I did extensive research on GPS units that offered various abilities… it seems the market is driven by unique needs…

I chose this unit for its robust MPS storage and GPS data storage…It does suit the requirements…

what makes this suffer is what it lacks, that even botton bollar units include.

These shortcomings start with the most important, Readability. Even cheap Garmin units have good screen dimming functions. In short, the 3 brightness settings offered on this allow you to go from still too bright to see at night, to still too dim to see during the day… never gets there.

The next big shortcoming is the lack of features on GPS side. Does not have a speedometer, or altimeter… although these formulas should be in the software somewhere, Clarion chose not to accent the unit with these. Then you have a very big glitch in programming where everytime you switch functions from GPS to any other… it wont just switch back…Instead it restarts the GPS navigation again (takes awhile, and restarts any routing). This makes it extremely difficult to play with the music screen and switch back and forth between choosing songs and using navigation. It does contain a narrow bar that controls the music on the GPS screen, but that bar only allows skip forward and skip backward… when you have over 500 songs on the unit, it becomes laborously difficult.

Now for the strong points…

Onboard FM modulator is pretty good and conveniant… didn’t get much static at all.

Optional backup cam is cool but requires additional wiring.

GPS layout and view angle choices are cool

Seems to have endless POI’s

Route guidance is great.

Holds lots of music with nice GUI.

Allows external video to be played on it (DVD,Videocamera, ect)

it is fairly well priced if you dont want an inclusive DVD player.

In retrospect, I chose this unit against a comparable priced Sanyo GPS DVD mp3 player that had a terrible mount system, and against a premium Eclipse in dash unit that was a little more money.

I wish I would have gone for the Eclipse… at least i could have used it at night.

For GPS alone… Garmin units work great, and include many features, but not many onboard POI’s

In closing… this unit would be near perfect if it could dim more, and brighten more. I wouldn’t suggest buying it until they improve the display. On an average 24hr roadtrip, you could only see the screen about 8-12hrs… voice only commands from then on.
Rating: 2 / 5

If you value your peace of mind, don’t buy this product. It’s all eye candy.

The N.I.C.E unit does provide navigation, satellite radio, video, and MP3 player functionality. However, the amount of frustration you have to experience to get these features is unreasonably high, especially considering the unit’s price.

These are a few of the frustrations users of this unit will encounter:

1. The interface is atrocious, both in design and response. Very often the unit registers a press of a softbutton on the screen with a highlight and a beep but doesn’t actually perform the action. You have to press the softbutton again. You’ll find this very frustrating when entering addresses in the Navigation component.

The interface is also not consistent between modules. Although less serious, this problem makes it difficult to learn the product’s functionality.

2. The SIRIUS radio component has major problems. The two N.I.C.E. units I’ve had constantly present a annoying alert (accompanied by a loud beep) named “Song-Seek Alert.” In the first unit, the alert was there from the start. After I got a replacement, the second unit worked fine for about two months but then started to constantly show the alert, too. The alert (shown in one of the customer images for this product) goes away by itself after two seconds, then the module goes into the Song-Seek List view, which lasts about five seconds. Listening to SIRIUS radio with this problem is a frustrating experience. Curiously, the alert (and the annoying beep) don’t occur when you use the SIRIUS module and the Navigation minimodule at the same time. The user manual makes no mention of this alert; therefore, you cannot determine what causes it. I believe this is a debugging aid used by Clarion (TM) engineers.

The second major problem with the SIRIUS module is that it doesn’t remember the band you were using after you turn off the ignition or after changing modules. This is frustrating because I keep my favorite SIRIUS radio stations in separate preset groups-called bands in N.I.C.E.-depending on the kind of content each station provides: I keep news/talk stations in band A and music stations in band B. While I’m listening to music-on the way to the mall, for example-I set the band to B. On my way back home, when I press the 1 preset softbutton, I get NPR instead of Area 33. This is doubly frustrating when I’m listening to SIRIUS radio and need to use the Navigation module. When I switch to the Navigation module, I need to activate the SIRUS minimodule and change the band before I can use my music presets.

The third serious problem with the SIRIUS module is the constant blinking of the SIRIUS logo. You cannot deactivate or overcome this blinking without losing the ability to change stations (by using the Channel List view, for example).

3. The Music module is terrible. This module makes it impossible to navigate a large music library while playing a song because it insists on going back to the song being played on the list. That is, if you’re playing the 25th song of a 100-song list and scroll to the 45th song, five seconds after you let go of the scroll button (to read the song names displayed on the page), the unit takes you back to the page that shows the 25th song. And, when you go to this module (either by restarting or by switching from another module) it always restarts the song that was playing last. This is a HUGE problem to people who enjoy listening to long tracks.

