Navman MY500XT: Bouquets and Brickbats
It’s no secret that I found the Navman S200 appallingly irritating. So you can imagine my trepidation when I was accosted by a charming PR person (do they come in other flavours?), bubbling about the new Navman range, now with integrated traffic information for New Zealand. Casting aside my black mood towards GPS units, I grudgingly accepted the offer of a review unit.
First big change: the unit comes with a giant sticker over the screen, advertising the solution to one of the more irritating UI issues: lack of responsiveness. You can see the sticker at right. It informs you that you can either use the slidey-glidey menus, or turn on the more basic “tap-touch”. The ironic thing is that the screen on the MY500XT is massively more responsive than the S200, so the slidey-glidey menus actually work quite well. Bouquets! Having said that, I can see that the tap-touch menus would work better when on the move (not that anyone uses a GPS device when on the move, right?).
Navman have also removed the inane and utterly pointless “don’t click there, click here!” video on startup. It has been replaced by a nice clear tutorial, with a big “never, ever show me this tutorial again” option on the first page. Bouquets!
The map display in general appears to be tidied up. Road names appear clearly and almost all upcoming roads are named. This is important when you’re running in non-routing mode and looking for an upcoming side road. I loved the way TomTom did this, but Garmin do it very, very badly. Navman’s new software is right up there with TomTom. Bouquets!
I’ve yet to have a proper play with the traffic options in anger, but I’ve seen a demo and I’m impressed. All the bits and bobs are there, including options to route around bad traffic or road closures. The traffic data itself is of cours sourced from Geosmart and completely out of Navman’s control, but the display and layout of traffic info is done well. Bouquets!
Now the big, aching brickbat. Whoever designed the mounting bracket and power plug arrangement on this device is an intellectual dwarf of the lowest order. They should be locked in a padded cell covered with Navman mounting brackets and forced to plug and unplug MY500XTs continuously for the rest of their living days.
Look closely. There is no possible way to plug the Navman in before mounting it on the bracket. None. Am I being picky? How about you sit in your car with the MY500XT on its bracket on the window, where you can’t see the mini-USB socket on its underside, and try plugging it in. Do that every. single. time. you hop in your car. 
Navman, please, if you are reading this: open every single MY500XT box you have in your warehouse, remove the power cable, and replace it with one that bends the other way. It’s a simple fix. I’m begging you.
Conclusion: lovely device software. Pity about the lack of attention to detail.
Popularity: 32% [?]
Simple answer – Navman have no control over the hardware design, it’s all done in Taiwan and Shanghai. Why do the cradle and power cord designs change every year rather than keeping a standard fitting? No idea.
Hi Ben, I’ve been playing with my review unit here at the PCW bunker, these are my thoughts.
The idea seems to be that you use the cable routing bracket on the back of the mount to secure the cable in place, which gives you about 3cm of freedom to plug it into the Navman. To me, this is a good thing — it means the cable doesn’t flop to the floor of my car whenever I whip the plug out to take the Navman out of the car, and it’s always in the right spot ready to plug back in. Also, I rarely seem to plug any GPS device in before it’s in the bracket so my GPS mounting habits, so to speak, are a little different to yours obviously.
Anyway, that’s my take on it.
Do you find the the new screen too grippy? Feels kinda odd.
Hey Scott, I tried using the cable guide, but it just makes my problem worse. Can you confirm that the power cord you have is identical to the one in my pictures? It’s really firm and doesn’t bend too well.
Oh and the screen, yeah it was really grippy at first, but gets better after a while. Probably some remnants from the sticker it comes with?
Yep, same cable. I can see where you’re coming from, but for me, it works like a charm.
A
but it’s all by the by now I have TomTom for my iPhone. Just need a bracket and a car charger for it now.
Totally agree. I’ve got a bracket and AV/USB cable for my iPhone in the car already. The loaner 3GS with TomTom just slots straight in and works fine. No worries about theft because I always take my iPhone with me.
Sounds Great
Hi Ben.
I have a navman S-150 and despite the flaws it has served me well and recently guided me around Europe without any problems. I assume that Navman replaced these S models with the MY models so quickly because of the interface problems, especially the ‘glide’ screen issues. What I don’t understand is why they just did not update the firmware to add navigation buttons to the S units. It would seem this should be possible with the existing touch screen. I thought there might be some thoughts on this in some of the forums but have found nothing. Have you come across anything about replacement or alternative firmware for the S series?? Do you think it would have been a good idea?
You’ve got to think of it from a profit perspective – you’ve already bought your device, so where’s the profit for Navman to release a complete upgrade for it?
Personally I think this is short term thinking. Happy customers will come back to the same company in the future, whereas customers who’ve received poor or even adequate service will look around when buying in the future. I know for a fact that the new software runs on the old devices (I did the work myself), but the cost of testing and releasing was deemed too much and apparently would prevent customers from buying a new device. Daft, eh?
By the same token, I’m hoping Sony will release Windows Mobile 6.5 firmware for the Xperia X1 phone when they release the Xperia X2, but I can bet some marketing dipshit is saying if they release the new software for the old phone it will hurt sales.
Thanks for you quick response Parsley.
You make a good point (or 2). I would have thought releasing this software to S series users might appease them a little!! But then Navman don’t seem to excel at customer service.
Were you working for them when you tested the software? I am surprised there is not more people asking this question on the forums or even a ‘hack’ for installing it.
@parsley
Used to work there but I left a couple of months ago.
The way the software is written, in order to use the new application you need a new license key. Anyone who got hold of the installer wouldn’t be able to use it. If the upgrade was released officially then you could connect to the license server to get a new key.
Incidentally, the security is done because Navman (like all GPS companies) are legally obliged to protect the map data (supplied by Navteq, TeleAtlas, etc). If you don’t protect their data they won’t sell you the maps!