 All around a great product |
| Review Date: May 12, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Max S. Hersch, |
I just installed this unit in my 2009 subaru sti. I have to say that installation was easy. Just took some time as I wanted to be careful. The interface is easy to use. I did not have to read the owners manual at all.
I installed sirius satellite radio as well. I purchased the tuner as well as the sirius clarion interface.
The navigation works very well and has a lot of great features. The display of buildings is very neat, much different from the garmin interface which I have been using for a long time.
The bluetooth is amazing. One very important thing is to download the firmware update from Clarion's website. The sound is very clear, much better than my last car that had nav/bluetooth built in from the factory. Plus the person I am talking to says I sound very clear. I mounted the external mic on the steering column instead of the visor. You can adjust the mic sensitivity depending on where you place the mic.
The audio quality is much better than the factory unit, which was Clarion also. :-)
Overall, a great unit. Since this is a new unit it is hard to find customer reviews. I started a forum on yahoo groups. It is called ClarionNX. Hope to talk to you there! |
Built-in-Everything
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| Review Date: June 20, 2010 |
| Reviewer: MARK PRICE, York, Pa |
| Installed in a 08 Equinox, fit perfect w/dash adaptor, GM Onstar adaptor, and PAC steering wheel controls (video bypass to). Sounds great at every volume setting and not ridiculously loud or distorted at volume MAX. 3D Nav is awesome. Controls and switching between sources (menu structure) takes a bit of getting used to. IPOD integration works great. Album art would have been nice touch, but it wasn't an option on any make/model so that wasn't a minus. Screen looks great during movies, but could have been brighter for viewing in bright light conditions. I use all the sources: DVD, Bluetooth, IPOD, USB, and FM, and they all work flawlessly for me. (I do not have an IPhoney). I took one star due to NO STREAMING MEDIA (PANDORA, SLACKER etc., via Bluetooth. I love my Pandora radio, but I was able to connect it via RCA so not a total loss. Who ever the suit was at Clarion that left out the Bluetooth AD2P streaming stereo protocol should be caned and throw in a salt mine :) Was a steal @ $870 when I purchased via Amazon. |
Great Mapping Engine But Clunky UI, Dismal iPod/iPhone Performance, Poor Bluetooth Support
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| Review Date: July 29, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Dan Trimble, |
I've used the Clarion NX700 for more than a month, having replaced my beloved Panasonic Strada that saw its final demise at the hands of the cruel, 15-minute-torrential-rain gods of the southeastern United States. Lesson learned: even when it's 90 degrees and virtually cloudless in the south, keep your moonroof closed during your 45 minute meeting indoors!
The Clarion NX700 -- at the time of purchase a nearly brand new product -- won over its Kenwood, Alpine, and JVC competitors. (Sadly, Panasonic has left the entire car navigation/audio market and was therefore not an option.) The Clarion won for its comprehensive flash memory-based maps, its range of functionality built into the system, and its purported ease of use. The final package I purchased and had professionally installed included the NX700 navigation receiver and a rear view/backup camera integration. Bluetooth phone support was supposedly built into the receiver, and I opted to defer buying at a later date both the iPod/iPhone video cable and an integrated module for Sirius or XM satellite radio. Out the door including installation, taxes, etc., this purchased system was approximately $1500 new. ($200 was the professional install.)
At the time of purchase, there were no units available for me to try in person. The dealers I went to didn't have any on display, and so my decision was based entirely on their recommendations and what very little information could be found about the brand new product online. The lack of a demo unit was probably a good thing for Clarion as I'm not sure it would have positively impacted my purchase decision. The unit is exceptional in many regards, and downright frustrating in many others.
NAVIGATION
Presumably the most important aspect of the system for most users is the navigation, so I will start there. It is the strength of the Clarion NX700. Clarion's navigation antenna and software has excellent reliability; measurably improved over my 2007-era Panasonic Strada. It tracks my routes and destinations without issue and with reasonable speed. It is not the fastest unit I've used in calculating directions, but it's speed is not a problem; on the contrary, I'd say it's above average. The use of fast, Flash memory for storing the map database is a huge boost to its speed (and a point of soreness for the audio system, but more on that in a bit).
The map engine has three basic methods of display: (1) a traditional 2-D, flat birds-eye look at the area in which the map rotates as your vehicle does; (2) the same view with North always at a fixed position; (3) a 3-D map. In both 2-D and 3-D views, the map can show road elevation, points of interest, roads of many types, and all the different elements you would expect of any electronic map.
