Cobra Nav One 5000

The first thing that will strike you when you see the Nav One 5000 is its huge screen. What's most important about the display, however, is its 4:3 format, as opposed to the 16:9 format found on wide screen models.

Those of you who remember your algebra know that calculating the dimensions for a 5 inch screen with a 4:3 format yields a total screen area of 12 square inches. A 4.3 inch screen with a WQVGA resolution measures 3.9 by 2.3 inches, resulting in a surface area of 8.7 square inches.

Thus, a 5 inch display in a 4:3 format has almost 50 percent more screen area than a 4.3 inch screen. This translates into a map that can show 20 percent more of the road ahead and text rendered in large fonts that are easy to read from a distance.

In addition, with a bigger screen, the Nav One 5000's on screen keyboard, configurable in either an alphabetic or QWERTY layout, has larger, easier to hit keys.

Though the Nav One 5000 has a built in rechargeable lithium-ion battery, it definitely falls outside of the shirt-pocket GPS category.

It measures a large 5.3 by 4.3 by 1.3 inches and weighs a hefty 9.5 ounces without its mounting bracket. The 5000 slides into a groove on the suction cup equipped bracket.

Because of the size and weight of the 5000, it had to mount it fairly low on my car's windshield where it could rest on the dashboard and not obstruct my view. The arm on the bracket is fairly short as well, so it took a little extra effort to get the suction cup attached.

And although it was easy to slide the device out of its bracket, I found it tricky to remount. In addition, you have to connect all of your cables directly to the Nav One 5000 since there are no pass through connections on the bracket.

The bottom of the device has connections for an external speaker, microphone, power, external GPS antenna, a USB port, and the optional RDS traffic receiver. Unlike the 4500, the 5000 has no buttons adjacent to the screen. Two hardware buttons, one for power and one for the main menu, are on the top of the device.

The menu system has a comfortable feel, and you can choose either the map view or the main menu as your opening screen. New users will appreciate the voice help, enabled by default, which walks you through the steps you need to create or customize a route. It also provides brief descriptions for each menu screen.

The main menu contains icons for Location, Address Book, Interest Points, and Go Home. Smaller icons either return you to the map view or open the Settings configuration menu.