Review: LG LN740 Portable Navigation Device

September 2007 By Grant Clauser

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You may know LG as a brand of LCD and plasma TVs and cell phones. Now LG wants you know its name as a maker of GPS navigation systems. Given the rise in popularity of portable nav systems this year, it’s not surprising that lots of companies are giving the category a go. I got to spend a weekend recently with LG’s LN740 to see if it could keep me from getting lost in Pennsylvania’s Pocono mountains.

The LN740 stands out from many of its competitors in that it’s incredibly small and thin. It’s less than an inch thick and less than a pound so you can easily pack it in a backpack, purse or even cargo pants pocket to carry around with you. There’s also no flip-out GPS antenna—the antenna is built-in and hidden. It has a built-in lithium ion battery so it’s as useful for walking around as it is in car. The map data is stored on 2 GBs internal memory but can be supplemented or updated with an SD card. Except for the volume buttons, the unit is all controlled with a touch screen.

My test involved a camping trip to Promised Land State Park in Canadensis Pennsylvania. After setting up the nav system with the windshield mount, it located several satellite signals in under a minute and was ready for me to input the destination. That proved to be a problem. No matter how I tried to search, the system wouldn’t give up Promised Land from it’s points-of-interest database. Since I didn’t have a street address for my campsite, I tried the next best thing—I entered the name of the nearest town knowing that when we got there I could easily take over. I also added another address because I needed to pick up someone along the way.

The unit calculated the route in about 30 seconds, then started pointing the way. The 4-inch map screen, while not as big most dash-installed screens, is big enough so street names, distance and other info is fairly easy to read. Zooming in for a better look is as easy as pressing the + or - buttons.

The unit includes a few convenience features I liked using. For one, you can view the turn by turn directions so you know what route you’re taking before heading out. The route summery option lets you see the whole trip in map form. It also can receive traffic and weather data via an FM receiver. This latter feature doesn’t require an additional subscription, but it’s also not always available.

Once on my way the unit was prompt in alerting me to turns and generally making sure I was going the right way. The voice commands were accurate, though not loud always loud enough. Since I selected shortest distance instead of shortest time in the route options menu the LG took me on a few small mountain roads I hadn’t used before, but ultimately got me to Canadensis as promised. The funny thing is, once we arrived at the park, the screen displayed our location as Promised Land State Park. I saved the current location for next time.

Except for the problem of finding the park in the point-of-interest database, the feature was otherwise very good. It significantly redeemed itself when I discovered bar/pub as one of the search options.

When you don’t need the unit to tell you where to go, you can use it as an MP3 player or a digital photo viewer via the SD card slot. It’s better as a photo viewer than as an MP3 player because it doesn’t broadcast the audio to an FM channel or include a headphone jack. The unit’s own speakers are pretty poor for music. As a photo viewer, it’s quick and easy to use, and the pictures look pretty good. I found this a handy use on my camping trip.