Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony NVU94T 4.8-Inch Widescreen Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator with Traffic and Text-to-Speech

I bought the 94T after my Garmin 660 lost its ability to find satellites. [...]. This unit boots up, acquires satellites and calculates routes faster than the 660 did. I particularly like the split screen feature as you are approaching an exit or turn. The display is also a bit larger. So far, I don't have any negatives. Definitely a real value for the price.

I bought this sony gps nvu94t a month & half ago. I am very pleased with everything that sony gps has to offer. Blue tooth is excellent. I travel with it from Syracuse to NYC, from NYC to Atlantic City, from NYC to Florida, from NYC to Boston. Acquiring the satellite signal is very fast with all those tall building around NYC. I never lost a signal. The position plus is great. The speaker is clear. The display is clear. Very nice finish. Sony's "super suction cup" mount works beautifully. The auto re-route is faster than another other gps such Magellan 860T and Garmin Nuvi 350 which both of them I used to own. If you want a great gps, this is the one for you. Overall, I am very happy with this gps unit.

***************** Avoid this GPS *****************

I bought this on December 15th when I drove from Detroit Michigan to Austin Texas. I have a very bad scene of direction and knew that I would get lost with out it. I bought mine when it was $399. I got this one over the others at the store (Bestbuy) because of the size of the screen. The others were very small compared to this.

Positives:
Large 4.8" screen
Navigation voice clear and easy to understand
Screen is bright and clear
Touch screen


Negatives:
Navigation voice was hard to hear even with the volume all the way up.
- Close your windows and turn down your radio, there is a aux out jack on this, but that means you have to turn off your radio still.
Route calculations can be slow at times, and I found that it only lets you select one option at a time.
- What I mean by this is it will not (at lease not that I found) let you chose it to calculate the shortest route and avoid toll roads, or fastest route and avoid major city's.
Map data updates I haven't seen one yet.
- New roads are always being opened, roads being closed do to construction etc. There is no way to update this and this seems to me to be a big minus.
Live Traffic updates costing.
- I don't remember the cost of this service at the moment but it seems like it was around $10 a month or something like that. Sony should offer this free of charge for there high end unit or have a one time charge that covers it for life. I would be willing to pay $100 for life time use.
Sony's unwillingness to use industry standard flash memory.
- I know Sony is trying to push their Memory Sticks but they could had included a SD or a Micro-SD card slot.
The screen every time it starts up saying "Do not use this device while driving" huh that is the point of a vehicle GPS.


I updated the firmware on mine and lost all my maps, I found out through several calls to tech support that there is no way to download the map's. Mine was still under warranty but I was told by a Sony tech that if it was not covered that I would be charged $109 ($90 short of a brand new one) to get the map data put back on.
Seems to me that $109 is a lot for basically 15 minutes of work. When I asked I thought maybe $30 plus shipping.

I do recommend that if you get this do get the extended warranty for this.

I am not a Sony basher by any means but when I see a bad product I call it as I see it.

Would I buy this again knowing what I know now - "NO!"
I would had gotten something with a smaller screen that works better and has better tech support and has the ability of the user to update the map's.

Why did I go with this one?
Well like I said it had the biggest screen of the ones on display at the store and the Sony name.

If you are buying a vehicle GPS I would suggest looking some place else, do not get this one. I see a lot of potential but Sony came up short on this GPS. There is a lot of things that I have seen just in the little time I have had it that Sony should had done or included with it.

If anyone from Sony reads this re-do this unit a few small changes would make this a great unit that would put any other GPS to shame.

The sad thing is, is that it's not like Sony does not have the money to research and develop something top notch, something that could blow TomTom and Garmin away.

If Sony had asked some one like me to beta test this unit and would take the suggestions this could had been the standard and the one all others would be trying to catch.

What I would like to see in the next Sony NVU:
5+" LCD
Faster route calculations
Better GPS satellite reception
Map data updated by user or satellite
Louder navigation voice
Option to include or exclude multiple things in navigation calculations
I would like to be able to take and enter my addresses on my computer and then upload it to the GPS instead of using the touch screen keyboard
Charge less for live traffic updates $20 per a year or $100 for life
SD or Micro-SD flash slot

This GPS, overall, is a guite solid, and works as intended. My only gripe is far is the route the GPS calculates. One really needs to review the path because the route may not be as efficient.

As an example, I planned a trip from New Jersey to West Florida. At north Richmond, the GPS calculates a path South 95 to 295, then back to South 64/95. Why didn't it just continue South 95? That's over 10+ miles to take that route.

Bottom line, be sure to check the route and add some intermediate destinations to force the GPS to follow your route.

New rating: *** (3 star)
Update: I lowered the rating because I'm just not that happy with the routes the gps calculates; it may take local roads when there are interstates in the same path. Why is that a problem? Comparing the gps route to my route, I can end up with the shorter time. Some have commented that the gps calculates also on historical traffic patterns. From my experiments, I just don't think so. Maybe I'm being too critical, but I was under the impression the gps would know some of the 'obvious' routes.

Again, check the gps routes and test yourself.

New Rating * (1 Star)
Final Update: After updating the firmware to latest (4.01) and travelling for NJ to New Orleans, the GPS took a frustrating fritz. Somehow, the GPS started rebooting every time I put in a route. It seemed ok when there was no route configured and sometimes a route to some other location. But for my route to LA, it kept on rebooting even after a hard reset. After an annoying few hours trying to figure WTF, a quick fist to the screen solved the problem. Goodbye Sony, hello Garmin.

Huge screen, I love it! Do not like the antenna cord on my dash!