Transport

Still taking a separate stereo and GPS unit on road trips?

Why not do what you’ve done with your shampoo and grab Sony’s latest 2-in-1?

Sony’s Xplod XNV-L77BT and XNV-L66BT head units not only feature 7-inch and 6.1-inch displays respectively they also brag TomTom Live smarts that you just don’t get with your run-of-the-mill sat-navs.

If you’d rather avoid those nasty little surprises on your journey you’ll love the HD Traffic and Safety Alerts which will help you skip past traffic jams and provide advance warnings about speed cameras and accident black spots. Engage sport mode methinks

The map coverage is what you’d expect from TomTom and both units include TeleAtlas map data for 45 European countries and have a Map Share feature. This bit of cleverness lets you edit out of date maps as well as download updates from TomTom’s Map Share user community.

Both of the Xplod XNV’s get TomTom’s Local Search with Google which is very nifty indeedy. Let’s say you’re craving a curry – sling in a search, grab the details, call the spicy purveyor via your Bluetooth-connected mobile and have your table waiting for you when you arrive – all done via the touchscreen display.

On the audio/visual side of things both will happily play music – you get a CD player and AM/FM radio tuner but DAB seems to be missing. There are iPhone and iPod connectors as well as a USB port so you can connect a multitude of players

Video-wise DVD, DivX and MPEG-4 video playback are chucked out at 800×480-pixel resolution and if you wanted you could connect external video devices such as a rear-view camera. Just don’t try watching True Blood whilst bombing up the M1!

There’s no pricing deets for these yet but they’ll be on UK shelves next month.

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