Navigon 7200T GPS Navigation Review
Navigon has worked itself into a fairly well known brand in United States. While not as widely recognized as Garmin or TomTom, it has good reputation in Europe and is enjoying a better brand recognition today. The 2100 model offered more feature and bigger screen compared to Garmin and TomTom at cheaper price. However, its performance was not quite up to Garmin’s or TomTom’s standard. The Navigon 7200T is intended to challenge higher end Garmin and TomTom models.
Screen
Navigon 7200T comes with 4.3 inch widescreen. The touchscreen is very crisp and vibrant. The auto Day/Night mode adjusts your screen’s brightness according the ambient light. I had no problem viewing the screen in bright day light. The touchscreen is more responsive than the 2100 model which had some lagging and lack of sensitivity problem with its touchscreen.
Ease of use
The interface is easier and more intuitive than the 2100. The predictive text helps tremendously when completing an entry into the unit. The non QWERTY keyboard is a small downside to inputting an address into the unit. As with 2100 model, there are four options from the start up. New Destination, My Destinations, Take Me Home, and Voice Entry are self explanatory options. The Voice Entry option was pretty accurate on most cases. I only had to repeat few street names that were very simple. Otherwise operating the GPS unit is very straight forward. I would have liked to see more shortcuts so I didn’t have to navigate the submenus.
Reliability
The 2100 suffered from time lag between cold boot to initial satellite acquisition. On some occasions, it took close to 10 minute to acquire satellite signal. The 7200T took less than 5 minutes to acquire satellite signal from the cold boot. The entering address for destination was easy and convenient with the auto complete feature. The Voice Entry had some problem with certain street names but was overall accurate and very useful. The overall routing was accurate with no unnecessary routing. The preloaded map was very up to date with exception of few new roads that were not listed during the routing. The rerouting algorithm was spot on as well. Overall, the 7200T is good improvement over the 2100 in terms of reliability and accuracy.
Battery life
The battery life is rated at 2 hour and it was pretty good estimation of real life usage. While 2 hour seems like very small, you get the car charger with the unit. You will most likely never use the unit without having it plugged into the automobile.
Features
This is feature packed GPS unit. It comes with everything the other high end GPS navigation units come with. This includes Bluetooth, text-to-speech and live traffic support. While some manufacturers charge for live traffic updates, Navigon 7200T offers free life time traffic updates for most major cities. The Voice Entry option is nice way of entering destination address with speech. While not perfect, it is better implemented than most other GPS units. Little things like Landmark view and reality view offers different way of viewing the navigation unit. Also, the Lane assistant feature shows you exactly what lane you should be at all times. The Zagat rating and reviews add another nice feature.
Expandability
The map updates are offered for purchase. On the other hand, the live traffics are included with the purchase. The SD card ensures that future upgrades are readily available.
Pros
- 4.3 inch touchscreen
- Text-to-speech
- Voice Entry
- Lane assistance
- Improved GUI
- Free traffic updates
- Cost
Cons
- Have to purchase map upgrades
- Some assembly required for mounting kit
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Navigon 7200T 4.3-Inch Portable GPS Navigation with Bluetooth, Text-to-Speech, and Free Traffic Alerts List Price: $499.99 Sale Price: $799.99 Used From: $192.99 Average Rating:   |
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Navigon 7200T 4.3-Inch Portable GPS Navigation with Bluetooth, Text-to-Speech, and Free Traffic Alerts List Price: $499.99 Sale Price: $799.99 Used From: $192.99 Average Rating: |
| Overall Rating | No Ratings |
| Ease of Use | No Ratings |
| Reliability | No Ratings |
| Battery Life | No Ratings |
| Features | No Ratings |
| Expandability | No Ratings |
This site contains the personal opinions of various authors and contributors to this website. The opinions in these articles and reviews are offered in good faith, but also come with no guarantees or warranties.
The worst customer service
This Navigon was bought last Nov. I loved it at first but noticed after 2 months it began to freeze and give me fatal error messages. I tried emailing support and it takes days for them to email you back. Then I finally got an email said I needed to send it to them. I filled out the form and waited for them to email where to send it . After days I looked on line for the corporate headquarters. It has closed and the post office was looking all over for it. Two weeks later I received it back. On the form they said nothing was wrong with it.
Yea, I used it for business- so here I go on another business trip. Worked one day- that night at the hotel I email again, get a reply 3 days later- press on button and reset button. I did- now it won’t come on at all.
Still emailing- filled out all the paperwork again- wait 3 days- you MUST fill out the form on line the email said again. Did it again 3 days have passed and still do not know where to send it.
