Kenwood KNA-G520 Sat-Nav gem


Kenwood's latest generation KNA-G520 is a high performance in-car navigation system that can be connected to a Kenwood touch screen unit to provide simple operation and clear guidance to your destination. It comes with detailed road data for virtually all of Western Europe on an easily updated SD Memory Card (updates are also possible via the unit's mini USB connection), and features a Text To Speech (TTS) system to provide the vocal prompts and information. This means it doesn't rely on pre-programmed phrases and even provides scope to have some fun.

The hideaway KNA-G520 is very compact (just 18 x 3 x 14cm). Kenwood have now switched to Trafficmaster to provide the TMC (Traffic Message Channel) data updates. These updates are delivered to the device every 2 minutes and help to avoid congested roads. There's an Auto-Zoom Function, 2D/3D colour map display options, and a staggering number of POIs (Points of Interest) such as restaurants, petrol stations, bank ATMs, shops etc - around 2 million in all, and the detail is terrific. For example, with petrol stations it even shows the brand, great if you collect points or vouchers at a particular station.

Speed cameras are indicated and you get an audible warning as you approach one (including traffic light cameras). It even shows mobile camera "hot spots" with a camera-on-tripod logo. The mapping has an option to show a "breadcrumb trail" of the route you've just taken, allowing you to easily re-trace your route, and there's a built-in gyroscope to compensate for satellite positioning errors and keep you on track even if satellite reception is lost for a while - this is one big plus over the portable navigation devices.

We loved the text-to-speech feature. Instead of just triggering pre-recorded phrases, the device converts any written text into speech. Maybe it's a lad's thing, but it's great fun giving pet names to often used addresses and hearing them in the amusingly deadpan female accent, and spoken directions actually name the road you're heading for, not just "turn right at the next...". It is a bit robotic but it's OK, and we expect the TTS firmware will get an update in due course. Text-to-Speech on PCs can be really natural sounding, but the best software currently demands a lot of memory to work. You can switch to boring old recorded voice messages if you prefer, and the speech quality is better that way. Overall the KNA-G520 looks a real winner.