carey934's Full Review: RIM BlackBerry 8100 Smartphone
Wow, this unit has about as many 5 star reviews as it does 1 star reviews. After buying a Garmin StreetPilot i2, then upgrading to the Garmin StreetPilot i5 (they were the cheapest name-brand GPS at the time) I couldn't turn down the opportunity to purchase a refurbished TomTom Go910 from Buy.com for $375 with free shipping and a full one-year warranty.
First, many people who wrote reviews paid $800 or more for their units and I believe their experience and expectations were relative to the amount of money they spent.
That being said, I paid essentially the same price for this unit as I did for my Garmin StreetPilot i5 last year. But the StreetPilot doesn't have 10% of the features!
For same price as the i5, I now have a bigger screen, a touch screen, maps of Europe (sold separately for the Garmin unit), the ability to use the GPS as a hands-free speaker phone with blue-tooth to my cell (that is not compatible with most blue-tooth cell phones), the ability to view pictures, the ability to play MP3s (if you have an aux. jack on your car stereo), the ability to customize screen colors, program my name/address/phone into the unit that displays each time the unit is powered on, put in a security code that renders the unit useless if it is stolen and the thieves don't know the code. The ability to see longitude and latitude locations (Garmin StreetPilot does not do this), a built-in lithium-ion battery with about 4 hours (if you're lucky) of running time (goodbye AA batteries that my StreetPilot required).
The windshield mount that everyone is complaining about is the same as any other windshield mount. My Garmin i2 and i5 both came with windshield mounts and they don't work well.
That said, the windshield mount included with the TomTom works just as well as the others I have had experience with. I went on eBay and purchased the dashboard mount (a tiny rubber tripod with weighted feet) for $50 for my Garmin units. So when I got my new TomTom Go910, I went back to eBay and bought the same thing, designed for the TomTom, for $50 (see a pattern here?)
Some areas of the maps included with the TomTom Go910 are more accurate then the current maps offered by Garmin. There is a major road here that was literally moved and the Garmin unit is oblivious. Worse yet, the Garmin unit keeps trying to put me on it when I want to go to the freeway. Also, a friend of mine moved into a new sub-division and the Garmin shows me driving through a huge empty field when I go there.
On the other hand, there are roads the Garmin has that have been around at least four years, and the TomTom unit doesn't know they exist.
The first thing I did when the unit arrived was connect it to my computer, install the TomTom Home software and connect to TomTom. It automatically downloaded new updates and there are a couple of POIs from major companies available free for download. This is a great idea, but I can get over 1,000,000 POIs for free for just about any GPS, including the TomTom, from www.poi-factory.com.
TomTom and other third-party companies offer celebrity voices, or impersonations of celebrity voices to guide you. TomTom offers John Cleese's voice, but it's $20, and gets old fairly quick. But still, it's a great idea. My old Garmin only offered one voice for each language, all female.
The TomTom Go910 offers 2 female and 2 male British voices as well as 4 female and 2 male American voices as well as a male Australian voice. The unit also comes with a free download of a free voice from their web-site (not John Cleese, though...gotta pay for that one).
Clearly this unit is made by a European company. There is definitely a European feel to it and many options and features (such as photo radar locations) and traffic updates are only available in Europe. The USA is clearly a secondary market for TomTom, with Europe being their priority.
The first thing you need to do with this unit, after you've updated it, is to go to the "Change Preferences" menu, click the NEXT button two times and press "Show ALL menu options." Why this is not the default setting is beyond me.
Now, instead of 3 pages of options you get 7 pages of options! This is fantastic! Here is a list of all the options:
Use Night Colors
Turn off 3D Display
Safety Preferences
Enable/Disable POIs
Turn off sound
Volume Preferences
Manage Favorites
Change Home Location
Manage maps
Manage POIs
Status bar preferences
Set clock
Docking preferences
Change map colors
Brightness preferences
Planning preferences
Toll road preferences
Compass preferences
Change voice
Change language
Set units (Miles or Kilometers, 24 hour or 12 hour clock, latitude and longitude as Degrees/Minutes/Seconds, Celsius or Fahrenheit, barometer as milliBar, hectoPascal or units of Mercury!)
