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| Navigon 2100 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator | 
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| Brand: Navigon
Category: CE
List Price: $249.00
Buy Refurbished: $87.89
You Save: $161.11 (65%)
New (22) Used (9) Refurbished (9) from $87.89
Avg. Customer Rating:  155 reviews
Sales Rank: 460
Color: Black
Media: Electronics
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Tracks: Unknown
Native Resolution: 320 x 240
Display Size: 3.5
Includes MP3 Player: 0
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 1 x 4 x 3
nv:Type: Receiver
Touch Screen: Yes
Expansion Slots: SD Card
Battery Type: 1100 mAh lithium ion battery
Battery Life: 3.5 hours
MPN: 10000170
Model: 10000170
UPC: 898110001105
EAN: 0898110001105
ASIN: B000W6EUOE
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Navigon 2100 January 5, 2008
I bought it from Radio Shack for $150 on Christmas Eve. I've used the Magellan 2200T before and that's my "benchmark".
Ease of Use: Very good. The menus are simple and intuitive.
GPS Function: I went down to Florida and Alabama (totally "foreign" territories for me) and it worked great. The showing of the freeway signs, with which lanes go where, is AMAZING and very realistic! Best feature of them all.
Voice Prompts: They are clear and loud enough, albeit "computerese" or with a Germanic (??) accent at times.
Screen: Touchscreen functions work well, but you got to make sure it "takes" every letter you punch in. Very annoying when you are in a rush or totally lost in an unfamiliar place.
Satellite Connection: Easy when outside or inside your car. In a big bldg or my home, it takes a while, but usually it connects within 1-2 minutes or just seconds.
Your Speed: I noticed that the displayed speed is 5 miles LOWER than the one displayed on the car (both rentals and my own). Don't relay on it, but then it might give you the overspeeding "warning" too late. The display of the posted speed limit is very useful, and as far as I checked it, accurate.
POI: Picked the ones I wanted without any problem. Did not spent too much time on this feature so far.
Windshield mounting: Easy to do, even in a rental car. BUT, the power connection (USB) requires too much space in the vertical. I had to adjust its mounting so it can plug in from the bottom. BTW, can I charge it thru my laptop's USB???
Big Surprise: Out of nowhere (and of course while I'm rushing to catch a flight) it went nuts, and came up with a "fatal error" message. I managed to re-boot it (my wife was driving) and eventually it found its brain, but only after we were lost and had to use the old and reliable "stop-at-a-gas-station-and-ask-for-directions" approach. I've been testing it for a few days now and it seems to be doing OK!
 Terrible Customer service January 2, 2008
9 out of 11 found this review helpful
I have had my product since black Friday and my realtime traffic still does not work. I have called Customer support 4 times each time a talked to a nice person who said a supervisor would call me back with in 48 business hours. It's 1 month later and I have had no calls back. I live in Los Angeles where the traffic signal should be strong but my unit is yet to pick up a signal. I do not recommend this unit to anyone and I highly do not recommend purchaseing the real time traffic unless you want to deal with lousy customer support.
 Full featured, awaiting s/w bug fixes, req. polishing December 31, 2007
22 out of 22 found this review helpful
[Update: 02/20/2008] - I've installed the firmwire update, things look better, in terms of routing, spoken voice and POI search. Not all issues resolved, but nevertheless better.
Extensively used it over the last 2 months and I find it to be reliable. Nevertheless, do take a peek as to what's coming up than blindly following the routes dictated.
I own a 2100T (not BF sale@Staples). First off, 2100 vs. 2100T is *T* includes the traffic subscription.
Here are my thoughts -- first off, the unit is small, good-looking with a very effective car mount. Upon startup, it acquires GPS signal quickly. It can be protected with PIN # against theft. The touch-screen can be calibrated. Reverting to factory-settings are possible.
Coming to more important stuff, one can search for an address using street name first, or city/ZIP code combination. The map included covers the 48 contig. states only. Also, it's feasible to store 500 addresses in Favorites for quick retrieval. 1 good feature is defining a route having multiple points and being able to save the whole route combination itself. Without GPS signal, it's possible to review the route in a map, giving TTS and turn-by-turn using *simulation*.
After putting in the address, and assuming GPS signal is active, a turn-by-turn listing can be displayed, where even specific roads can be blocked. Post blocking, the system can be made to re-route and then use that route for navigation. In terms of routing, there's considerable options available. Fastest route, optimal route, shortest route, scenic route, avoid/allow/forbid tolls, avoid/allow/forbid highways, avoid/allow/forbid ferries, avoid/allow/forbid U-turns, mode for bicycle, car, truck or walking. While driving, taping the map it displays a *block* option, which is like .5,1,1.5,3,5 mile sketches, if activated, system auto blocks that sketch in front and tries to re-route alternative route (traffic congesion, etc.) - a very handy feature. Option to switch from 2d/3d at tap of the map. However, what the unit does NOT do (some GPS units do it) is detect your speed and if less than normal auto suggest detour options. The system display on the map the next turn and the turn-after (if almost immediate). In fact, also if it's situation like *bear immediately left, after right turn*, etc. shows both of them, thus it's possible to detect earlier what's coming up. Good feature. In case you missed what was said, tapping the turn icon again causes TTS to kick in and repeat.
In case traffic is activated, which is for life and the charging cable MUST be plugged in, system shows a small icon on map, if clicked shows all active traffic information. Again, can be configured to show ONLY traffic relevant to route. Furthermore, immediate traffic details are displayed on the map itself (radius approx. 2 miles). System can automatically route you thru alternative routes or can be made manual. A VERY +VE point being the subscription is lifetime, once bought - it's forever ACTIVE!! Very powerful feature.
