The Navigon 8410 is the latest flagship product in the range which brings to the table a selection of core updates and new features such as Real City 3D, wrapped around a large multimedia laden 5” display with optional TV support.

The 8410 incorporates its capacitive screen (similar to that used on the iPhone) into a deceptively slim profile which despite its size and weight looks the part with a lovely brush metal finish at the front to match.

Navigon in their wisdom have also added a media player (video, audio, picture) to take advantage of the larger screen, including room for an optional digital TV-tuner. Sadly we didn’t get chance to test the latter but the videos we played back looked great, and we could happily listen to our music even when driving, though the player is a little fussy in terms of codec support.

Linking up the Navigon via a USB cable to transfer files across seemed to cause the software to freeze once the cable was removed, which was a little disconcerting.

Firing up the main navigation software greets you with the familiar Russian doll style interface as before, whilst the software is not quite as quick as the likes of TomTom for example, it works well enough and the capacitive screen proved responsive to the touch.

We were really pleased to see that entering destinations has been enhanced with the option to enter full postcodes with a street/house number and the voice command feature has been updated to include simpler screen swipe activation, the ability to voice control POI, My Destinations or even dial contacts from our Bluetooth enabled phone.

In terms of accuracy the above worked pretty well – with practice – inside the car (with typical driving background noise), but it still felt counter intuitive at times as you have to wait for a chime to finish before speaking and the voice control tends to turn itself off after exiting certain options so we were still reaching over to touch the screen more than we would have liked.

As for the remaining set of features rest assured you’ll find all the fan favourites are onboard such as MyRoutes technology, which in layman’s terms presents you with three route choices before embarking on your journey (though we always picked the first choice to save time), lane guidance, text-to-speech, TMC and safety camera alerts (to name but a few), but now you’ll also have two new options to play with, namely the last mile and Real City 3D.

We really liked the last mile option as you can park close to your destination and then be routed to the final stages on foot using a true pedestrian profile (and then back to the car) with the map view changing slightly to incorporate a compass and other visual aids – nice!

Next we tested the Real City 3D view which comes to life when approaching major cities. With Real City 3D the screen changes to a 3D representation of your surroundings, with a small standard mini map in the corner.

Whilst graphically we could see that buildings did resemble their real-life counterparts (which was exciting), we found that screen updates were sluggish and the view a tad distracting at times, though we have to admit it shows great promise.

As for general performance we noted that indoors it can take a while to lock onto our position but out on the road we had no major problems to report, though if were being picky route cautions could be a touch faster and battery life drains quickly when the screen is set on full brightness.

Bluetooth calling was loud and clear, there’s a handy track recorder option so you can view routes back in Google Earth and the map view looked vibrant on the 5” display, though street names were harder to see with the text being a similar colour to the background and enabling all the directional aids is still a little overpowering.

You could argue that for the price Live services should have been included, as the process of updating cameras for example is still relatively old fashioned, but the good news is an update will become available once the 8450 comes out.

The 8410 is expensive and a few kinks need ironing out but with its lush 5” display, pedestrian profile and wealth of additional directional aids as standard it’s certainly worth consideration.

Price: £349
Web: www.navigon.com
Map coverage: Europe

Verdict: 8/10

Written by Brett James. Originally published in Smartphone Essentials magazine.

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