Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I've had my Navdy for a few months now, and use it every day. There are plenty of video reviews to be found online, so I'll stick to describing a few features and topics that I don't see mentioned that much: 1. The installation is simple. It took me maybe 20 minutes, but that was mostly because I took the time to watch the extremely helpful step-by-step installation videos that are fed to you through the companion app during the installation process. It is basically plug-and-play. The unit sits on top of a mount/power pad that stays affixed to your dash. The mount adheres to your dash and is meant to stay in place (and it does), but the unit itself is easily removed - it securely affixes to the mount via strong magnets, but can be removed from the mount easily and quickly. I take my Navdy off my dash whenever I leave my car, and reattach it each time. Takes just a second or two to pop it on and off. 2. The Navdy itself has made me a safer driver, I think, in a few different ways: (1) It has helped me keep my eyes on the road more than before. No more glancing down at my car's dash to check on speed, or gas, etc. All of that information is projected in front of me. No more glancing at my phone at messages, either; (2) I find that I don't speed as much, because I'm more aware of my speed at all times - Navdy's interface shows you not only your current speed but also the current speed limit, and it does it both digitally and via an arc that changes color; white while you are within the speed limit, blue when you are a few miles above the limit (around 7-8), orange when you are doing more than that. I assume that there are colors beyond that but I haven't found out yet. It can also warn you audibly when you exceed the limit, but I turned off that feature pretty quickly. 3. Navdy is more configurable than you might think: Not only can you tweak the interface so that you pick and choose which widgets appear in your view as you drive (compass, time/date, next calendar appointment, current music, time and distance driven during the trip, etc) but you can also change things up on the fly quite easily. Plus, you can choose to get (or not get) what Navdy calls "glances" (think "notifications") from various apps. Want Facebook notifications, tweets, email, etc? You can enable it. Find having everything enabled too overwhelming or distracting (it is, IMHO), then you can toggle each option on or off. There's a good bit of granular control, so you can pick and choose what you want to be bothered by. 4. Navdy comes packaged in a manner reminiscent of an Apple product - securely and with everything in its place. It looks like a high-quality item, and it is. A few months in, I still haven't thrown away my box. 5. The post-purchase experience was reminiscent of TiVo - an email a day (more or less) explaining options and features and just generally making sure that you're having a good experience with the product. The hand-holding isn't really necessary, because the product is well-designed enough that its use is easily intuited, but having the email contact that first week was still nice. 6. Sound - Navdy doesn't have its own speaker, so all sound comes through your phone (or your car's stereo, via your phone's connection to the car). Navdy greets you (optionally) when you start your car, and Navdy shuts down automatically when you turn off your car. During the drive, when Navdy speaks to you, its in one of many voices you can select. iPhone tip: You can download and make accessible to Navdy some high quality voices by going into your phone's settings -- Settings/General/Accessibility/Speech/Voices - make sure you download the "enhanced versions." (Second tip: From that same area within settings, you can correct your phone's pronunciation for various streets and other things that it mispronounces). 8. Cable management - I suppose this depends upon where in your car your OBDII port is, but cable management is not a problem. There's only one cable, and it is thin (a bit thicker than a phone charging cable). Clips are provided to keep things well tucked away. In my car (a Honda Accord), I've got about a foot of visible cable, total. The part that goes from the back of the power pad toward the windshield, and isn't even in view when I drive anyway. The rest of it runs out of sight. 9. Car information integration - the widgets that are available to you will depend, I believe, upon the data your car's manufacturer makes available via the OBD-II port. Here's a scenario that can easily play out, given the Navdy's bridging of the information from your car and your phone: (1) You have an appointment at 10:00 AM listed on your phone's calendar. (2) You get in your car at 9:45. (3) Navdy assumes you might be going to this appointment, and suggests that it map the route for you; (4) Navdy, via the information from the OBD-II port, also senses that you are running low on gas. It offers to add a stop at a gas station along the route. 10. You can interface with Navdy with swipes of your hand (for accepting and dismissing certain glances), or via a little scrolling dial with a button that attaches to your steering wheel (for the majority of the interface). The latter works so well that I almost never use the former. Navdy is smart, though - it learns from you as you swipe and gets better at recognizing your swipes over time. 11. The information displayed on the HUD is viewable only to you. The person in your front passenger seat can't see it, from their angle. (The back passengers can see the info on the screen depending upon how they lean in and look. This affords you some privacy, but it also makes the Navdy kind of difficult to show off to people unless you have them sit in your driver seat. And Navdy is the type of thing that you are going to want to show off.