Cobra Electronics SkyNav GPSM 3000 - 5.2 in. Car GPS Receiver

I think that that Nav One 3000 is a sleeper in the world of automobile GPS....It's a great unit for a reasonable price. Other comparable units, the Garmin 2620 and Magellan Roadmate 700 also have hard drives that store the entire US right in the unit and can be used without downloading new maps as you progress along your trip, but the Cobra is available at a much lower price. I have owned the early Street Pilot and the Street Pilot III, and as far as the ability to get from point A to point B, the Cobra is the winner. The screen is very bright and highly visible, and the turns diagram is outstanding as far as being very clear and precise. The voice direction, unlike my Garmin SPIII, discriminates between a "slight left turn" and a "hard left turn" in places where the SPIII turn directions are very confusing. Satellite lock is nearly immediate...I even get a full strength signal in my garage! I could hang a bowling ball from the suction mount on the windshield...no problems there! Route calculation is rapid: The unit calculates the first part of a long route in seconds, gets you on your way, and calculates the remainder of the route while you're driving, as far as I can tell. If you go off route, recalculations are quick. You have the ability of choosing regular roads, toll roads, or interstates, or a combination of the three. The non computer-like female voice is very pleasant, never nasty, and even says "please" on occasion!

My first impressions were mixed. I liked the huge screen, but the unit does take up a lot of real estate. There were several glitches in the software which were were a little annoying. For example, when you entered a one digit address, the number didn't come up on the screen, but you actually do end up at the proper number on the proper street. Another annoyance was that under some circumstances the HD locked up and you had to restart the unit to restore function. The day/night feature had an annoying delay in the transition between the day screen and the night screen. In order to cancel a route, you had to switch screens instead of being able to do it right from the map screen. When I went to the Cobra website and downloaded the new firmware revisions (as of April, 2005), however, the unit came to life! All the above problems were history, along with several other glitches, and it was like having a newly purchased updated model for a couple minutes of time. Kudos the the engineers at Cobra! Although those problems probably should have been resolved before release, they were certainly well addressed in the end. For anyone who owns one of these units, I would recommend keeping up with the revisions. I wonder what they will come up with next!

As for what I would like to see on this unit, I would like to have a zoom out feature where I could move the map to the other side of the country rapidly and then zoom back in to look at my destination. The zoom does not go out very far, so moving the cursor over large distances is very tedious.
Some people have said they'd like to have a touch screen (the Cobra does not have one). Personally, I like the letter/number toggle method. It takes only seconds when you get used to it, and a passenger can do the job easily on a bumpy road without having to hit tiny letters on a tiny screen in a moving vehicle.

All in all, I think this is a great little (or big) unit, and is really underrated for what it and the new firmware can do.