Navigon 2000S GPS Navigator
Manufacturer: NAVIGON, Inc. Part number: 10000320
- More product information:
- Editors' review
- User reviews
- Specifications
- Manufacturer info
- Bottom Line:
- The Navigon 2000S portable navigation device offers a great value, but the slow satellite acquisition time makes for a frustrating experience.
Read more
Where to buy
| store | customer rating | inventory | tax & shipping | price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ![]() | In stock Order Now-Ships Today | Enter zip code to get total price: Price +Tax +Shipping =Total price | as of 12/08/2009 |
| ![]() | In stock Order Now-Ships Today | as of 12/08/2009 | |
| Amazon.com Marketplace | ![]() | In stock | as of 12/08/2009 |
CNET editors' review
Navigon 2000S GPS Navigator price range: $145.95
- Reviewed by: Bonnie Cha
- Reviewed on: 10/21/2008
The good: The Navigon 2000S offers advanced lane guidance and other visual aids for complicated intersections. The portable navigation device also has text-to-speech functionality, an affordable price tag, and improved general performance.
The bad: Satellite acquisition is painfully slow, and route recalculations can sometimes be sluggish.
The bottom line: The Navigon 2000S portable navigation device offers a great value, but the slow satellite acquisition time makes for a frustrating experience.
We've reviewed several of Navigon's portable navigation devices, and it always seems to be the same story: great features, affordable price, but always coming up short in performance. The company's latest entry-level model, the Navigon 2000S, is another chapter in that saga, though it comes closer to a happy ending than previous models. The 2000S offers advanced navigation features such as text-to-speech functionality and photo-realistic street views--all for a bargain price of $199.99. We were also encouraged by the general responsiveness of the in-car GPS, as it felt snappier for tasks like searching points of interest and planning trips. Unfortunately, satellite acquisition took a long time, and it was a source of much frustration. Despite its value, we'd be willing to pay a little more to get better performance with a model from the TomTom One family or Garmin Nuvi 200 series..
Design
The Navigon 2000S has a very simple design. The unit measures a petite 3.8 inches wide by 2.9 inches high by 0.7 inch deep and weighs 4.3 ounces. It's compact enough that you could fit it into a pants pocket or use it as a handheld navigator, and there is a pedestrian mode as well as a bicycle routing option. Be careful when transporting the system or using it outside of the car, as the portable navigation device has a plastic casing that feels like it could easily crack if it took a tumble.
On front, there is a 3.5-inch touch screen with a 320x240-pixel resolution. It's vibrant and sharp, and Navigon products have always had some of the better-looking maps we've seen on other PNDs. You can adjust the brightness of the screen and choose between day or night map colors, though we recommend you just set it to automatic mode so you don't have to think about it.
The touch screen is responsive, but we found the onscreen keyboard to be a bit cramped. The Navigon 2000S has a feature called SmartSpeller that will bring up possible search results after you input a couple of letters, but even so, the smaller keyboard can lead to some mistakes. There's also no option to switch it to QWERTY format, only ABC.
The user interface of the Navigon 2000S is similar to the company's other products. The Main Menu page presents four clear choices: New Destination, My Destinations, Take Me Home, and Show Map. There's also an Options menu at the bottom of the screen where you can adjust various settings, such as routing preferences and map displays. While the user experience is not as smooth or streamlined as Garmin or TomTom, it's still intuitive and general performance is snappy.
There's a microSD expansion slot on the left side, a reset hole on the right, and a mini USB port on the bottom. On top, you'll find a power button, but it's slightly wobbly and set deep beneath the device's surface, so it's a bit hard to press.
The Navigon 2000S comes packaged with a car charger, a vehicle mount (dashboard and windshield), and reference material. The car mount requires some assembly, but it's simple and the accessory securely held the unit in place during our road tests.
Features
The Navigon 2000S is a good value, offering a lot of navigation features for the price. The system is equipped with a SiRF GRF3i+ GPS chip with InstantFix II and comes preloaded with Navteq maps of the lower 48 United States. Planning a trip can start in several ways. You can enter a specific address, select a favorite location or recent destination, or search for a certain point of interest. The 2000S supports multidestination planning, so you can have more than one stop along your journey.
The points-of-interest database includes all the major categories, including gas stations, lodging, and ATMs. For certain POIs, there are also subcategories. For example, with restaurants, you can drill down further and find food by cuisine type, or you can search for shopping by type (book store, sporting goods, and so forth) or if it's a major corporation, by brand (for example, Best Buy, 7-Eleven, Safeway, or Walgreens). The Navigon 2000S also has something called Direct Access, which gives you one-touch access to four-predefined categories (gas stations, parking and rest areas, restaurants, and lodging). Unlike the Navigon 7100, however, the Zagat reviews and ratings aren't preloaded on the device, but you can purchase this as an additional service for $19.99.
