14. Pros

• AC Adapter included
• Free lifetime traffic
• Zagat guide data included for over 70 U.S. cities
• 5 hour battery life
• Reality View is visually stunning and makes complex highway junctions a breeze
• Nicely designed "POIs on Route" screen shows POIs along the current route
• Logbook feature automatically keeps track of vehicle mileage (as an MS Excel document stored on the GPS)
• Good quality text-to-speech sounds natural when announcing street names
• Good routing engine
• Uses SiRF's high performance StarIII indoor GPS receiver
• Multi-stop routing and trip planning

15. Cons

• Map screen is cluttered with too much information and written in text too small to read from the driver's seat
• Touch screen display isn't sensitive enough, requiring an overly firm touch
• Icons are too small and are difficult to press (sometimes I had to use a fingernail to get precise enough to tap the icon I needed).
• Smudge-prone plastic housing
• No printed manuals / documentation included (electronic documentation is included on a CD-ROM)
• Combo traffic antenna/headphone jack means you can't use a headset/external audio cable and the traffic antenna at the same time
• Difficult to insert/remove SD memory card, as the card is recessed and doesn't sit flush with the surface
• Windshield mount doesn't provide power; power cable connects
• Main Menu does not have an option to show map (it's hidden within the options menu)
• Overly complex bluetooth management
• Bluetooth connections needed to be re-established from time to time
• Traffic alerts and avoidance are poorly implemented, and confusing to use
• Zagat Guide data and regular POI data aren't integrated, so you have to search both to see a full list of POIs
• NO way to search for POIs near a specific address (you can choose a city, but that's it)

16. Conclusion

Navigon's 7100 is an attractive looking GPS that offers some compelling and unique features. Navigon is one of the first companies to incorporate Zagat Guide data on a portable GPS. Convenient access to Zagat's high quality reviews and ratings of Restaurants, Hotels, Nightlife, Golf Courses, and Attractions is a tremendously helpful feature when searching for Points of Interest. Navigon's Reality View provides a stunning 3D virtual view of upcoming turns, and highlights the correct lane you should be driving in - a great feature for handling complex intersections. The 7100 is also one of the only GPS devices that includes free lifetime traffic data. Most other traffic-enabled GPS devices require annual subscription fees of around $60.

However, the Navigon suffers from three fatal problems:

• Slowness - virtually every aspect of the Navigon 7100's user interface is unbearably slow compared to other GPS devices
• Small text & icons - icons and text are much too small to be seen from the drivers seat, and it's almost impossible to operate the device without accidentally hitting adjacent icons
• Touch screen sensitivity - the touch screen isn't sensitive enough, and you have to press fairly hard on the display before the GPS recognizes the command

The combination of all three of these problems (slowness, small text/icons, and the hard touch required to operate the touch screen) is, unfortunately, a death sentence for the 7100. Trying to spell a city name on a screen that's hard to press, using keys that are too small, and trying to read text that's too small is difficult to from any angle, and virtually impossible from the distance of the driver's seat.

The 7100 is a promising GPS with an interesting feature set, but the unit is plagued with user interface problems. There's an overall sluggishness that permeates everything the 7100 does, and it quickly becomes annoying. The map screen is cluttered with too much information that's hard to read, and the menu icons are overly complex. Cryptic looking icons don't make it any easier to navigate the menus.

The Navigon 7100 is simply frustrating to use and there's too much working against this GPS to recommend it.