Anker's Roav Dashtop augmented driving HUD up for preorder, much cheaper than Navdy
It's still a HUD for your car that connects with your phone, yet it differs from Navdy, and not only in price
The Roav Dashtop is slapped onto your dashboard (duh), and has a popup transparent HUD situated right in front of your eyes when driving that displays pertinent info, and still lets you see the road through it. So far so good, that's what Navdy does very well, too, not to mention some similar cheapo solutions coming from the vast prairies of China's tech industry. Well, Anker was created by former Google employees, so a bit more thought has gone into Roav for the price.
Pricing and connectivity aside, what does the Roav Dashtop do? Well, it projects any information you might need while driving right in front of you, for starters, on a transparent background, so you don't crash while looking at your phone's or car infotainment units' displays to check on a message or whether you need to turn left right now (we've all been there). You can, for instance, choose to display messages, hear them read aloud, or have them hidden for privacy purposes.
The devil is in the details, though, and the Dashtop uses a voice-controlled "driving assistant" powered by Nuance for commands and navigation, disregarding ambient noise. You can ask it to read or send messages, change the navigation endpoint, or play some music from your phone, and follow through on the clear display in front of you. Still, the Dashtop also has a "steering wheel mounted glance-free controller," which sounds a whole lot like the knob that Navdy offers so you can navigate the interface the oldfashioned way with your thumb while driving, instead of using voice or gestures. The device is powered by your car's OBD port, so it can also display info like speed, RPM, and the like.
Some other intriguing tech details include a "heatproof Li-pol battery," which is important for something that will sit on your dash during a hot summer day, and USB-C connectivity. The Roav Dashtop also sports two "high-quality" speakers, and dual mics for noise cancellation duties., as well as accellerometer, gyro and ambient light sensors, plus a GPS chip. On the software side, the ROAV Dashtop ROM is based on Android, and, naturally, there is an app store planned for it.
Such HUDs used to be pretty futuristic, but the Roav Dashtop seems to be a good tradeoff between what goes on in the helmet of an F-35 pilot, and how you can get a similar experience for three Benjamins in your old clunker ($25 less if you refer a friend). The fly in the ointment is that the 4G version ships for in the spring for US only, while those in Canada and the UK waiting on it or the Wi-fi only model, will have to wait for next summer. Preorders are live at the link below, though, so head over if you like what you see in Roav's promo clip at the top.