Gadgetory

what's up everybody this is Antoine Goodwin associate art etc taking a look at the garmin hud a little device that's supposed to make navigating your car a little bit safer now HUD stands for a head-up display and you'll actually mount this little LED display on your dashboard so that it will project those turn-by-turn directions right up into your line of sight where you can see them without looking away from the road in the box you'll actually get a plastic reflector shield and a reflective film that you can choose from to reflect these directions off of so they kind of look like little Holograms floating in front of you now this is the reflective plastic lens and it actually with a little bit of difficulty snaps on and when you view the directions through the shield you can actually see the directions right side up and floating sort of in mid-air right before your eyes now the way the Garmin would actually like you to experience the hood is through this transparent plastic film that they include in the box that you'll actually attach to your windshield to project those turn-by-turn directions upon now they only put one of these in the box and it's a little tricky to install so you're going to have to get it right the first time you're first going to want to figure out where on the windshield you want it to be the next thing you're going to do with wet the windshield down really good so that we can move it around a little bit as we install the next step is to actually peel off the backing mark with a white flag just kind of peel that off and then start applying the HUD to your windshield now when the windshields wet you still get a little bit of leeway and repositioning it so here's your time to kind of figure out where exactly you want it to be once you've got it lined up you're going to want to take a credit card or something and actually sort of squeegee all the bubbles out from under it so that it's perfectly flat to the windshield and then the last step is just grab the green tab and pull off the front protective film now the last bits actually the easiest part just peel off the protective backing to expose the sticky back panel on the hood and then you take it and actually just put it on your dashboard so that the numbers reflect up through the thing now the hoods base actually has a little bit of swivel and a little bit of twist to give you some flexibility to mounting this flexible pad also bends a little bit to better contour around your dashboard so that'll actually help you get it good and secure so it doesn't go flying if you actually actually make a quick turn now on the unit itself you've actually got a power cable right here that plugs into the 12 volt adapter that adapter has a built-in USB port on the back of it so you can keep your smartphone charge while you navigate over on the other side you've got a small power button which probably won't have to worry about that much because when your vehicle turns on and off when it's plugged into your cigarette lighter the hood should actually turn on and off with it so generally speaking you don't really have to futz with this much after you've got it set up now on the front you've got a photocell right here it's going to measure the amount of ambient light so that the display doesn't get blown out during the daytime but it doesn't dazzle you during the night it will automatically adjust this brightness as needed now what sort of information will you see you'll actually see an arrow that will show you where you need to go and what direction your upcoming turn is it's a pretty complex arrow beneath it you'll see Lane guidance information that'll show you what lane if valid for the route that you've chosen so you don't don't worry about very quickly jumping across four lanes you'll already know where you need to be on the road in the next column we've got the number of feet or miles to the upcoming turn as well as your time for reaching your destination below that you've got the current speed limit and your actual speed right there now if you run into traffic or red light cameras you'll actually get a little red LED right here that will show you to expect those things now while all of this is going on the Navigon or Garmin Street pilot app is going to be running on your smart phone giving you the turn-by-turn directions and supplying them to the garmin hud the verbal part of those turn-by-turn directions will either come out of your smart phone or if your pair to your car stereo via bluetooth or an auxilary cable through your car speakers so you can kind of get it both ways here now the garmin hud has an MSRP of one $49.99 and the garmin street pilot or never gone out that you're going to need to actually run it I'm going to run you an extra 50 bucks so that's about two hundred dollars to get going with this head-up display navigation at that price this is a bit more and it actually is useful but in my opinion any increase in safety no matter how small is a good one I've been in chuan gudem with cnet.com and we've been taking a look at the Garmin head-up display or the hood