Like many navigation systems, the NX700 has the capability of displaying its map in normal colors and brightness, as well as in a "night mode" designed to reduce glare and eye strain in the dark. You can manually select day or night mode, or set it to "automatic". Ostensibly, this automatic setting will adjust between day and night...well...automatically. However, as of the date this review was written more than a month after installing the system, I have yet to be able to get the automatic function to work.
The unit comes with a POI database of approximately 12 million businesses, government offices, gas stations, restaurants, airports, and virtually any other type of location you might find in, say, a Yellow Pages. It is easily searchable and browsable, and is fast, and accurate. Updates to the database can be purchased online from [...], though I have yet to see any instructions or support for doing so on that site for US-based NX700 models. (As of the date of this review, the only instructions on the site apply only to European models, the NX700E specifically.)
The normal means of entering one or more destinations is through an obvious touchscreen button with a picture of binoculars on it. WIthin it, you can select a destination by entering it manually, finding it in the POI database, retrieving it from your list of previously taken routes, or from a list of your "Favorites". On screen you are given a natural, intuitive touchscreen keyboard that is highly responsive; fast to the touch -- much faster than any other in-dash navigation system I have used. When you are unclear about the full address of a manual entry, you can enter as much as possible and search from there, or specify street intersections or the center of a city. If you are driving long routes and know what general course you want to take from city to city but don't need to go to specific places within each city, this is an eminently useful function. Overall, I couldn't be happier with the system's ability to let you enter your destination quickly.
Selecting an entry from the POI database also displays the general information about it, including phone number. If you have your bluetooth phone connected, ostensibly it will place the call if you click on this. However, Bluetooth is still not working for me after more than a month, so I can't vouch for it. More on that in a bit.
But there is where my happiness with the navigation interface ends. The user interface for the map system is very stable, and generally acceptable (note that I only stipulated the map system; the audio system's user interface -- entirely different in style, colors, and function -- is leaps and bounds more clunky, cumbersome, and counter-intuitive). However, the navigation UI will take even the most experienced navigators some getting used to as things change in ways that seem somewhat counter intuitive. For example, you cannot enter multiple destinations all at once while creating your trip. Instead, you must enter your farthest end point first, let it calculate the route to get there, and then enter each of your intermediary locations as a "Via Point". One by one: each time you select a new via point, it will recalculate the entire route and take you back to the map with your turn by turn guidance. If you have more to enter, you must go back into the menus, add a new entry, and so on. If most of your trips are simply from Point A to Point B, this won't trouble you much. If you do a fair amount of long distance driving, or even short distance with multiple stops, however, this will feel a bit "odd" until you get used to it.
An additional oddity about the navigation interface is that the place you go to access certain functions actually changes depending on whether or not a route is active. For example, once you enter a route and it's active, clicking on the aforementioned binoculars touch button does not take you back to the same screen where you would enter an address, select a POI, change map settings, and so forth. It takes you instead to a detailed overview of your trip, how far you've gone and have left to go, a function for displaying the whole route fitted to the screen, and 3 different trip computers. While I admit all of this I've found very useful on many occasions, changing the expected behavior of a major button in the user interface is poor design, and is a constant frustration. For example, if you're driving along and decide you want to modify your route, change to a different route method (fastest, most economical, shortest, etc.), or add a new "Via Point", you'll find yourself clicking that button since that's where you did those things before, only to find it replaced by these new functions. (The button, oddly, still looks the same as it always did, however, hence the expectation it will always be the place you should go to find/enter addresses). Once a route is active, those destination and map settings functions relocate themselves to a much smaller, semi-transparent touch button on the lower right side of the display. It's labeled "Menu", and be sure to strain your eyes to see it as it fades to a semi-transparency while the route is active. It's a nice touch and it looks kinda neat, but something that important should not be moved from its normal location, nor should it be hard to see while driving.
Other elements of the navigation user interface that are worth mentioning are: zoom buttons that are large and easy to work with, but unfortunately disappear entirely while driving. To get them back takes only a quick touch of the map, but zoom strikes me as an important feature that Clarion might want to consider making available from a single touch. The NX700 also has a "Position" button for identifying exactly where you are (city, state, latitude, longitude, and so forth), a 2D/2D North/3D button for changing map views, and small, medium, and large area pre-set zoom levels. A neat feature of those zoom levels is that you can change their defaults to your preferred zoom levels and restore their factory defaults quite easily.
