smartphone or PDA. This discouraged us from carrying the device in a pocket, but any spills in the car were easily tolerated. There are no buttons on the device save for a recessed power switch on the top. We were impressed by the display brightness setting mounted as jog wheel on the top of the unit, rather than having to manipulate it via the menu interface.

Battery Life: Decent!

The 310 features a five-hour lithium-ion battery, and is in fact able to run for that amount of time at the lowest brightness setting. However, the 310 is geared towards multimedia which can cut down the time to a couple hours when playing music. In addition, the unit lacks a sleep or low power setting. In most cases though, the battery has little impact given the continual use of a car adaptor.

Ease of Use: Needs a Facelift

The interface may seem easy to use at first, given the main menu is divided into four quadrants. However, the uniform quadrant background color (gray) and small font did lead us to make a wrong decision every so often. Each menu was designed in a similar manner as well.
Another drawback was the main screen or home key. The Harmon Kardon 310 labels this button “Source,” causing unneeded confusion. It would have been better if “Home” had simply been used. However, we did find that the transitions between menus and map zoom were fast and reliable. On other units, the animation would hang, requiring a reboot of the device.

Performance: Not Bad

In any GPS navigation system, the goal is to get the user from point A to B as efficiently and quickly as possible. The Harmon Kardon 310 offers the option to navigate by point of interest (such as a gas station), address, postal code, or intersection. The 310 also offers the ability to avoid certain portions of a route, including borders, toll roads, ferries, and unpaved roads.
Once a destination has been selected, the unit offers a few options: shortest distance, maximum freeway use, etc. Should you miss a turn or exit the unit will automatically reroute and set you back on track. The rerouting algorithms worked well and so did the GPS chipset.

Features: Needs Improvement

The 310 uses a text-to-speech engine to relay the directions via voice, but we found that the tone was unnatural and difficult to understand at times. Besides acting as GPS, the 310 includes a multimedia player, but this was also disappointing. The software is only able to play MP3s and the device itself has no internal storage, just an SD card slot.

Few Benefits

• Fast rerouting system
• Smooth menu transitions
• Unit thickness enables it to withstand jolts and bumps

Disappointments

• Unnatural text-to-speech
• Limited multimedia player
• Difficult user interface
• “Source” rather than “Home” button

Want to compare this model to other H.K models? Click here to download Excel spreadsheet.

Primarily known for high end automobile car audio products, Harman Kardon entered GPS navigation unit market with three navigation units GPS 310, GPS 510, and GPS 810. Like other GPS navigation unit makers, Harman Kardon has the basic, mainstream, and high end models. The GPS 810 represents the top end model that includes Bluetooth, text-to-speech, real-time traffic, and media playback function.

Screen

The GPS-810 comes with 4.3 inch touchscreen with native resolution of 480 x 272. The screen was legible in any light condition including bright day time driving condition. There were some glare problem but not to the point of having to shade the screen to read it properly. The 4.3 inch screen size provides more than enough room to display routes clearly without having to sacrifice details.

Ease of use

The GPS-810 has very intuitive interface. Equipped with auto complete feature, inputting destination address is fairly easy. When you start typing in the name of the street, it will display most likely street name you are looking for. The main menu is not cluttered with numerous items. You have four options to start with and you can return to main menu via home button. Harman Kardon has done a great job simplifying the user interface. The included wireless remote knob is nice little addition to the unit. It is very easy to use and very intuitive in the way it interacts with the unit.

Reliability

The most important aspect of any GPS navigation unit is its accuracy. Most GPS navigation units provide fairly accurate routes and directions. Harman Kardon is no different. Tested with three different address inputs, the GPS-810 provided accurate route and driving direction. The Points of Interest destination was no different. There were some problem with route recalculation when I missed some turns on purpose. Instead of rerouting via most logical path, it simply asked to make U turns. This is not big problem as long as you get to your destination. But, missing an exit or turn pike could lead to some trouble.

Battery Life

The stated battery life of 4 hours was no where near the real life usage of around 2 to 3 hours. This might not be an issue if you plan to use it with car charger at all times. However, the media player playback and internal battery might entice some people to double as media player or share it with another vehicle. Using it as a video player quickly drained the battery from full to empty in one hours or so.

Features

GPS-810 is a feature laden unit. The unit is capable of receiving live traffic update right out of the box via Traffic Message Channel. You need to make sure you are in the area that is covered by Traffic Message Channel to receive traffic updates. The built in FM transmitter allows you to use your car stereo to listen to music or navigation prompts. The voices came through clean without distortion in my vehicle. The text-to-speech was pretty accurate with the street name pronunciation. Some units have very unnatural pronunciation which can be source of confusion and irritation. As with most other premium GPS navigation units, GPS-810 comes with Bluetooth connectivity for hands free calling. The media playback feature is limited to the medias encoded in AAC, MP3, WMA, WMV, and MPEG-4. Make sure your files are converted to these formats for propel playback. As of this review, there were no updates available for map or software updates.

Good features

• Very intuitive user interface
• Useful control knob
• Solid build quality
• Good screen size and crisp display
• Media playback function
• Mostly reliable routing and direction

Bad features

• Horrendous battery life
• No updates available
• Bad reroute calculation
• Some video formats not supported

Want to compare this model to other H.K models? Click here to download Excel spreadsheet.

	ChargerCity® GPS Vehicle Power Cable Car Charger Adapter for HARMAN KARDON GPS 510 810 310 810NA 510NA 310NA 200 300 800 w/9ft extended coiled cord & ChargerCity OEM Micro SD Card Reader/Writer (ChargerCity Manufacture Direct Warranty) Sale Price: $12.99

	ChargerCity® GPS Vehicle Power Cable Car Charger Adapter for HARMAN KARDON GPS 510 810 310 810NA 510NA 310NA 200 300 800 w/9ft extended coiled cord & ChargerCity OEM Micro SD Card Reader/Writer (ChargerCity Manufacture Direct Warranty) Sale Price: $12.99