Delphi's First Retail GPS a Worthy Contender

REVIEW To many consumers, Delphi is known as a manufacturer of XM radios. However, the company wants to change that and show its strength in other markets where it has had an OEM presence for years, such as GPS.

Enter the NAV200, the company's first entrant into the increasingly crowded consumer portable GPS market. At $399 USD, it is priced as much as 25 percent cheaper that equally-featured units.

Delphi has hopes that the low price point, combined with an impressive feature set, will lead to quick market share traction. However, in the process of keeping the price down, did Delphi cut corners and sacrifice product quality?

The Hardware

Most impressive about the NAV200 for its price is the large touch-sensitive screen. Measuring in at 3.5 inches, it is the largest I've seen in its price class, and its quality compares to units that retail for $500 or more. Maps and text on the screen should be easily read by just about anyone without much difficulty.

Four large buttons flank the sides of the screen, two on the left to either access the GPS' main menu or turn off the display to conserve battery power, and two on the right that control functions such as zooming in and out of maps on the screen.

Buttons to turn off the unit and adjust volume are located on the sides of the unit, as well as jacks to plug in headphones and DC power. A stylus pen is enclosed on the top beside the flip out antenna, and a SD slot is included on the bottom of the unit.

The NAV200 can either be used as a portable GPS through the internal battery, or while connected to an external power source through the included cigarette lighter adapter. With such a large screen, its not surprising that battery power alone would only give about 3-4 hours of continuous operation without having the unit plugged in.

Delphi includes an adjustable car mount, however I found the construction of it allowed the GPS to shake a little too much for my liking while the car was in motion. A little patience allowed me to adjust it to reduce the shaking as much as possible.

Overall, the hardware impressed me the most about the NAV200. The large screen made it much easier to see the maps, as well as use the benefits of the touch-screen interface (such as scrolling around maps) much easier.

The buttons allowed for quick zooming in and out of maps, especially while driving. I found this much more easy to use then the scroll-like function of my Garmin GPS device, which required a little more attention to work properly.

Of course, Delphi never recommends you make adjustments when in motion.

The Software

Delphi has tapped Microsoft to provide the operating system backend here -- Windows CE -- that is almost immediately noticeable through the sound effects it uses. This choice also allowed the company to add some features not commonly seen on GPS players as a bonus.

Among those features are a calculator and several multimedia functions: a picture viewer capable of displaying GIF, JPEG, and PNG images; a music player that supports WAV and MP3 files; and a movie player that plays AVI movies.

Also included is a games and world clock functionality. While the extra functionality is nice, I found little use for them within the unit due to the fact that in order for these to be used, a large SD card is required, and many are just looking for a GPS to give them directions, not play their music or watch their videos.

Add to this the fact that neither the video player nor the MP3 playing functions support Windows Media Video, or songs with DRM, and the functionality becomes somewhat useless.

Basing the platform on Windows also has its obvious pitfalls - I was able to run into a problem where the Windows backend crashed once due to a memory corruption, forcing a complete restart of the unit.

Usage

Using the NAV200 is pretty straightforward, although a few quirks sometimes made operation a little confusing. I found the map quality to be a little more detailed than I've seen on my Garmin i5, including city names and points of Interest displayed directly on the map.

What I didn't like here was Delphi's choice of two modes, called "standard" and "extended." Standard gives you basic functionality, including navigation, access to favorites and recent destinations. Extended adds functionality, including route planning and showing the map.

I saw the delineation here unnecessary, and somewhat confusing. I found myself having to turn to the manual in the provided CD to figure out how to just show the map by itself. I feel this shouldn't be necessary and should be fairly straightforward.

Navigation is acceptable, although unlike the Garmin, which smoothly zooms in and out of maps depending on speed of the vehicle, the NAV200 would switch from zoom level to another abruptly. This I found distracting when driving.

Another issue was the software's inclination to sometimes lose track of direction when passing under a highway. I found this is an issue in a lot of GPS units; it's annoying, although correctable through the software.

A final issue was the volume, which seemed to only have three levels, quiet, slightly quiet, and loud. However, in defense of Delphi, I think this is more an issue with the Windows CE backend rather than Delphi's hardware.

What I did like here was the map quality, as I've said previously. Also the constantly updated distance, time of arrival, and duration information on the navigation screen is a nice touch.

Delphi would do itself a huge service by addressing the above issues - because in the end, when it comes to items like GPS, it all comes down to the software, no matter how good the hardware may be.

Before the end of the review, we should mention that this unit also has the capability to receive TMC traffic information signals, although we did not have the necessary equipment to test that functionality out.

So even with its drawbacks, is the NAV200 guiding us on the right path?

The Good: The hardware. You are going to be hard-pressed to find a GPS with this feature set for the price, which is very competitive. Some may see the calculator, movie and music functionality as an added benefit.

The Bad: Obviously the software here is the NAV200's biggest liability, at least in the eyes of this reviewer. Some of these issues, such as the volume problem, are enough to cheapen the device overall. Additionally, some of the little things that make the overall experience more positive like smooth zooming are still missing here.

The Bottom Line: It's a decent debut for Delphi, but not without its issues. Like we've said in the review itself, the company would benefit greatly from refining the software. However, if you're willing to deal with a few quirks, the $399 price point is hard to beat.