Sat-navs tested: £150-£250 - Runner up: Sony NV-U92T

Sony NV-U92T

Best Price £234.94 (Amazon.co.uk)
For Desirable with well-designed maps and some of the best spoken instructions.
Against Cradle doesn't work well, the menus could be quicker and the speaker distorts easily.
Verdict Still a fine sat-nav, but it could be the best with a few tweaks.

A bit more polish and the Sony would have been our best buy. It looks great on any dashboard and is superbly finished.

You get European maps, traffic monitoring and a huge 4.8-inch screen as standard, too.

We found the menus easy to understand and the big on-screen buttons particularly useful.

The spoken instructions were among the best we've come across, and the maps were exceptionally well designed.

The Sony wasn't perfect, though. It was mainly let down by a poorly designed cradle, which was supposed to cling to either the windscreen or dashboard with the help of a 'super-sticky' pad.

When we were testing, however, it didn't stick to either very well - especially after a few uses when it had picked up some dust and hairs. We found it very insecure as a result, and difficult to angle correctly.

While the menus were easy to navigate, the unit could have been quicker at responding to commands. It wasn't painfully slow like the Panasonic (see next page), but did feel sluggish compared to slick units like the Clarion.

We also found the speaker distorted at relatively low volumes.

• See how all the systems fared by clicking here.

Sat-nav systems under £150
Sat-nav systems over £250