14 DAY TRIAL // The Navigon company is one of the most important European manufacturers of GPS devices, but, unfortunately, it hadn't previously penetrated the US market. However, it seems that the company has finally decided to go stateside and in order to really make a booming entrance, it announced that it will start retailing two of its high-end models, the 5100 and 7100, which provide quite a large number of interesting features, some of them presented for the first time on the American market.
Thus, probably the most important selling point provided by the two navigators from Navigon is probably a feature called "Reality View", which guides the users with photo-realistic 3D images of complex intersections. Thus, the drivers will be able to enjoy a navigation map that's as close to real life as possible, thus making it a lot harder to get lost in very busy areas. Moreover, the devices include a feature called "Lane Assistant", which recommends the optimal lane the driver should be in relative to the route.
Besides the aforementioned features, the two GPS navigators from Navigon offer users what they consider to be the "industry's only subscription-free traffic service", which means that drivers can be advised on traffic flows and incidents, as well as alternate routes. Moreover, both devices contain more than 5 million POIs (points of interest), saved onto the 4 GB SD card delivered upon purchase.
One of the main differences between the 5100 and 7100 GPS navigation systems is the size of the touch screen LCD display, namely 3.5 inches in the case of the 5100 and 4.3 inches in the case of the 7100. Other than that, the two models are fairly similar, both incorporating SiRF Star III GPS chipsets, Samsung 400 Mhz processors and 64 MB of RAM and ROM memory. However, the 7100 model also sports a Bluetooth module, which makes it quite a complete navigation solution, according to today's standards.
Since they're quite featured-packed, it's no wonder that the two GPS navigation systems from Navigon are not exactly cheap, the 7100 retailing for around 649 US dollars, while the 5100 is priced at around 500 US dollars. The only thing that remains to be seen now is whether the two devices will enjoy in the US the same level of success they did across Europe, but that's something only time will tell.
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