Review on HK GPS 500 Widescreen Navigator by Harman Kardon by William Groupp

I just received a Harman Kardon GPS unit and thought I'd write about my experience. I bought it for my dad and it was a bit risky (I was hoping it would be easy for him to use) but I've been using it myself for the past few days. say I was pleasantly surprised. There are two things that stand out about this device. First, it's a big screen. You don't realize how good a screen this big is until you put it next to my petite Garmin (half an inch is a lot). It's big, it's bright, it's easy to read when it's at the top of the windshield, and it's that good. The second big thing is the user interface. I see the Revain review caught this as well. This is the only navigation I've seen with attractive menus and buttons. But more than just looking good, what's really nice is that it's very easy to do with it what you want, like enter an address or change settings. I mean, you don't have to navigate through a large menu hierarchy or figure out what the icons mean to get anywhere, everything is just a few keys away from the "Source" button. This is especially useful if you're listening to music while navigating and want to quickly switch between your MP3 player and the map screen. Such little things make it a well thought-out product. For example, if you are in the MP3 player, it will show the name of the next streets in the bar below, and if you look at the map, it will show the name of the current song. Seems obvious right? The design of the device is slim and fits in your pocket. It doesn't have a large fold out antenna (which I didn't know when I bought it), that little bump on the top left is (I think) the antenna. I was a little worried about GPS signal reception, but it wasn't slower compared to my previously mentioned GPS. Here are some tech goodies for all you geeks out there. As said, the GPS performance seems to be on par, and there's a connector for an external antenna if you have a roof antenna (haven't tried it). The routing is pretty good, if a bit slow. One thing that seems strange is that he treats all the small alleyways in my area as streets. It's kinda weird, but it's okay (they don't turn me on). There is a USB connection configuration option that can be toggled between mass storage and MTP. If you get music or videos from any of the subscription services, you can use them as a Microsoft portable player via MPT. I don't have any of these, so I haven't tried this feature. The device has maps for the whole of the US and Canada on its internal memory (no SD card required), but has an SD slot that allows MP3s and videos to be played. I uploaded some MP3s and some of my MPEG4 AVI files and they played fine. It doesn't seem to have enough power to play videos and navigate at the same time, so the navigation pauses when you're playing a movie, but you can play mp3 and navigate at the same time. Battery life is good (4-5 hours? I didn't hit the limit as it was mostly on a car charger) and it charges via USB (it comes with a handy USB charger that I'll use for my iPod from now on will use). the). The mount is rigid and strong, and you can remove it from the mount with one hand and with little effort. It's been stuck to my windshield for about 2 days now and doesn't look like it's coming loose. What I didn't like was the annoying warning screen when playing a video. If you're the kind of person who watches videos while driving, I don't think the alert will stop you. And if you're a passenger, you don't need a warning. I wish there was a setting to turn this off. Also the blue light on the cigarette lighter adapter is too bright. A little tape fixed it. All in all, I'm glad I bought this item. It has a large screen and a nice design for a GPS navigator that costs twice as much. Also, my dad was able to figure out how to use it (that says a lot) so he'll be using it instead of just leaving it at home (meaning I won't be seeing it again). . Great value for money, highly recommend.