You can view maps in 2D or 3D mode, and the system tracks north up or the direction in which you are traveling. The map screen shows your current street, distance to, and street name of your next turn, estimated time of arrival, remaining distance, a compass, and signal strength. For complicated intersections, the Navigon 2000S offers a couple of aids. First, there's Reality View, which gives you a "photorealistic" view of complicated intersections, such as major highway exchanges, with a 3D image of the road. You also get something called Lane Assistant Pro, which we first saw on the Navigon 2100 Max. Again, the idea is to provide better visual cues for complex exchanges, so for where there are multiple lanes, the 2000S will overlay arrows on the street to show you which lane you should want to be in and which direction you'll eventually be turning.
In addition to the visual aids, of course, you get audible prompts. Despite being an entry-level system, the 2000S has text-to-speech functionality so you'll hear street names rather than generic directions. Other GPS features include automatic route recalculation, a turn-by-turn list of text directions, route simulation, and speed warnings.
Finally, like the Garmin's "Where am I?" feature and TomTom's "Help Me" tool, Navigon has something called DirectHelp, which provides you with the location and contact information of the nearest police station, hospital, roadside assistance, and other emergency services based on your current location. It's a nice safety feature to have, especially if you're in unknown territory.
Performance
In the past, we've made note of the sluggish performance of Navigon's GPS products, and with the Navigon 2000S, we have good news and bad news. First, general performance is much improved. The system responds faster to commands and we rarely experienced any delays, that is, except when it came time to hit the road.
We tested the Navigon 2000S in San Francisco, and from a cold start, it took the unit about 15 minutes to get a fix on our location. While cold starts usually take longer, this was a fairly significant amount of time and we grew impatient about 5 minutes in and completely frustrated after 10 minutes. Subsequent starts weren't any better, taking up to 5 minutes. This was all with a clear view of the sky, too. While driving around the city, the 2000S did a fair job of tracking our position, though it could fall behind a half a block or so.
We also plotted our standard trip from the Marina District to CNET's downtown headquarters. While satellite acquisition might have been slow, the Navigon 2000S quickly returned with directions. We looked over the turn-by-turn list and were satisfied with the prescribed route. Once on the road, we found the text-to-speech directions to be loud and clear. There were just a couple of mispronunciations of street names, but not so bad that we couldn't understand the instruction. We also missed several turns to test the route recalculation rate, which was mixed. At times, it was quick to get us back on track, while other times, we would get instructions to turn right as we passed the street. We also wish there was some kind of audible notification that the system was recalculating a route for reassurance, as there is no such warning right now.
User reviews
-
-
Best for the money! High-end features, very cool!
by dayandnight77 on November 22, 2008
Pros: Excellent features! Works great! Fast processing, customizable settings, and easy to use. Great visual design of the screen and its layout! Love the gray/darker map background. Automatic day/night brightness. Speaks street names. Displays POI's logos
Cons: GPS signal acquisition, while slow, for me was always less than 3 min from cold starts and almost instant from Standby mode.
Most of the time it did route properly; however a few times the route it chose was maybe not the best/fastest or most common.Summary: For an entry-level GPS ... less than $200 ... this is definitely one of the best in its price-range as it provides some high-end features that add to its "cool" factor in ...
Summary: For an entry-level GPS ... less than $200 ... this is definitely one of the best in its price-range as it provides some high-end features that add to its "cool" factor in addition to great functionality and performance and being a very cool product overall. Navigon, while lesser-known, is set to become one of the leaders. This is a very cool unit i think.
