Category — Alpine

Remember Alpine’s PND-K3?  First debuting at CES 2008 and released in August, the PND-K3 has finally met the tough reviewers at CNET.  The good news is the new Alpine is a big upgrade from the company’s Blackbird line, sporting a much improved user interface and improved performance to boot.  Positive features include Bluetooth, text-to-speech, and advanced lane guidance.  On the downside: route recalculations aren’t always efficient, battery life extends to a subpar 2 hours, and it’s just plain expensive.  Amazon carries the Alpine PND-K3 for $469.99, but TomTom’s GO 930 (similar features but with voice recognition) is $449.99, and Garmin’s 265WT has comparable features and costs only $300.  Overall CNET gave the PND-K3 a 3 out of 5.

via cnet

Alpine’s BlackBird PND-K3 is the latest in-car navigator from a company better known for their in-car A/V products.  First showcased this year at CES 2008, the PND-K3 sports a 4.3-inch touchscreen and boxy design, features dimensions of 4.8 x 2.9 x 0.78 inches and can be mounted on either your dashboard or windshield.

Preloaded with Navteq maps of the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, the PND-K3 offers text-to-speech, Bluetooth, 6 million points of interest, and 4GB of built-in memory expandable up to 8GB with an SD card.  MP3 and WMA audio files stored on an SD card can also be played back on the PND-K3, but there is no video playback or photo viewing capabilities.

All this for how much?  A pricey $550.

Alpine will be showcasing their new PND-K3 GPS units at CES 2008. The units feature a 4.3 inch touchscreen with a built-in database of American and Canadian maps and over 6 million points of interest. Music can be played via an SD slot, and navigation is simplified with voice guidance, automatic map zooming, and the units are Bluetooth-enabled for hands-free phone calls. Two versions of the PND-K3 will debut, one being a basic model with the above features and one higher-end model, the K3msn which will have access to MSN Direct. No suggested price or release date has been mentioned.