Oddly bulbous in the rear, Sony’s sat-nav offering looks like a miniature Trinitron TV.
Sony’s pedigree in the audio-visual department shines through here; the 3.5in LCD screen was bright and sharp and sound quality good.

Apart from this, we weren’t that impressed with the Nav-u. It might be a little cheaper than average, but it lacks some of the basic features we’d expect from a sat-nav device.

For example, there’s no memory card slot for expansion, and only UK and Ireland maps are included. You’ll have to fork out about £120 for the rest of Europe and transfer them from a PC to the unit.

Full postcode searches aren’t possible, either; and the device failed to find one of our test addresses, suggesting that the map data might possibly be out of date, too. On the plus side, the NV-U50T comes with a lifetime’s worth of free traffic updates.

This article is part of a group test of satellite-navigation devices.

See also: 
Garmin Nuvi 310
Magellan Roadmate 3050T
Medion GoPal PNA465
Mio Digiwalker C510E
Navman N40i
Navsure 300i
Novogo S700
Sony Nav-u Nv-U5 0T
TomTom One Europe
ViaMichelin X-950T
When sat nav goes wrong
Galileo project

A table of features can be read via our pdf download above.