They are terrible- do not buy a Navigon- I did like the unit but CUSTOMER SERVICE is the most important part. If a company does not have phone and someone to answer I will not buy from them!!
Still to early to judge
I have been using this product for three weeks and it has it’s good points and bad points so far. I had some initial issues trying to update the software version only to find Navigon has no phone support Tech Support available in the US only email. I have had a couple of issues where the unit completely locked up requiring me to hit the reset button or power the unit off and on. So at this point reliabity of the unit is questionable until I get more useage under my belt. Definitely a lot of features for the price.
Navigon GPS
For the lower price it has a lot of good features, but remember the more features you have it will take a more time to set-up.
If you use Outlook for your email program you can transfer all your names and addresses
And phone numbers that you want to your GPS
If you do decide to buy because of this feature create a new contact list in Outlook with just the what you want to transfer otherwise it will transfer all, and that’s ok too if that is what you need
worthless GPS
When I use the car charger it goes into computer mode rendering it useless for actual car trips. It only functions when it is unplugged using its internal batteries. Which by the way if your trip is longer than 3 hours good luck because the batteries run down. I was extremely frustrated on a trip because the batteries decided to run down and had no paper maps. I got an RMA for the 7200T and I thought the unit was broken(which, by the way, I had to pay for the shipping being sent). I just got it back and the diagnosis said there was no fault found.
Big Bug
This would be an exceptional product if Navigon continued service and sales operations directly in North America. Since they don’t, I must assume that Amazon had their product on the shelf for such a long time that it’s battery no longer functions. In short, the battery has no charge capability, and the GPS can only function when plugged into an outlet.
Excellent product – worth the money
I admit I was a little hesitant to buy a navi from a company I really knew nothing about. But after reading the reviews and taking a chance away from the Big 3, so to speak, I just bit the bullet & figured I’d try it. I am so glad I took that chance because after taking a long ride with this, I had my friend test every little feature of it and it passed with flying colors! All I heard him say was “Wow, this can do this and this can do that!” If I weren’t driving, I’d be able to actually see what he was talking about, haha! But I really love the lane assist, that is why I bought it. He was very impressed with that as well and also really love the way it warns you if you are going over the speed limit (you can turn that feature off, but since it could save you a speeding ticket, why bother). Another feature he loved was the way it tells you how far above or below sea level you are. We used the traffic alert too and I’d have to play with that a little more to see if it will be useful but he said it showed all traffic in the whole state. So, not sure about that yet – might be a little hard to use while driving. I love the 3D effects and the verbal intructions are very clear & right on! My friend loved how the screen changed & was in total psynch with the speed limit signs on the road. He was amazed at how accurate it was. Overall, this is a great investment and I have total confidence in it. Now, I can get rid of my Garmin, which I refused to pay $50 every year just to update it. Great product for little money!
Great but cant update maps
The Navigon GPS was a great buy but the things that made me mad were the fact that if you want map updates you must purchase a subscribtion to “Fresh Maps” and you can not do this online. You must buy a Fresh maps card which you could get off of amazon or tiger direct or other online stores, but they are all bought out and Navigon is not going to release any more. The reasoning is, Navigon is leaving the North American market. So everything was great and worked like it was supposed to but i cant update the maps.
Have to learn the unit. Aftewards no problems at all.
Nice GPS. Don’t have any problems that other people complain about it. Only little problem is that it takes while to find satellites. I love free traffic alerts. This one is way better than Garmin crap.
Great on paper, not so great in real life.
Even though Navigon is a lesser known brand, I decided to purchase this unit based on its features despite some of the reviews. My mistake. The unit itself looks nice with the flat screen (no bevel), but that’s about it. It looks nice, the features are impressive, but the functionality and customer service is very poor.
I bought this unit on 4/27/09 but the unit was loaded with a Q3 2008 map. I contacted the manufacturer and they said I would need to purchase the latest map for $[...], even though I bought the unit Q2 2009. Ok, so it’s missing some newly developed roads, who needs to know what road they’re on, right?
Software quibble aside, the unit itself arrived with the rubber plugs half-in over the screws and external antenna connector. It took about 10 minutes to correct and was a major pain, but these should have been properly installed at the factory.
The touch screen “feels” very spongy compared to other touch screen products, including other nav units. I also own a Tom Tom XLS and the touch screen on there feels solid. It is a little annoying having to touch the screen several times to get a response. The power adapter is also bulky and looks cheap.
So, does it work? Yes and no. It works fine as a gps nav unit, but the features – bluetooth, live traffic, text-to-speech, voice recognition, lane assist, 3D landmarks, sort of work.
