Intrinsically speaking, Sony isn’t really a manufacturer of such devices even though it has made a few forays in this field. When it comes to GPS, the big brand that spring up to one’s mind is TomTom and Sony is more famous for its graphics and gaming prowess. Sony has used this in the XNV-770BT, an in-dash AV/GPS receiver. The device plays to its strengths and outsources any possible weakness to the external TomTom GPS module. There is crisp seven inch video display along with full navigation experience courtesy of TomTom. It is a novel approach done by Sony in order to avoid any trouble of making any proprietary turn-by-turn software and it gives the users a very familiar interface.
Sony XNV-770BT sticks to double DIN car audio receiver standard and the front surface is dominated by the big seven inch LCD screen. This is a really gorgeous screen and has a big resolution of 800×480 pixels. I am never seen such a big resolution for car GPS devices and hence was delighted about it. The audio source information and menu screens are very crisp. However, it seems that the potential of the ultrahigh resolution isn’t exploited to the maximum owing to the standard definition video inputs. The resolution is good for 480p encoded DVD video. Still it is always good to have more pixels.
The display of the Sony XNV-770BT is touch sensitive and you just need to firmly press on the display. The screen is responsive and touches are easily registered. Most of the interactions will be done through the touch screen but there are a few physical controls on the bottom edge of the screen bezel. They include source selection, volume up/down, and a ‘Top’ button, which is oddly named and takes you to main menu.
The CD/DVD optical drive is located behind the motorized panel of Sony XNV-770BT. There is no SD card slot for updating GPS maps or for media playback. Instead, Sony has given a USB port on the TomTom GPS module. You can connect it to the computer for all these functions. The external TomTom GPS module and the cradle is installed in a location that is easily accessible to the user like the footwell or back of glove compartment. This module is the real brain or processing unit of the navigation functions. The interface is quite similar to other TomTom navigation devices.