Jensen NVX225

Jensen is no stranger to aftermarket car tech, but we've mostly looked at its in-car stereo units rather than the company's portable navigation systems, so we were pretty anxious to take the Jensen NVX225 out for a test drive when it arrived at our office. On the upside, the NVX225 has a pretty affordable price tag of $299.99 and offers all the navigation basics for getting from point A to point B. However, we found that it couldn't compete with other similarly priced and featured GPS devices, so we'd have to recommend the Mio DigiWalker C230 and Garmin Nuvi 200 instead. Both of these systems have more user-friendly interfaces, better-looking maps, and even better, the Mio C230 offers text-to-speech functionality and costs less.

Design
The Jensen NVX225's design isn't anything to write home about--not that we're saying it's ugly, just a bit ordinary. With a squarish shape and black-and-silver color scheme, it's simple but lacks the attractiveness of a Mio C230 or Garmin Nuvi 200. Still, it's light and compact at 3.6 inches wide by 3.1 inches tall by 0.8 inch deep and 6.8 ounces for easy portability between cars.

The NVX225 is equipped with a 3.5-inch diagonal TFT touch screen. The QVGA display is decent for viewing maps, but we felt colors were slightly washed out, making it difficult to see in bright sunlight, and text wasn't quite as crisp as other systems. You can change the map colors under the Settings menu, and the system can automatically switch maps to night colors if you choose that option. The NVX225's lackluster interface leaves much to be desired and it isn't the most user-friendly, especially once you get deeper into the menus. For example, there were a couple of instances where we didn't know how to get back to the previous screen. As such, we recommend giving the user manual a quick read before setting off on your first trip with the Jensen NVX225.

You will find the power button on top of the unit, as well as a shortcut to the Main Menu page. The left spine has an SD expansion slot, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a reset hole, and a mini USB port, while there's an external antenna jack, a volume rocker, a master power on/off switch, and a power connector on the right side. The speaker is located on the back along with a stylus on the lower left side for easier text input, which is a good thing since the onscreen keyboard is pretty small.

The Jensen NVX225 comes packaged with an AC adapter, a car charger, a vehicle mount (windshield and dash), a USB cable, a soft carrying pouch, a companion CD with Canadian maps, and reference material.