I personally love it. For me, I like the gray/darker map colors instead of the usual tan/cream background -- especially for night driving. Plus, it has automatic brightness for day/night modes. Its very easy to see and read without being distracting. The design of the screen layout is easy to get used-to and understand -- its easy to find the information you want such as POI's within just a few touches, including by category and subcategory. It has logo's of many common places displayed on the screen when driving by them (e.g., McDonald's, Subway, DQ, Taco Bell, Shell, Speedway, BP, Kroger, Wal-Mart, Walgreen's, CVS, etc.) and icons for other places (without logo's preloaded) displayed on the screen. The voice only mispronounced a few street names... otherwise very great pronunciation. The voice is clear, loud (adjustable), easy to understand, and pleasant (not annoying). The system works very fast to calculate routes (nearly instant, usually taking only a second or two), and is very responsive to touches. Overall, the unit is very customizable with its settings and features -- for example: automatic standby settings; brightness level settings; three customizable quick-access button categories (e.g., gas stations); voice settings and volume; categories of places that are shown on the map; route options (e.g., Fast, Optimum, Short); travel type (e.g., Standard Car, Bicycle, Pedestrian); option to display an icon to show speed limits (on major roads) and whether to alert when exceeding by 5, 10, or 15 mph; and many
The only negatives to this product for me are: (1) the time it can take to acquire a GPS signal. If the unit was completely turned off this can take several minutes! However, if you set the unit to go into standby mode when it loses direct power from the car (or you manually put it into standby mode if you're walking) instead of turning it off completely this much improves the situation. The power button displayed on the unit's home screen = standby whereas the power button in the outside of the actual unit = completely power on/off. Returning from standby mode, GPS signal acquisition is usually really fast, almost always less than a minute. (2) Sometimes the route it chooses is maybe not the best / fastest or most common route to get from point A to point B. You will still get there, though; it just may not be the smartest or fastest way. However, this only occurred for me on a few occasions. Most of the time, the unit does an excellent job of routing you from A to B in the most common / typical / fastest way possible. It is something they could improve however. In fact, if they were to improve this issue along with the GPS signal acquisition wait time, I would give the unit a 100% A. In its current state though I still give the unit an A, but probably a 95% A. Nevertheless,
This is a very cool product! And for the price you really do get your money's worth. I would highly recommend this product to others that want a very nice GPS navigator but dont want to spend too much money. If you're unsure about which unit to buy as I was, i'd suggest reading several reviews (professional and amateur) and going to each company's website to see what all they offer, such as features, other product comparisons, accessories, features, map updates, and so forth... do your research and spend time on each one... and/or if possible go to a local store that carries the product and try it out there.2 out of 2 users found this user opinion helpful.
-
good product but no real support
Pros: small, fast, love the display
Cons: no support, slow support, lousy support
Summary: Product initially worked great. One day it failed to boot up and the message on the screen said to reset the hardware. Did that a few times, did not help. ...
Summary: Product initially worked great. One day it failed to boot up and the message on the screen said to reset the hardware. Did that a few times, did not help. Called support line, got a vm saying to email instead, no phone support. Emails back and forth, slow response, waited 3-4 days each time to get a reply ... been a couple months, no resolution. Don't buy Navigon product!!!!
-
Best features for the $ - good interface - not sluggish
by bduboff on February 4, 2009
Pros: I'm really impressed with this unit and I've used others from TT, Garmin and Pharos. Definitely beats out the TT. Had called customer service with a question - they answered quickly and accurately - located in Indiana.
Cons: Don't love the screen colors. Don't like having to put in the street name before the number (others do the same).
Summary: For a basic unit (no blue tooth, traffic, voice input) this unit rocks. Got mine on eBay for $119 including shipping. Lane Assist is great. Very good mount design. Holds ...
Summary: For a basic unit (no blue tooth, traffic, voice input) this unit rocks. Got mine on eBay for $119 including shipping. Lane Assist is great. Very good mount design. Holds signal for a long time in tunnels and in cities. Would recommend it highly.
-
Works great. Sometimes hard aquiring GPS signal
by dpmelson on January 5, 2009
Pros: The device is packed with High End features. Great buy for the buck
Cons: Somtimes it takes the device a long time to aquire a GPS signal.
Summary: Great buy for the money.
Summary: Great buy for the money.
Specifications
- Manufacturer: NAVIGON, Inc.
- Part number: 10000320
- Description: The Navigon 2000S goes beyond the basics. With advanced text-to-speech voice guidance, you will get verbal directions including street names. Never miss your exit again with Reality View Pro - giving you visual 3D guidance for virtually every highway exit and interchange. The 2000S also includes a host of useful features, such as Lane Assistant Pro, DirectHelp and Multi-Destination Trip Planning.
General
- Width 3.8 in
- Depth 0.7 in
- Height 2.9 in
- Weight 4.3 oz
GPS System
- Recommended Use Automotive
- Receiver SiRF GRF3i+
- Connectivity USB
- GPS Functions / Services Speed Assistant, Reality View Pro, Lane Assistant Pro
- Voice Navigation instructions, Street name announcement
- Antenna Built-in
- Features Emergency Help, Built-in speaker, Automatic routing, Preinstalled POIs, SiRF InstantFixII, Text-to-Speech (TTS), 2D / 3D map perspective, Automatic day/night mode
- Built-in Memory 2 GB
- RAM: 64 MB
- Supported Memory Cards microSD
- Maps Included 48 United States
Navigation
- Trip computer Quickest route, Fast/short route, Street address search
Built-in Display
- Type LCD
- Diagonal Size 3.5 in
- Display Illumination Yes
- Color Support Color
- Features Touch screen
Connections
- Connector Type USB
Battery
- Battery Enclosure Type Integrated
- Battery included qty 1
- Battery technology Lithium ion
Miscellaneous
- Included GPS accessories Car holder, Dashboard disc, Car power adapter
Manufacturer info
- NAVIGON, Inc.
- Manufacturer profile
- Browse NAVIGON, Inc. products on Shopper.com
-
- Website: http://www.navigon.com/
- Address:
200 W. Madison, Chicago, IL 60606








