Harman Kardon preps video player with GPS

Harman Kardon flies the flag for convergence with the announcement of its Guide & Play GPS-500, a combo sat-nav/multimedia player.

As the name suggests, the Guide & Play is principally a portable sat-nav unit. Both 2D and 3D European maps come pre-installed on a 2GB flash card. Harman Kardon has also included support for TMC (traffic message channel). So the pocketable Guide & Play can double up as both pedestrian guide book and in-car electro-map.

Alongside the sat-nav, the 'Play' functionality encompasses music and video playback. The Guide & Play supports MPEG-4 and WMV9 for video; MP3, WMA and AAC for audio. An ideal device for the connected urbanite who has little or no sense of direction.

The Guide & Play will be available this month and HK has slapped a guide price of £345 on it. For more information, swing your browser towards www.guideandplay.eu .

We'll bring you a review when we can get our hands on one.

Technical specs

4" widescreen display (480 x 272 pixels, 65k colors)
300MHz ARM9 dual-core processor, 128MB RAM
2GB of internal flash memory
Preinstalled maps (Tele Atlas): Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, San Marino, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom and Vatican City
Up to five-hour battery life (lithium-polymer battery)
SD card slot (up to 4GB)
USB 2.0
Dimensions (H x W x D): 75mm x 118mm x 20mm (3" x 4-5/8" x 3/4")
Weight: 201g (7.1 oz)
Available: Silver/Black