Sony Updates NAV-U™ Personal Navigation System Product Line

As fall nears, Sony is introducing more updates and new products. This time Sony delievered us some newer more entertainment featured navigation systems: models NV-U94T, NV-U84, NV-U74T and NV-U44. The biggest differences from the previous models (NV-U83T and U73T) you will notice are A2DP Bluetooth profile for streaming music from your NAV-U to Bluetooth-enabled car stereo system, including Sony’s Xplod® MEX-BT2600 and MEX-BT5100 head units; photo frame function (something you need to have in your car, eh?) and playback of your MP3s and non-DRM AAC files as well as MPEG-4 video support (again, make sure you pay attention to the road as you drive, not those music vids!); gesture commands were also incorporated into the new models (something similar to Locationfree (LF-X1, X5 and X11) gestures to switch channels, etc).

In NAV-U units gesture commands let users “jump to commands with one touch on the display. The new gesture command feature for forwarding photos lets users advance to the next picture, music track or video clip with a swipe of the finger from left to right across the screen. Other gesture commands include take me home, zoom in or out and call home”.

As far as more useful functions, Sony added more POI (points of Interest) to the models, as well as Position plus feature. According to the press release: “POSITION plus is a unique, hardware-based solution that consists of an acceleration sensor, a pressure sensor and a gyro sensor that together can calculate the vehicle’s current position based on the last known GPS location. The result is a more consistent and accurate position that helps provide interruption-free guidance under the most difficult of GPS reception conditions.”

NAV-U44 model comes in 2 colors: silver and red, but has a smaller 3.5 inch screen compared to 4.8 inches in U84 and U94 systems.

Models are going to be available in September and you can pre-order them now at Sonystyle.com

Also check out recent Sony Blog post by Greg Herd, NAV-U Product Planning Manager about these units.

I am going to stick with my NV-U83T model as I was not too impressed with the new U94T (other than from the pictures it looks slimmer than its predecessor, which is nice).