Video Review: NUVIZ Head Up Display system

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Tested by: Tony Carter // Price: £615 with free shipping, 30 day returns policy and one year warranty // From: www.ridenuviz.com // Miles ridden on test: 2000

 

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So let’s cut to the chase – this thing is AWESOME.

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Honestly, I’ve been riding with the NUVIZ for 2000 miles now. And I absolutely love it.

And I hate gizmos. Gadgets that don’t work well, cause me issues or are difficult to learn find their way into the nearest bin pronto.

So far with the NUVIZ – I love this thing so much that I’ll fight anyone who tries to take it away from me.

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So any thoughts you might have 
that it looks daft, will add weight or wind noise to the riding experience or anything other 
than positive – put them aside 
for the rest of this review.

What the NUVIZ is made up of is, basically, a smartphone that bolts onto the side of your helmet and projects a live screen onto a viewing area mounted in a clear acrylic ‘block’ which sits just in front of your visor.

The relevant/required information that you want sits about two inches away from the visor on the outside. You can tweak the projection block so that it’s in the ideal place for 
your line of sight.

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The screen is in colour, easy 
to read and the functions are accessed via a controller which you can mount in various places on your bike.

NUVIZ offers up a few screens to scroll through including Phone, Music, Rides, Camera and Speed. Using it is child’s play. Internally loaded maps and a plethora of guidance voices – via the app – give you the ability to plan 
a route, select warnings for speeding etc. and connect the device to other bluetooth systems you may already have hardwired into your helmet.

The battery is charged in-unit and lasts a long time. I rode from 8.30 in the morning until 1am the following day with the unit on for the majority of the time and it lasted the whole ride long. If you’re not using the live scrolling maps or making a call, shut the screen off, which drastically extends the battery life.

On my mega-ride across a chunk of Europe, I encountered rain of Biblical proportions and 
the unit performed perfectly 
for the hours of severe wet weather that I rode through.

The NUVIZ is easy to fit, comes with its own headphone speakers and microphone and in a very short matter of minutes becomes second nature to use.

In fact, after the first handful of miles I was aware that the small screen had started to ‘float’ into my vision as I was looking at the dash from time to time. Effectively my vision had adapted to the small screen so that I had 
a screen about the same size as my KTM 1290 Super Duke GT’s dash.

Focusing on the NUVIZ is very easy – even on the move. The focal point is about the same distance away from your head as the back of your hand when 
it’s on the handlebar. It’s a neat trick and means that you’re already used (conditioned, almost) to switching your focus from the road ahead to that dash-type distance.

A massive benefit with the NUVIZ is the way you use and interact with the camera, housed in the front of the unit just below the projection unit. You select 
the camera via the handlebar controller and the projection screen shows you what the camera sees in real time. No 
more guessing where the camera’s pointing. Pictures are automatically loaded on to your phone’s gallery as they’re taken and video is recorded onto the on-board micro-SD card.

In a few minutes the NUVIZ went from being a new ‘toy’ on the helmet to get to grips with to a genuinely useful tool. Riding at pace along Italian mountain passes I found myself putting the system on the Route page and then pulling back from the viewpoint offered up as default on the screen. By pulling further and further up from the direction arrow on the screen I could see the corners that were a mile or so ahead (it’ll let you pull out far further than that, but a mile ahead gave me what I wanted). Knowing what was coming on roads I’ve not ridden before was a huge help. Suddenly, without realising what I’d done, I’d turned the NUVIZ from music-streamer and live mph gauge into a digital navigator that was showing me where the fun stuff was. All without faff and having to stop.

Honestly, I could go on about how much use – and fun – this system is for many more words than I have space for here. What 
I will say in summary though is: 
try one. Speak to the NUVIZ 
guys. Try it out. I promise you’ll like it.

Let’s not sweep the price under the carpet though. At 699 Euros this thing isn’t cheap, far from it. But if you’re of the means to be able to try one, you want to ride with the future inches away from your nose and you want to enhance your riding how and exactly when you want to – then this set-up is incredibly hard to beat.

It is worth your while getting up to speed with this excellent bit of kit because, hand on Head Up display unit, this thing really will change your experience of big or small-miles riding.


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