Re-routing, in case of missed turns are quick but read issues below.
TTS functionality has a single voice only (lady) and is of good pronounciation. Nevertheless, there's some peculiarities, which one can get used to. Generally, states to bear left, or keep to the left/right much earlier, gives clear road-names, very accurate in saying *NOW, turn right/left* etc. If there's multiple turns (city) avoids saying each & every road name to avoid confusion. The speaker, however is on the low side. Might have slight difficulty in hearing at high speeds. However, the system uniquely provides an important feature called auto volume increase with speed increase. Very effective. In case you're going over speed-limit and you've configured to warn you if over 10 mph, TTS does do a *caution* statement. The volume is configurable, directly from the map and can be muted too.
The map itself is highly customizable. It's possible to display speed limits, set warning if exceeing limit at city/highway levels and that too at 5 mph, 10 mph, 15 mph above limit settings. Can show/hide altitude, speed, distance to destination, duration of travel, ETA, compass, street-names. The display itself is bright (brightness can be configured, both at day/night levels separately) and has separate day/night views. Note - the unit does NOT switch to night view automatically. The associate time settings are done automatically. The 2D zoom provides another important feature - auto-zoom. At higher speeds, etc. ; system auto-zoom to cover more area, etc. The amount of zooming itself is configurable. There's a button providing further options like browing the map itself (pulling/pushing it up/down, left/right), tapping a point on the map which showing details about that point and if there's any recorded POI at that point, etc. Very good and nice. Manual zooming of the maps is possible. However, locking the map-view preventing changes if accidentally tapped, etc. is not possible. The orientation of the map can be direction of travel (default) or always North.
The Reality-View is very effective. It *kicks* in at critical junctures of travel, where there are complex turns involved showing clearly which lane to stick to, etc. However, keep in mind it's static and automatically appears. Once turn is over, switches to map view. Again the view can be turned completely off.
Coming to POIs, it offers a set of POIs which can be searched and navigated to, from the main screen. There are multiple categories of POIs and each almost always have sub-categories. The search can be based on *Nearby* (if GPS signal is active), *City* or *Nationwide*. Once either of these options are selected, a search can be done based on category or sub-categories. If *Nearby*, it displays a set of choices which can be expanded to include more radius. Similarly at city (by city name or ZIP code) or nation-wide hunt of main corp. brands. Further, there's a quick selection of critical categories at immediate availability for searching is possible - max 3. For example, parking, restaurants, WCs. The search is displayed as a list with up/down buttons and the keypad vertically oriented in the split screen. The keybad is ABCD format which can not be changed to QWERTY. Auto completion is possible and active. The up/down arrows displaying the list are very sluggish and hang quite a lot. The actual icon for the brand-name is displayed alongwith the POI name. Re-tying POIs, changing categories/sub-categories, etc. are cumbersome and inefficient. The database is also very, very limited and does not include almost all major brands but are more inclined to include mom/pop shops. The POIs can be made to display in the map itself and the types of POIs to be shown on the map are configurable, the good part being they appear as icons on the map. My observation is it makes the map very cluttered. Tapping the map provides an option to display immediate POIs in vicinity or route and then adding such a POI as an intermittent route point. Effective but the type of POIs available by default (being low) makes this ineffective. A critical -ve point being users are NOT allowed to add their custom POIs, or share other users' compilation, etc. You can only save the address as a favorite, for your personal use. Separately ($40) a Zagat survey lifetime subscription can be bought - which provides for Zagat surveyed POIs - an option to review the ZAGAT ratings given for the POI in the system itself. I don't have it, thus can not comment.
Pushing the top button causes immediately the product to go into standby mode, thus switching it on is very quick and good (activates the PIN # option, for theft deterance). It does NOT auto detect vehicle switch-off and thus has to be manually switched off.
The cons lies mostly with the POI database, sluggish search/display/modification options available. The next -ve point lies in the routing display. Many a times, it'll display a rather zig-zag route with weird roads, etc. and need to be carefully reviewed (turn-by-turn listing) prior to embarking on the travel. On a personal note, users should ALWAYS use the "short route" option by route-points are within city limits or short distances and "optimal route" if interstate travels. If route is missed, although re-routing is quick - again can be weird and can really take you on a trip down the highway! This is true also for automatic traffic re-calculations. There's supposed to be a firmwire update in January 2008 addressing this problem. On a lighter note, there's numerous others who have NOT reported any routing issues; thus I think it's case-by-case basis and mostly to do with the NavTeq maps being used. A proof in the pudding lies in the fact that many-a-times the system will ask you to take an exit, go couple of miles and then re-join the highway again! This normally happens if system detects a portion of the highway to be *missing* in it's database - normally caused due to extreme compression of the maps itself (to fit into the SD card). This is not pronouced much for 2100, since it has ONLY 48 states of US. But for higher models, i.e. 5100, 7100 - which has the whole of NA - it's more pronounced behaviour. Also reported, in quite a few cases, the traffic, even if activated - does not work. You'll need to talk to support for resolving this. There are NO media-players, headphone jack, AC adapter, PC update options for software/firmwire, CD/DVD containing help manual, etc.
Navigon support - for me has been quick and good, while others have reported problems. Again a case-by-case. They have quickly responded email queries too (24 hrs. turn-around time).
 Good system. December 29, 2007
I got this unit the day after Thanksgiving for $99 with lifetime traffic. It has been great. We've used it a few times and the directions have been right on. Traffic feature has been used more than the navigation.
Won't get lost again December 29, 2007
I love my navigon because it gives you street directions instead of "right turn now." Then on a freeway, when you approach a freeway junction it shows you were to go with signs on the navigon. Then the touch screen is great once you get a hang of it.
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