4. The Video module needs to be more usable and flexible. When I parked my car under a tree and tried to enjoy videos in my iPod, this module keep thinking that I was driving. This caused it to display an alert every couple of minutes during playback. For videos that use the widescreen format, you cannot clip the top and bottom black bars, with a zoom function. You can only stretch the display. Having been released in the era of widescreen video, this is unacceptable.

5. The mounting arm is not strong enough to hold the unit in place. While driving, the unit bounces too much to be usable as a navigation aid. You have to add extra support to work around this problem. I used a small pack of napkins.

The Navigation module is the best one of the unit, which isn’t saying much. It has a few minor glitches and the user interface responsiveness problems mentioned earlier; but, overall, it’s OK.

These problems, especially the Song-Seek Alert problem, tell me that Clarion performed very limited testing under actual usage conditions, that is, inside a vehicle being driven and parked as a regular person would do. Clarion offered customers an relatively expensive device expecting us to conduct the actual testing. As a gadget-savvy customer, this offends me. As of 2006-02-12, Clarion has published no software updates for the N.I.C.E. unit.

I had always associated the name Clarion with sophistication and quality. This association no longer stands. This is my last Clarion purchase.

If you value your sanity, I strongly advise you to stay away from this product.
Rating: 1 / 5

This is a good product to have if you are looking for the benefits of GPS navigation and Sirius Satellite Radio in one module. Includes a suction cup window mount but it is recommended that the unit be installed professionally to avoid poor performance. I have had this unit for almost 2 years and I am completely satisfied with it’s performance.
Rating: 5 / 5

Unit won’t detects any satalite. No signal at all. I power it up every month and still fail. Called support and asked me to go to http://www.clarion.com but clarion.com has no email or anything to contact with. So cannot get any live support by person from Clarion. Brought it to a couple repair centers and they said they don’t konw how to repair it. The worse product and support! I won’t buy any clarion products from now on since no support at all.
Rating: 1 / 5

The Sirius have problem,navigation have a problem and don’t have update map,is descontinued product.I bought and had a Clarion NICE about 2 years and a half ago, at an authorized retailer, and for the first few months it worked well. I had the MP3 output hardwired into my AUX port on my car stereo and it works great. I bought this device because of the screen size and its integrated MP3 capabilities.

The start up is easy enough. Typical for most Nav systems, you have to tap on the “Accept” button to get the Nav to work. The system takes a few seconds to bring up your last known location and then begins to search for satellites. You can choose to bypass the Nav system by pushing the “Music” button on the lower portion of the unit and a player will appear. The MP3 player is pretty straight forward and easy to use.

I don’t utilize the video inputs or the Sirius Radio portion. I received a free 30 day trial for Sirius when I purchased the unit, but I let it expire since it was not a necessity for me. However during the 30 day trial period the Sirius Radio worked as promised.

To review:

I bought this system because:

1) Big Screen for the Nav

2) MP3 integration into my stereo

3) Navigation

These will probably be the same reasons any consumer would look at this device and in the showroom it all worked as I wanted it to.

Then I got it home.

Having owned this very pricey system for a year and a half, here is my opinion.

The navigation system is horrid. At freeway speeds it lags and is inaccurate with directions. I can’t count the number of times it has recalculated my route after making a turn it told me to make, started yelling at me to make a “U-Turn”, only to have it recalculate again in 10 seconds, once it caught up with itself and realized I was in the right place. Another down side to this Nav system is the total lack of options for Navigation. Almost all of the other units I have used since have the ability to stay off toll roads, quickest time vs. shortest route (programming in average speeds for street type), or even surface streets only. You just get what it gives.

The MP3 player does not have a well thought out user interface considering it will be used while driving. After many attempts to customized folders and create individual play lists (per the manual), I have been relegated to just leaving it on random play and pushing the next song button on the screen.

The touch screen is not very sensitive to my finger/stylus/pen/ or any other item. I average 2 or 3 touches to get the system to recognize that I touched it. I wonder how it would respond to a baseball bat tapping the screen? The sound quality is fine, but getting the song I want is too much work. There is not an intuitive search mechanism. Just keep pressing next, next, next, next until you get to the song you want to hear.

All in all it was a huge investment for a Navigation system that doesn’t have updated maps, an MP3 player with a mind of its own, and a catalog of POI that will really challenge you.
Rating: 1 / 5