Guiding Angel
More, smaller and better. All electronics products seem to be headed for the same goal of giving the consumer more capacity and features while taking up less space. Products like the wildly successful iPod embody this trend. An electronic gizmo that is the size of a deck of cards, slips into your shirt pocket and holds more music than a 100 CDs shows how amazing the scale of electronic miniaturization is. Single-DIN car audio units aren’t going to change in size, but they still benefit from miniaturization by being able to pack more technology and features into the same box. The new Eclipse AVN7000 in-dash monitor/multi-source receiver with navigation is definitely one of (if not the most) feature-packed single-DIN units on the market.
Navigation Plus…
For starters, the AVN7000 features a 7-inch touchscreen monitor with an in-dash DVD/CD/MP3 player, Mosfet 50 watt x 4 internal amplifier and AM/FM tuner. Anyone familiar with in-dash units may not be overly impressed by the basic stats, but the list continues. The AVN7000 also has HDD (hard disk drive) navigation, direct Memory Stick Duo input, three RCA audio outputs, coaxial digital audio output, an A/V input and output and a back-up camera input. Even a die-hard skeptic with any installation experience will have to give credit to the engineers at Eclipse for pulling off this technical challenge because the AVN7000 does it all without the use of a secondary black box. As if the AVN7000 doesn’t do enough, it also has the capacity of interfacing with (requiring additional hardware) an iPod, Sirius Satellite Radio, HD Radio, two CD changers, a TV tuner and a 5.1 multichannel processor.
Ease-of-Use
All the features in the world don’t amount to much if the product is difficult to use and operate. The AVN7000 does a good job of keeping things simple with an intuitive user interface that makes it quick and easy to change sources and settings. The rotary knob and buttons, in conjunction with the touchscreen menus, make it simple to navigate. Speaking of navigation, the HDD navigation system makes the AVN7000 an impressive piece independent of all its other capabilities. Rather than storing the map and point-of-interest database on a DVD-ROM, the AVN7000 stores the data on a tiny hard disk drive, similar to the one found in an iPod. The advantage of this data storage method is how quickly the navigation system can access the data, and the benefits were very apparent. There was very little to no delay when scrolling around on the map, GPS positioning was quick and searching through the POI database was snappy. I was able to scroll the map (which includes Canada and Hawaii) from Los Angeles to Atlanta smoothly without the any delays or hiccups. One of the first things I noticed after firing up the navigation system was the visual quality and smoothness of the map. In fact, it is the best-looking and most detailed map screen I have seen on the market. You might even say it’s beautiful. Eclipse credits the AVN7000’s “Ultima Engine” processor and over 32,000 map colors for this. The roads are very smooth looking and the street names are very clear and easy to read, lacking any of the jaggedness common to most navigation maps. Freeway on- and off-ramps and major surface streets are highlighted with different colors than smaller side streets so they can be easily differentiated. Many landmarks and icons such as parks, hospitals and schools are labeled for easy identification.
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