At first glance it looks like a miniature Sony television set, but upon closer inspection it turns out to be Sony's new line of portable Global Positioning System (GPS) devices.

The Nav-U line of GPS devices comes in three models. All offer a 3.5-inch touch screen display, Navteq mapping software and a 4 hour battery life.

The basic NV-U50 contains complete maps of UK, Ireland and France (standard in all models). The NV-U50T builds on the standard features, T stands for traffic because this model offers support for TMC data which can very usefully provide re-routing in case of heavy traffic. Lastly the NV-U70 comes with everything the U50T has plus a built in Flash Drive with 1GB of memory for additional maps.

All three devices are expected to become available in January 2006 with Sony NV-U50 and Sony NV-U50T being estimated at £319 ($551) and £449 ($776) respectively.