Motorola MotoNav TN765t – All new PND

Before this, we reviewed the MotoNav TN30 and we had lots of issues with it. Motorola, instead of redressing these issues, has given us an altogether new product in the form of Motorola MotoNav TN765t. The design is changed and so is the onscreen experience. The menu screens and maps are merged and you get a seamless and slick interface. But its predecessor, the TN30, also had sleek interface. This made us dig deeper in to the device to see if there were indeed any issues.

Design:

Motorola MotoNav TN765t has a 5.1 inch TFT LCD display which gives an aspect ratio of 2.39:1 and it is wider than the standard 16:9 aspect ratio which we usually find on PNDs. Motorola exploits the presence of the big screen with more real estate of pixels but vertical profile is much lower. The screen has a matte finish and you can see it clearly even in bright sunlight. This PND won’t take up much space on your windshield as other devices.

Controls:

Motorola MotoNav TN765t has plenty of physical controls, on the top, there is a lock/power switch and a separate menu button. There are six additional physical keys on the either side of the back. The left side buttons relate to mute and volume up/down whereas the right side has a programmable shortcut key and zoom in/out buttons. On the bottom, you get a multipin connector which lets you attach car dock and there is also a microUSB port, micro SD card slot and recessed reset button. There is also a speaker at the back.

Interface:

Motorola MotoNav TN765t takes you directly to map screen when you boot up the device. The interface is very clean. On the top there is info bar, transparent soft buttons for voice-command, zoom in/out buttons and alternate views key. You can overlay the POI icons on the map through the categories in the menu. If you go to 3D view, large buildings and major landmarks are shown in 3d models. Incident data and traffic flow are overlaid as icons and color coded highways.

There is no separate menu screen for preferences and routing options. Instead of this, the menus are laid on the map. When you tap on the map, you get the right panel menu. There is “Enter Destination” button along with 3 soft keys on the right edge. You can customize 2 of these keys but the third one slides the right panel out further and gives you a wide range of options.

Features:

The Motorola MotoNav TN765t has all the features that you’d expect in a PND which includes graphic lane and text to speech guidance. The device can download data of traffic for free for major highways, when you connect it to the charging cradle. The data is free but you get ads, do don’t get frustrated with those text ads. The PND has Bluetooth connectivity for hands free calling and we liked the way it is implemented.

Motorola also exploits the presence of Bluetooth technology to give data connectivity to the device. It is called MotoExtras here. The PND will use your cellphone’s voice connection in order to access servers of Motorola through dial up connection. You get info like flight status, weather forecasts and fuel prices here.

Performance:

The Motorola MotoNav TN765t took about 35 seconds to boot and after that we had to wait for one more minute for the satellite lock. After that, reboots were much faster, almost instantaneous. The interface of the device was snappily transitioned and is responsive in the menu along with smooth animations. The touch screen is resistive and may not be as good as the gorgeous capacitive touch screen of the iPhone but still it is good enough for surfing through. Apart from that, the resistive touch screen is easy to use with gloves too, which will be added advantage in winters.

We had a couple of problems with Bluetooth connectivity initially but it ran fine after some time and we easily got a firmware update. The installation was quick and after some reboots, all the issues disappeared. We liked that Motorola has immediately offered updates after launching a new device.

We took the Motorola MotoNav TN765t to test in San Francisco and the PND struggled in tall buildings. On the bright side, in open sky, the device could acquire our position quickly.

Trip planner:

This was the one feature that we really liked in the device. It allows you to choose and you can also save lots of points of interest (POIs) in playlist to retrieve it easily later. For instance – you can put all the destinations input for chores of today or clients list visit and then hit a button for navigating each successively. If you want to avoid back and forth driving you can use the Trip Planners Optimize button which automatically places destinations efficiently for short trip. You can move through the destinations in the list through dragging for better control.

Verdict:

Motorola MotoNav TN765t is improved a lot over its predecessor and Motorola is really serious about breaking into the market of GPS. We really loved the PND interface on the ear, the separate menu screen is ditched for single interface for options, navigation and mapping. We would go for this PND amongst others if given a choice. Our previous favorite in this category was Garmin Nuvi. We also liked the feel of the device and the features that it had to offer at this price point. The features include text-to-speech, enhanced map data along with lane guidance and info of 3D landmark and lifetime data of traffic.

We had some gripes about the GPS though, the FM traffic data and the style of dial up data wasn’t up to our expectations and we would like to see some improvements in here. Motorola gives  model in series of TN700 which has a data connection that is always on and is live with HD traffic, (Garmin NuLink rip off) but that model costs more. This GPS could have been our favorite had it not been for the below par performance.

Pros:

Updated hard ware, new interface which combines the menus and map. Has hands free Bluetooth calling, text to speech, free reception for FM traffic.

Cons:

Data service of MotoExtra isn’t always on, you have to refresh it manually. The GPS lost signal in dense urban areas.

Outcome:

We would recommend this GPS to you for its robust feature set.

Specifications:

• Motorola MotoNav TN765t
• GPS Functions / Services – MotoExtras, Junction view, Lane guidance, Speed
• Connectivity – Bluetooth
• Voice – Voice command recognition, Street name announcement, Navigation instructions.
• Features – Hands-free calling via Bluetooth,
• Hands-free calling via Bluetooth, Preinstalled POIs, Built-in speaker.
• Built-in Memory – 4 GB, supported memory cards – microSD
• 5.1 inch TFT LCD screen, 854 x 358 resolution
• Lithium ion battery, rated life 2 hours.
• GPS design features – Cinematic display, Smooth scrolling, Map-centric interface