FineDigital's FineDrive M760 : a thin 7-inch PMP with GPS navigation

Oh hey, what's this? Thin GPS... can it really be? Fine Digital just announced their Finedrive M760 navigator with real-time TPEG traffic alerts for S.Korea. Of course, with a 7-inch, 480 x 234, LED-backlit LCD display, they just couldn't resist slapping in some DMB television to up the distraction factor. Hell, it even features a little NIP (Navigation In Picture) so you'll never have to look at the road again. The 25-mm (1-inch) slab also packs an SD card and 800mA battery to take your MPEG-4, DivX, WMV video and MP3, WMA, and WAV audio with you once you arrive. If you arrive, that is. It'll cost you ?440,000 (about $483) for the pleasure starting next month.

[Via AVING]

[Chrisphillers @ Apr 23rd 2007 10:56AM]

That looks suspiciously like the Nokia Internet table (770)

[Chrisphillers @ Apr 23rd 2007 11:35AM]

Did I say table or did I mean tablet!?:p

[sdsdv10 @ Apr 23rd 2007 11:37AM]

The resolution of the 7" screen on the new Nokia N800 = High-resolution (800x480 pixels)

The resolution of this device = 7-inch, 480 x 234

Which would you rather have?

[Kev50027 @ Apr 23rd 2007 11:56AM]

That's pretty inexpensive for anything with a 7 inch screen. Then again, it will never be sold in the US anyway, so why do I care?

[Gadget Oggler @ Apr 23rd 2007 12:23PM]

H.U.D., H.U.D., H.U.D., when will they learn. Forget the screen and build me a Heads Up Display for double the price, and I'll buy it in a nanosecond.

[kadajawi @ Apr 23rd 2007 2:22PM]

The resolution is terrible for a screen that big. Meizu wants to use a 3.3" 720x480 screen. From a 7" display I'd rather like to have something like 1024x768...

[v_dogg @ Apr 23rd 2007 5:31PM]

the res on this thing sucks major

[Kev50027 @ Apr 23rd 2007 5:40PM]

You people are blind. You don't need an insanely high resolution on a GPS, you're looking at it from 2-3 feet away, duh.

The extra pixels would waste power, processes, and cost.

[sdsdv10 @ Apr 24th 2007 9:38AM]

Kev50027 are you blind? This is also a PMP (portable media player; see article title), so people are supposed to watch movies on this thing (more than just GPS use). For viewing movies, that resolution sucks big time.

[davydany @ Apr 23rd 2007 6:00PM]

when i used to work at staples, we had a FineDrive system, and most of the customers who bought it, returned it. Why? Because the navigation software sucked and the extra features only prooved to be annoyingly annoying...such as the MP3 Player builtin w/ FM Transmitter. From what I heard (cuz i didn't buy it), it was a hassle to make it play songs. It might make it here but I doubt it'll be successful

[Kev50027 @ Apr 24th 2007 10:04AM]

Archos released a 7 inch screened device about a year ago that had the same resolution and still got excellent reviews. I agree a higher resolution is always better (and my cell, the Nokia N80 has a higher pixel density than any other cell i know of), but for INEXPENSIVE devices, lower resolutions are a must to keep costs down, like cheap cell phones and mp3 players (like the iPod, which is trash)

[sdsdv10 @ Apr 24th 2007 10:56AM]

Actually, the AV700 was released almost two years ago (5/23/3005) and the screen was generally always considered a negative. Here is a review of the AV700 at Cnet (The related AV500 with a 5" screen and the same resolution received much better reviews).

http://reviews.cnet.com/Archos_AV700_Mobile_DVR_100GB/4505-6499_7-31392977.html

Where they state, "The bad: Expensive; screen looks grainy and washed out". A grainy screen is exactly what you would expect for 7" with this resolution.

By contract, Archos current product the 704 WiFi (the AV700 was discontinued over a year ago, not released as you stated) has a 7" screen resolution of 800x480.
http://www.archos.com/products/video/archos_704wifi/tech_specs.html?country=us&lang=en

Most current MP3 players (iPod, Zune, etc) have QVGA (320x240) in 2.5" to 3" screens. If we were to scale these to 7" size they would be ~640x480, which is not widescreen like the unit in the article but would still be higher resolution nonetheless.

If we are talking GPS, the Garmin Nuvi 670 packs a 4.3" screen with 480x272 resolution. This is roughly same as the Finedrive with in a 1.5" smaller screen, thus having a finer pixel pitch and probably having a sharper look to it.
https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?pID=8578&locale=en_US

I understand your comment about keeping costs down, but anyway you cut it this screen will look like crap.