Alpine Blackbird portable GPS

Independently or connected to a video screen Alpine

I just try Alpine Blackbird. Here are my first impressions! After making a quick connection via the cigarette lighter, so I used in standalone like any average user would have to do.

It is not connected to my car multimedia video screen Alpine IVA-D300, otherwise the display would be black and Blackbird orders placed directly via the touch screen of the IVA-D300. It is a specific innovative product. It can be connected directly to an Alpine video screen via a special adapter that serves as finally fixed, or removable in case of using the Blackbird also in another vehicle.

Getting Started friendly

The grip is very friendly, the usage is very little different from other PND brands, so a bit different from usual interface Alpine car navigation products (browser screen video with fixed). 

The operation is effective, with a tiny flat on the GPS positioning at startup because of my thermal windshield that makes the process a little slower. But when the positioning was done, I had no glitches. Recalculations on route changes are random rather fast. I took some shortcuts that I know well, it's a blackbird (translation into French of Blackbird), in the countryside should not be lost and he did well.

Faced with an embedded system

I compared it to my car navigation system via a PC drive connected to the auxiliary audio / video screen Alpine IVA-D300. The recalculation is a bit slower but it is surely due to the repositioning made slower by the thermal windshield. I just did it on purpose to get a good compréhenssion the phenomenon: a recalculation on the PC is almost instantaneous (less than 2 seconds), the blackbird is 4 maximum. But in 4 seconds, the distance is not very large, so a replacement is being found quickly to resume its path.

Cons by the route calculation is pretty fast, so it will not change too users Series Alpine NVE-N077-board or 099. Since I have not customized user menus, I have not explored everything alone, mostly as regards the use mode TMC. For this, we must dock to connect to a multimedia station Alpine. I have not explored either the use of radar maps that are not pre-installed I suppose, but I did not really dug into the menus.

So I made a rather direct use out of the box: if you are good salesman, the customer should be able to use it to go home without major worries, if you enter the correct address!

The opinion

I confirm that this is a good product. Of course, 549 €, it is not cheap. But lately, I think I can say I've been sitting for some products as expensive or more, who will struggle to get her ankle.

He just lacks Bluetooth, but Alpine already provided for the second version due out shortly in the USA and later at home. 

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