Home > Consumer Reviews > Nextar X4-T 4.3-Inch Portable GPS Navigator with MP3 Player

This is my second NEXTAR GPS. Upgrading from the X3(3" screen) instead of buying new glasses.
This brand has several superior features I have not seen in other brands.
Additionally it does not have a load of 'commercial' materials as the Garmens do from AAA.
+Voice to text. The GPS announces route changes/turns and includes the street name route you'll be turning onto. No need to look away from the road when the GPS says turn to identify what road/route you're turning onto.
+You can create an itinerary for your trip if you want to go a specific route you already know.
+ You can identify a "current location" and then save it to favorites.
+ An additional feature is available when looking up destinations by address, or on any location added to favorites. After saving the address/location to favorites you can EDIT the address/location title, and add a title you will be more familiar with than just the address.

The voice on this model is clear and the volume is easily controlled by a volume knob on the side of the unit, no need to go into the set up.
The 4" screen has good resolution and color and routes appear to be up-to-date.
The map data is USA only and is on a 1GB SD card. I have not attempted to go on-line and research maps for Canada which I also want.

I have had the unit for about 1 month (May 8-08) and I am sure I will learn more about it but travel often by car and it has been great. It easily recalculates route directions if you fail to turn where directed (AS I HAVE) and also recalculates if you know a better road. When taking your own route it will often direct you to make a U-turn when possible, but it will eventually come around.

Needless to say I love this brand & model.

I just returned from a road trip using this device. I agree with other reviewers that it's easy to see, read, & etc., but it has issues. Several times it didn't alert me to a turn in time, telling me that a street was ahead of me when in fact I was passing it. Several times it advised that I was "Off Route" when I was simply driving along the same highway. Worst of all, though, was when, after leading me nicely into a tricky place with many turns, it simply froze, leaving me to find my own way back. Not nice! It was basically dead, giving only the opening screen with no menu options.
Here's the clincher: To get it serviced within the 1 year "limited" warranty, you of course need to pay the postage to them, but you'll also need to include a money order for $25 for return shipping! That's Nextar's policy.
This, by the way, is a discontinued model and you'll find no on-line support for it.

The other reviewers listed and discussed the hardware which was fine as far as it goes. I am in Southern California and the maps and mapping have been fine. If I know a better way for part of the trip it quickly recalculates and adjusts. If I made a wrong turn, it gets me back on track.
Now for the unadvertised EXTRAS; The maps are stored on a 1 gig. SD card and take up 970 megs., so there is no room left for music or photos. Here's how I solved that "problem". I pulled the 1 gig. card and copied the contents to my computer. Next I recopied the maps onto a 2 gig. SD card and put it back in the NEXTAR GPS. Everything still worked! Out came the card for a few extras. I installed a folder with 500+ MP3 songs and other folders with JPG photos in albums (You will need to make the photos fairly small to get them to cycle quickly).
True I can not navigate and listen to the music, but that's fine with me. What I can do is pass around a photo slide show or just let it cycle on the 4 inch screen.
Or I can select what I want to hear and let the music run.
Sure there are better GPS' out there, but at the price I paid (under $150-) and the "free" extras, I'm quite happy. P.S. I went by a GPS display at a chain retailer and listened to a few others costing over twice as much. Same voice, same instructions.

I purchased two of these after receiving a link to a great deal.

It sounded like a pretty easy item to use, with a big screen - and that's what I wanted for my grandfather and my parents.

I personally have a small Mio C230 (that I hacked easily yesterday), and a Microsoft Streets and Trips GPS. So my experience is with low end GPS systems.

Please note: I haven't driven anywhere with these yet! I just wanted to review the features right out of the package, since there is so little info available on these models.

Benefits of this model:

* Large screen. Very pretty.
* Street names are announced. After using my Ms S&T once, I'll NEVER buy another GPS that doesn't announce street names.
* Takes SD cards for storage.
* Built in stylus holder with stylus. Handy, especially for big fingered people!!!
* Easy to save favorite addresses/locations, and you can give them each names (mine were all VERY long names).
* Night mode can be automatic. I don't know what that means, but my guess is maybe it goes by time of day???
* Comes with ALL the power/connection cords you want and need (all 3).
* Much more intuitive than my Mio and my Ms S&T (both of which are known for being difficult to figure out). Not perfect by any means, but I was pleasantly surprised.
* Actually does find my address! Although I did have to strip off the letters in it (our addresses have the weird format S27W98985). That alone made me consider giving my mom my MIO and keeping this one for myself. The Mio doesn't have any non-number-only addresses loaded. It can't find half of the client addresses I search for.
* When you type in addresses, it's very intuitive and smart.
* You can avoid roads on the fly if there is construction (or flooding this year!).
* Map screen shows Time and Speed at the bottom of the screen, and not alot of other cluttered buttons/info that take up space.
* When I plugged the unit into your PC, it installed automatically and instantly. It shows up as it's own drive. When the SD card is installed, that shows up as a second drive under the first drive.
* Can display photos and play MP3s. There is just enough room on the SD card (I think there was about 25-40 MB space left on the 1 GB card) included to toss some photos on there without buying any extra cards. And to put photos on there, you just copy them right to the root of the SD card. A width of about 400px worked best for me. I didn't try MP3s.

Drawbacks of this model:

* Couldn't find any hacks, or even online information for that matter. It's listed as a Windows CE Core 5.0 system, so I would think some hacks would be out eventually?
* Anyways, I didn't find any way to upload lists of POIs so far. Or games. I like games. And there isn't a feature to upload construction updates that I could find.
* No POIs pre-loaded at all for nearby towns except banks. Strange!
* Very limited Map zoom out. You can't zoom back far enough to see the entire trip - even for fairly short trips. That's the main reason I'll stick with my Mio. When you do zoom out, most of the street names disappear, so you can't tell where you'd be going anyways. There is also a lag in the zooming. Annoying.
* I know there has to be a written itinerary/directions in here somewhere, but I cannot find one. All I can find is the map view.
* It appears that you cannot run the GPS and any other program concurrently. So you can play music, OR find you way - but not both.
* The U.S. maps come all loaded onto the SD card that is included and inserted. The instructions say to NOT put any photos or MP3s directly on the unit. So basically in order to use the photos or MP3 feature, it seems to be assumed that you'll carry around a separate SD card. Although there is that bit of space left over on the included SD card - at it is writable.
* Switching to 3D mode takes a few steps to find.
* Turning on and off sometimes holding the button. Sometimes.
* Instructions are lacking. Simple, but miss out on telling you where to find features it's referring to and things like that. Especially in relation to the image player.
* It can warn you if you are speeding, however it says it doesn't know what the speed limits are, so it just guesses based on the road class. That seems kinda lame. But it does bleep when you are speeding - I set the speed limit at 1 MPH and ran across the living room at 3 MPH to check. BLEEP-BLEEP-BLEEP.
* Not sure I trust it's routing ability. I put in my first "trip", and it gave me a route that I've never taken to get there. Nor did MS-trips, Google, MSN maps, Mio, or Mapquest ever suggest that route. So I switched it from "Quickest" route to "Shortest", and it found my usual route and said the usual route was 2 minutes faster. Huh? Wouldn't that make IT the "Quickest" route also?

Map is outdated. This product is not in production anymore. Zero support. None upgradeable. Battery holds no charge.