GPS Devices Life

Clarion N.I.C.E. P200 Car GPS Receiver Product NICEP200 Key FeaturesDesignationAutomobileForm FactorFixedMap capabilitie...

Pretty good so far - Clarion N.I.C.E. P200 Car GPS Receiver I've been looking for reviews on this unit for a while when the price hit $599 (used to be $899). Now that Fry's h...

This is my first car GPS system and what really drew me to it was the multimedia aspect of it… something that has GPS, Video, Music and Pictures all in one… Sweet!

– The Good –

The GPS navigation is very nice. You have top down view, 3D view or split screen with voice directions.

It does not announce street names, but when you come to a turn a magnified screen shows up where you can see the street name.

The accuracy of the navigation is VERY good.

MP3s play flawlessly and while there is no support for playlists, as long as you organize in a folder structure you’re good to go.

You can also listen to music while you’re using the GPS and if an announcement comes up it pauses the music.

– The Bad –

First off, Clarion has the worst “customer service” I’ve ever experienced. I had a very simple question about add on cables for the p200 and it took me almost a week to finally get someone.

They list a bunch of numbers on the site, but when you call them and finally get someone you just get transferred to a voice menu with no support option.. this goes for all the numbers.

There’s no way to contact a support person on the website and no number for as support person and sales does not seem to have even basic knowledge of the product.

I even tried the local places listed on the Clarion site as ‘Authorized resellers’ and most of them didn’t even know what the p200 was.

Finally after four days someone finally returned my call about the NAVCK and it turns out that they’re falsly advertising the cable. They claim it’s audio and video input/output, but the tech informed me that the p200 is not capable of input!

The screen is very dark, even with the brightness all the way up.

It’s just OK for seeing the navigation, but if you want to watch a video in any amount of sunlight then forget about it.

The video.. oh boy… In the manual it lists several video and audio codecs that work. Video Codecs include Divx, XVID, MPEG-1 (yes 1 only) and WMV.

I had to compress the heck out of WMV, MPEG-1 I couldn’t get to work at all without unwatchable jitter. Xvid and DivX took me about two days to find a setting that would keep the audio sync when played on the P200.

Even with a setting that works, it locks up every now and then.

The pictures, the functionality of the pictures is good, but the screen is just not good enough to do them justice. You’ll be able to see them, they just won’t look very good.

I got the unit on sale for $399, but even at that price I’m considering returning it. It’s good for GPS and music, OK for pictures and near worthless for video.

I probably wouldn’t recommend this to someone and because of the horrible customer service, I’m going to think twice before buying a Clarion product again.

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