Let me start by saying the voice recognition is excellent. Once trained, it recognizes speech on the first try. That’s about where the features end.
At the highest volume setting, the speaker crackled. Navigon’s fix? They updated the software so you can’t set the volume to max anymore, making the sound unacceptably soft. Also, the text-to-speech reads streets oddly like computers from the 90’s. For example, avenue is pronounced “aver-new”. My other navi reads it normally.
You’d figure once bluetooth is setup, it would connect automatically. Nope. You manually have to make a connection every time and since the speaker volume is so low, you can’t really use it.
Live traffic is slow to report and I usually I’m in the thick of it before it shows me there is traffic. Grant it there aren’t any ads like the Garmin, but I’ll deal with ads for quicker, real-time updates.
On a couple occasions, the lane assist provided inaccurate information causing me to take the wrong exit ramp. I was told this was corrected in the latest map that I would have to purchase, something that should’ve already been loaded in my unit.
To summarize, if you want to tell your friends you have a nav unit with all the bells and whistles, then this is for you. However, if you want a unit with all the bells and whistles that actually works, get a major brand unit. The Navigon 7200T works just fine as a basic gps navigation and that’s about it. They should take out all the crap that doesn’t work – most of it, provide 2009 maps for units purchased in 2009, use a better quality speaker, and improve their assembly QA.
I would not recommend this product unless the above mentioned issues are resolved.
no owners manual
I received the Navigon 7200T yesterday. It wants activation and product numbers. I figure one out by plugging it into my auto. I was not able to get the blue tooth to work. I email customer service since there are no numbers to call from the States and they do not provide you an owners manual. I tried to download pdf file it seems that they do not have.
It does not recognize where I live and puts me into the next town. I believe Amazon. com will receive this as a return.
navigon 7200T
Where to begin? Ok, so i chose this GPS because it had free traffic and it seemed to work well when i tried it out at a retail store.
Unfortunately, i have only had this GPS for about six months and the cons heavily outweigh the pros.
PROS: free traffic, re routes somewhat quickly
CONS: As many reviewers mentioned, the battery life is horrible, the navigation seems to take the longer routes, the GPS shuts off and/or gives an error message. Traffic on route takes awhile or sometimes isnt present.
****Currently, my navigon is not charging unless I hold in the adapter!!! I dont know if its the adapter that went bad or the device. The battery signal on the gps shows two bars and with in 30 sec (of me not holding in the adapter) it shuts off. Seriously this item wasn’t cheap and of course i cant return because its been six months. This is very frustrating.
Buy at your own Risk: No Support from Navigon
I purchased a Navigon 7200T. It is a nice piece of equipment, but beware! As of May 2009 Navigon has discontinued North American service. You are on your own. There is no live customer support. The phone number is a recording, and email is not particularly useful. I did not get a card with the code number needed to activate the Live Map feature. After trying several times to contact Navigon to get a card I received the following note:
Thank you for your inquiry.
Accessories, map material and content are not available in North America through NAVIGON.
Unfortunately we don’t have information concerning the availability of these products at other major retail shops.
Sincerely
p.p. Christian Josopait
————–
NAVIGON Support Team
Buy at your own risk. Do the features of an orphan GPS really matter?
nellie
love it , how did I ever get anywhere without it .Have compared it to other GPS in the family . Mine is the best.Easy to use and havent had any problems with it, It does what the ads say it will do . Even an old fogie like me can figure out how to use it.
Don’t buy this unit
I bought 2 of these units n May 2009. Both are broken. My husband’s broke first – I just assumed he manhandled his. I was using mine on a vacation in early July and it crashed before my very eyes. Will not reset. My opinion of this company is terrible. My husband finally got through via e-mail to their company and they said to mail it to them. Guess what – they didn’t give him an address. One frustration after another. Buy a Garmin or anything else.
Not worth the money–even if it was 50.00!!!
This is the first GPS I have ever owned, and the last Navigon!! Several times it led me to dead end roads… In St Louis, I wanted to go to the Arch, but it led me to a junk yard, it locked up SEVERAL times while I was using it and had to shut it down for about 5 minutes so I could use it again, I thought I would use it for my road trip vacation but when it locks up for a couple minutes and you have to shut it down for 5 minutes, it’s a huge inconvenience trying to backtrack. I could actually go on and on with all the errors that I had with it, but I can see that all the errors I had with mine have already been complained about by the other negative complaints. I thought maybe I got a lemon because of all the issues I had with mine, but reading all the negative reviews, I guess everyone got a lemon! Next time I’m getting a Garmin!!!!