Harman Kardon Guide + Play GPS-500 review

Harman Kardon Guide + Play GPS-500 Review

Reviewed by: Will Head

Reviewed on: 31 July 2007

Harman Kardon may be better known for its audio equipment, but the US company is dipping its toe in the GPS market with the Guide + Play -- a 102mm (4-inch) widescreen, touch-sensitive European satellite-navigation unit that also doubles as a video and audio player, all for £345.

Strengths
Hit the big power button on the top of the display and the Guide + Play is quick to start up -- it's ready to use in just a couple of seconds. The menu is very simple to operate, with large on-screen buttons that even the most ham-fisted should be able to get to grips with.

Finding locations is a doddle as it actively searches its database as you type, dimming keys that are no longer relevant. Type M, for example, and letters such as B, D and F dim, as there are no places beginning MB, MD or MF.

Once you've told it where you want to go, the large display makes it easy to see where you're headed and voice instructions are clear and given well in advance.

The battery life is impressive at a good five hours, and in the box you'll find adaptors for both the mains and your car's cigarette lighter, as well as a dashboard mount and protective case.

You can even listen to MP3s while you're driving along. You can adjust the relative volume of voice commands so you can always make them out over the music. Sensibly, all navigation functions are disabled while it's in video mode.

Weaknesses
While the Guide + Play is a competent satellite navigation device, the same can't be said of its media-playback facilities, unfortunately. The software is incredibly basic -- we've seen more controls on a posh fridge.

You'll need to supply your own SD card to make use of its multimedia features, as you can't store files on the internal memory, but it can take cards up to 4GB in capacity.

The built-in speaker is pretty tinny -- you'll probably want to hook it up to a decent pair of headphones instead. More worryingly, it would occasionally pause for a fraction of a second during playback. It's almost imperceptible, but this makes tracks you know well sound rather odd.

The video side of things is also fairly disappointing. There's no software included for converting video, but it will work with Windows Media Player's sync facility. It supports MPEG 4 and WMV formats, although it failed to play DivX files without conversion. Xvid files would play, but not without dropped frames. Even lower-resolution WMV files sometimes dropped frames during playback.

Occasionally, while planning trips or navigating the menu, the device would freeze and become unresponsive for seconds or sometimes minutes, although luckily this never happened during navigation.

Conclusion
The Guide + Play's talents are heavily skewed on the Guide side, with Play coming in a poor second. If you focus only on its navigation abilities, then apart from the occasional menu lockup, it's a great, albeit expensive, GPS unit. Its media playback facilities, on the other hand, are rather embarrassing and best overlooked.

Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Nick Hide