While driving, the NX700 can also optionally do an automatic zoom that changes the angle of the map, the zoom level, and other characteristics to more easily show you where you should be turning. On long stretches of road, it then zooms back out to give you a view ahead. Many devices have an automatic zoom, but the Clarion's is much easier to follow.
Like many more modern navigation systems, the NX700 also shows you lane information so you can easily identify what lane you should be in and from which lane to turn, as well as street names. Miss your turn, and the system confidently and quickly gets you back on track by recalculating your route. However, the NX700 does NOT have the ability to read out street or highway names with its voice guidance. The voice guidance is clear and easy to listen to (and selectable between a variety of male and female voices), but the lack of reading aloud the street and highway names is unacceptable in any navigation system newer than 2008. There's simply no excuse, especially when even the cheap $200 handheld units have such functionality.
A note on voice guidance...if you are playing audio while navigating, you may find the volume level is too high even on the lowest setting if you also have Dynamic Volume turned on. Dynamic Volume changes the volume of the navigation system based on how fast your vehicle is going (theory is that the faster your car travels, the harder it is to hear over road noise). This is a well loved feature, actually, but I found it necessary to disable the dynamic volume as keeping the voice guidance volume itself even at its lowest non-muted volume was typically very high. (Even with my 4,500 pound SUV with heavy offroad tires causing a ruckus of noise). Volume is also easily changeable by going to the Binocular button (or the Menu button if you have an active route), clicking Settings, clicking Voice, and changing a simple slider.
One of the last frustrating things about the NX700's map user interface is the lack of ability to go instantly back to your map with a single touch or button. Clarion's marketing materials clearly place a great deal of pride on the fact that the system itself has only three physical buttons -- besides those three buttons, everything is done on the touchscreen. The physical buttons include volume up and down, and menu button. The menu button is what takes you very quickly between the map/navigation interface and the audio/video/phone interface. No matter where you are within the navigation system, that button will take you to the audio/video/phone UI. But depending on where you are within the audio/video/phone UI, it will either take you back to the map OR it will take you back to the main menu of the audio/video/phone UI. More on that will be discussed below, but suffice to say, it's another example of how the user interface changes on you sometimes unexpectedly. While this is actually a handy function and I applaud Clarion for taking a stand on the beautiful looks and simplicity of a system with only 3 buttons, usability should not come second to how a product looks. If you are, say, four levels deep into the menu structure of the mapping interface (4 levels is easy to get to for even some relatively common features), there is no ability to just be done with it and go straight back to the map. You might think clicking the Menu button on the device itself would take you back, but it doesn't. Instead, you generally need to reverse your way through each level of the menu structure until you get back to your main map screen. This is overly cumbersome, a distraction while driving, and a poor design choice.
One of the many other strong suits of this system is the "Detour" function. It provides an easy ability to quickly deviate from your route in order to get to a POI of some kind. The Detour lets you select places to go by category, and displays the results either by distance or "by detour". (Perhaps, that refers to the amount of time it adds to your original route, though even after reading the manual, I'm still not entirely clear whether or not that's how it actually ranks it.) Oddly, the Detour function has no search. So while you could add the same location to your route through the "normal" means described above and even search for it through that normal way, accessing that same location from the Detour function will not allow you to search for it. Notwithstanding this oversight, the Detour is one of my favorite features of the navigation system and has been a great asset many times. It can be used even when there is no active route and you're simply driving around.
Lastly, the navigation interface works fine while driving, which I am extremely pleased about. There is a setting you can toggle to disable the menus after the car reaches 6 mph or something, but I quite happily leave it turned off. Thank you Clarion -- and thank you to their lawyers -- for being one of the few manufacturers to trust adults to make adult safety decisions about how to drive and how and when to use the system.
The system so far has been tried throughout vast areas of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Alabama. From Key West and Miami to the Blue Ridge Mountains, it's been put through its paces. In a couple months, it will be going on a 5,000 mile journey through 30 additional states, taking me back home to San Francisco, California. I have no doubt its satellite reliability and seemingly impeccable accuracy will get me where I need to go, quickly, efficiently, and confidently. I look forward to it as it's an excellent navigation system that does its job very well, albeit with some serious frustrations in the UI that hopefully Clarion will address in a software update at some point down the road (read: soon, I hope!). But where the rubber meets the road is in the accuracy and navigation skills of the mapping engine, and that's one area where Clarion seems to have outdone everyone else.
