harman/kardon intros budget Guide+Play GPS

Only having entered the market late last year, harman/kardon today released its second Guide+Play GPS device. The GPS-300 is a streamlined edition of the earlier GPS-500 that brings the core features to a lower price. Like its ancestor, the 300 is consciously designed for both mapping and music playback with a 4-inch wide touchscreen and 2GB of built-in flash for storing maps as well as MP3 and WMA tracks. A miniSD slot similarly provides room for up to 4GB of total maps and music. Battery life is also the same at five hours, as is support for loading information from Macs and Windows PCs.

Differences between the units are relatively small, according to harman/kardon: the new GPS system primarily drops the more demanding MPEG-4 video support, letting it use a lower-cost processor. This will allow the company to sell the GPS-300 for a much lower $300 when it ships in June bundled with a carrying case, an in-car ball mount, and a power charger.