Product Reviews

Navman's iCN 720 is a standalone GPS navigation system with an integrated digital camera. It remembers where you took a photo, so you can navigate by selecting a picture rather than entering an address.

The iCN 720 is chunky, but it feels well made. The fold-up GPS antenna seems tough and doesn't wobble when locked in place. Its large, 4" screen has a very high resolution and is bright enough to see clearly even while driving in strong sunlight. The high-resolution screen also makes maps clear, and you can pick out road names at a glance.

Unlike Navman's previous navigation systems, the iCN 720's onscreen buttons are big enough to operate with your finger, so you don't need to use a stylus to enter destinations. You can enter a street name and house number or simply the name of a place, which is useful when you're navigating to a small village and you don't know the names of any streets. The iCN 720 is rare in supporting full seven-digit postcodes, rather than the four or five digits most navigation systems offer, so you can narrow down your search

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to a small group of houses. You can also navigate to a number of Points of Interest such as hotels and car dealers. Short-cut buttons take you to the nearest petrol station or car park, useful when you're lost in a city and can't pull over to operate it manually.

Once you've entered your destination, the iCN 720 calculates the route very quickly. Planning a route from South London to Edinburgh took just 25 seconds. The GPS receiver is also incredibly sensitive. We even managed to get a GPS fix indoors, so you are unlikely to lose your satellite signal when driving between tall buildings or under an overpass. The 3D display updates smoothly, and the iCN 720 gives voice prompts well in advance from its loud speaker. Like Navman's iCN 520, the 720 has a top-down 2D mode and a turn-by-turn view, which can be less distracting than the 3D view. The battery lasts for only an hour of navigating, so you'll need the charger, which plugs into the cigarette lighter.

Pressing the button on top activates the camera and, if you have a GPS signal, the iCN 720 encodes the location's latitude and longitude in the image. This means you can take a picture of a beautiful view or a quiet spot by the river and just click the picture to navigate there rather than trying to remember an address. The photos look sharp and clear on the screen but are no better than those from a 1.3-megapixel phone camera once transferred to a PC using Microsoft ActiveSync and a USB cable.

The integrated camera is a novel idea, but Navman's iCN 720 is an excellent navigation system in its own right. It's pricy, but it's the best standalone GPS system we've seen.