AUDIO AND IPOD/IPHONE INTEGRATION
Where to begin? Clarion has done a remarkable job of integrating virtually every feature you might want in an audio system, but has done so with a user interface that is so cumbersome and awkward to use that I've actually found myself frustrated to a point of saying screw it, and going back to the pleasant silence of the road ahead of me!
Let's start with the basics. AM. FM. Native iPod and iPhone support. HD, XM, and Sirius. (HD and satellite radio features are only available if you buy a Clarion adapter/module; although they were reasonably priced at $129, I was unsure which service I wanted and simply opted to buy it down the road as I had no immediate need. As of this review date, I have not and am not reviewing the HD, XM, or Sirius functionality.) CD-Audio, CD (MP3) and DVD video support.
Video support is comprehensive, with support for commercial DVDs and video files on a DVD disc. However, not surprisingly, and just like every other system on the market with video support, it will not display the video as long as the car is in motion or the parking break is disengaged. This can not be disabled, and in most jurisdictions, it is illegal for a driver to watch video while driving anyway. HOWEVER, the NX700 does have support for "2-zone entertainment". If you equip your car with 1 or more monitors in the backseat or an overhead monitor, they can be connected to the system so that your kids or other passengers can watch while you drive and see either your map or audio on the main unit in the dashboard. I do not have rear monitors and would rather my passengers learn to talk or see the world outside them than stare at a television show or movie in the car, but the function is there for those who want it. Video quality when it does play is very good. It's certainly no iPhone "Retina Display"! But it's quality level is surprisingly decent compared to most nav video systems.
Accessing the audio system is as simple as touching the main menu button on the physical face of the unit (button center of the frame). This is roughly equivalent to the "Source" or "Src" buttons on many other navigation systems available. From this screen, you can select the Tuner, DVD, USB (for connected iPhones/iPods, for example), Aux, and so forth. You can also use this screen to configure settings for the receiver itself, for audio and speakers, device calibration and security features (e.g. PIN codes), and many, many more settings than I'll bother to cover here. Suffice to say, the unit is highly configurable in most respects you'd expect, and then some. From this screen, you would also access the built in Bluetooth phone "support".
The audio and video clarity of Clarion products is legendary, and for good reason. It is crisp, vivid, engaging, and encompassing. There's not much more to say on this; listening to music with the NX700 is a pleasant experience.
Getting that music to play is another matter!
Yes, the tuner is easy enough. Click Tuner. Hit "Band" if you want to switch between AM and FM. Click a Preset. Switch between "Home" and "Travel" presets. Automatically seek or manually change the tuner. Easily modify a preset by holding the preset key. Simple, straight forward, and just as we'd always expect it.
Things start to get less simple with the iPhone/iPod support. I must admit, having that support built in and native to the unit is a huge improvement over the vast majority of devices on the market, and connecting the iPhone or iPod to the NX700 could not be any easier. A cable that plugs into the back of the unit simply comes around the dash through my glove box, and connects to the same standard USB cable that I connect my iPhone to my computer with. The cables and the phone then simply rest inside my glovebox while I drive, and the cables serve as a charger as well. As long as the phone is connected, the system recognizes it, and I can simply click the "USB" source from the main audio screen to start playing.
One thing that does irk me is that the system automatically starts playing the first song on the iPod or iPhone as soon as the device is connected to the USB cable and recognized by the NX700. While this isn't a bad feature necessarily, it bothers me that I can't choose to disable the automatic start. Often times, I might be listening to the radio and simply want the iPhone connected in order to keep it charged, or to have access to play later. If I do this, it automatically turns off the radio, switches to USB, and starts playing the first song it finds. Additionally, very rarely is the first alphabetized song stored on an iPod/iPhone the one I want to listen to. I appreciate this feature, actually, but would greatly prefer the flexibility to toggle a setting that would turn it on or off.
Speaking of settings, the NX700 has many, many audio and device settings ranging from equalizer/genre settings to repeat, shuffle, and others. However, it does not save all of the settings you might select. No matter how many times I tell it turn off Shuffle, for example, the next time I connect my iPod or iPhone, that setting is once again turned back on. Yet it does save my settings for repeat (I keep it to Repeat All instead of repeating just the current song) and others. I suspect this is a bug since some settings seem to be saved, and I look forward to a fix as quickly as possible. This is a really, really pesky bug.
