I have recently had a pioneer installation costing around £300. It has bluetooth for hands free calling, cd, ipod connection etc. Now I feel a satnav included would have been more preferable but the cost was around £700. So it looks like i will be purchasing a portable satnav device with the sunction pad on the windscreen.
But, having looked at a few at halfords, I find the end that fits into the cig lighter socket are fairly big, plus the wire trailing over the dash makes it all very unsightly.
What, in your opinion, is the best portable satnav device thats discreet and what would be the best way to attach the cable from cig lighter to device? (thats if you attach satnav to windscreen)
Any comments welcome.

 

Hi Phil I looked into the satnav thing & when the phone route , I now have a black N95 nokia , Satnav & gps build in , you should be able bluetooth satnav voice thro' the radio just as a hand free setup , going this way i just have one item to carry around , for me its my camera (5 meg) ,phone, mp3, mp4, internet TV , pda & satnav on foot or in the car. Also today i saw a 7" touch screen satnav in Halfords for £399.00 but it does not play dvds ,Not sure what make it was .

Good luck

Andy

 

Andy, thats a thought! Never looked into using one of those fancy phones for the satnav. That would certainy do away with leaving suction pads and wire/cables running all over the dash. I will certainly look into that. I also saw that £399 jobby in halfords it looked ok but far as I could tell it didn't have bluetooth, so hands free calling was out of the question. On reflection i dont think it had ipod connectivity either but i could be wrong on that one. Cheers anyway.

 

I looked into this too a while ago and thought about the built in DVD Sat Nav option. Decent models (Alpine etc) are well over £1000, and the LG I saw advertised (about £600) was not recommended. The local halfords stopped stocking them due to the problems they had with them. Replacements map discs can also be expensive.

I decided to go the route you're thinking of. A replacement head unit and a standalone sat nav.

I ended up with a TomTom 920, this also happens to have bluetooth and MP3 capability built in; you can get away without the wires for a couple of hours if you charge it up before you go out. I'm not sure that's true of all sat navs though. You can also get a mount this fits onto the centre heater vent.

FWIW, I got an N95 when they first came out. I didn't work as a phone so I took it back to the shop. I would have got a replacement but by then I had done some research. The battery life was terrible, the GPS took an age to lock on and the phone was like a brick to carry around. The black ones are an improved model so I guess some of these problems have been addressed.

 

Its also worth looking around e-bay for an offical crossfire radio/satnav, i bought on eon there before and had it fitted, sounds better than the original radio too for some reason

 

Hi all I think you should go old school & get yourself a SATNAG setup , its worked for me for years , takes alittle to get up & running & depends on which one you end up with could be alittle pricely to run , but no cables running around the cockpit .


Cheers

Andy