Not nearly as pesky, however, as the pain -- yes, you read right -- pain -- of browsing song and artist lists from the NX700 user interface. I have at most two dozen playlists on my iPhone. It's a small number, so flipping through my playlists is easy enough. However, my iPhone has nearly 8GB of music on it -- that's a lot of artist and song names. Trying to browse through these lists takes an impossibly long time for it to retrieve and display each page. Once the first screen of artists displays, for example, pushing the next page button takes about 20-30 seconds before it displays. Searching can be done, but only for the first letter of your search text. The other day, driving from Miami to Georgia, I tried to search by entering "S". It was more than 13 miles of travel before the system finally displayed the first page of artists beginning with an "S".
I understand that performance is driven not only by the NX700 but also by both the iPhone or iPod itself and the protocol used to allow the two devices to communicate. I've tested with both an iPhone 3G 8GB, and a 32GB iPhone 4. But this is largely a factor of the Clarion NX700's speed, or lack thereof as the case seems to be. For example, since it is obviously reloading the list of songs or artists every time it tries to display them. Caching such a list or storing a list and allowing the user to refresh it when they want to would go a long, long, long, long way to improving it if there are factors out of Clarion's control (such as the protocol or iPod speed.)
Another option would be a hard drive for syncing music to. Most nave systems do not have this feature, but it's worth considering. But do keep the flash memory for the maps -- it's much faster than a hard drive.
The iPod/iPhone speed issues might actually be tolerable if you could also use the iPod or iPhone itself to browse and select music to play while connected to the NX700. However, while connected the iPhone is unable to provide its own music interface. (You can use everything else on the device, but the music interface is disabled with a statement that an accessory is connected.)
Another limitation of the iPod/iPhone interface is a limit on the number of characters the NX700 displays. A maximum of 15. For longer named music titles or artist names, this makes it tough to find what you're looking for, especially since the NX700 does not provide any means of side-scrolling the names so you can see the part that gets cut off after the 15th character.
All that said, I have not seen another navigation system with better, native support for iPhones and iPods than the NX700.
The last issue I want to comment on about the audio and video menus is the cumbersome nature of the menus. There's a lot of going back and forth in menus to get to what you need, and not in a particularly logical manner. You learn it quickly, and you get used to it, but it's not nearly as intuitive as would be ideal.
BLUETOOTH
When I first bought the NX700, I was using a BlackBerry Bold 9700, which I had also bough a few days earlier. I was able to connect the device once or twice via Bluetooth, but one day while trying to sync the address list, it stopped connecting. I was never able to get the BlackBerry to reconnect.
I ended up returning the BlackBerry a week later for unrelated reasons, and went back to my iPhone 3G. The iPhone 3G was never able to connect either.
Since that time, I have replaced the iPhone 3G with an iPhone 4. It too will not connect.
I have also attempted to get the NX700 to connect to a friend's BlackBerry Curve, a BlackBerry 8700 World Edition, and Nokia E71i. None of them will connect to the Bluetooth system.
At this point, I'm convinced there is something wrong with the Bluetooth software inside the unit, or bugs in its Bluetooth stack since NONE of these phones have any issues connecting to other Bluetooth devices (earbuds, and so forth).
As of this review date, Clarion has not responded to my support inquiry. Should I get any support from them, I will gladly update my review on how well the Bluetooth integration works.
SUMMARY
Pros: Great, reliable, in-depth maps and navigation guidance. Huge range of features. Ease of finding addresses. Clean, simple, elegant look of the hardware.
Cons: An inconsistent UI that is equally easy and straight forward in many important areas, and in other areas truly frustrating. Poor speed of iPhone/iPod browsing. Bluetooth that struggles to connect to a broad range of devices. Unresponsive support. |
Short and sweet
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| Review Date: August 31, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Michael Tracy, San Antonio, TX, USA |
| Everything stereo-wise is as fantastic as you would hope it would be, but the bluetooth screws up regularly, and the GPS is terrible (better have a backup Garmin, or even your smartphone). Not only does the GPS constantly freeze up, but when it DOES work, it will often lead you in the wrong direction. Bluetooth will not stay syncronized and often cannot find the device to sync with. I might suggest finding a different head unit if you're into all the bells and whistles jingling and whistling without flaw. |
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