Operate left-handed
Keyboard preferences
Name preferences
Hide tips
Set owner
Speaker preferences
Speech preferences
Edit TomTom PLUS account
Start-up preferences
Bluetooth preferences
Disable wireless data
Show fewer menu options
Ask arrival time
Reset factory settings
WOW! That is a lot of customization! And that's just under one menu button from the 'main' menu, which offers another 3 pages of options.
I love that I can have this GPS display the information I want on the status bar. This was not an option with my either of my Garmin units. I also love that POIs (points of interest, like gas stations, hotels, restaurants, etc...) can be displayed as little white boxes on the 3D map as you drive. In the Garmin unit I would have to pull over and roll through the menus and often times the distance listed on the Garmin unit was completely wrong.
This unit powers up and finds satellites much, much quicker then the Garmin units I previously owned.
One thing my Garmin units would do is say if my destination was located on my right or left. The TomTom unit simply says "You've arrived at your destination." I wish it was more specific.
The TomTom appears to be a bit more accurate about my current location. Whenever I entered the freeway by my house, the old Garmin unit thought I missed the on-ramp and would guide me to the next on-ramp. The TomTom does not make this error.
The issues I had with daylight saving time on the old Garmin units do not appear to exist with the TomTom GPS. In fact, so far as I can tell, there is no menu to set your time zone, let alone an option for DST. I hope this unit will automatically adjust the time based on my location. Watch for future updates as I discover these types of details in time and experience with the unit.
I was disappointed that this TomTom unit does not appear compatible with the Blue-Tooth on my LG cell phone.
The 20GB hard drive still has 11.5GB free, which can hold pictures (that can be viewed on the unit) and mp3's (which can be played through the unit).
As for a reviewer complaining he couldn't put his iTunes music on it, he just didn't know how. There are two ways: One is that you buy the new DRM-free music offered by iTunes ($1.29) which is also of higher sound quality.
The second way is to copy your music to CDs, then copy the songs off the CDs (called 'ripping') with a program like MusicMatch Jukebox, back into MP3 files. Its a pain, but its free and your music will play on anything!
I'll update this review after I'd had some time to get intimately familiar with this unit...
I'm sure there are better GPS units available for twice or three times the cost... But for the same price, I don't believe a better GPS exists.
UPDATED 5-21-07
I WAS WRONG!
Well, I've only had the unit a week and I have already found some serious issues. The first of which is when I have turned the GPS off and then, later, go to turn it back on, nothing happens. I have to use a small, bent paperclip and push the extremely tiny and well hidden reset button. This makes no sense to me as the power off appears normal and the device is carefully handled and put away. When I turn it a few hours, or a few days later, nothing happens. The reset fixes it, but what is up with that?
I already discovered an address the TomTom couldn't find. A big shopping center located at 7000 E. Mayo Blvd, Phoenix, AZ. It's been there about 4 years. The unit doesn't know it exists! So, when I was in the parking lot, I told the GPS to remember my current location (using latitude and longitude) and then I labeled and saved it as a Favorite. But when I tried to navigate to that favorite, it says 'ROUTE NOT AVAILABLE' because it thinks I am trying to get to the middle of a field that no road connects to. I noticed this same effect in another parking lots. It sees the parking lot as a field and rather than direct me to one of the roads that surround the 'field,' it simply refuses to navigate insisting ROUTE NOT AVAILABLE!
For all my complaints of my Garmin StreetPilot, I never had this problem. This is very discouraging!
UPDATED 7-03-07
Well, I have now sold the unit as I could no longer stand it! After planning a route from Phoenix, AZ to Park City, UT, with the latest maps installed, the TomTom GPS wants to direct me through Las Vegas, adding 30 minutes on to my trip. If I tell the TomTom GPS to send me through an alternate route, it actually picks the faster, shorter route, but says it will take an hour longer at 14 hours total travel time. The actual time is 11 hours as calculated by Google Maps, Yahoo Maps and my new Garmin Nuvi 350.
Contacting support for this unit is via email only, the support knowledgebase and web-site are difficult to navigate and the maps are rubbish.
When you save a favorite location, you must remember to save the address in the name, otherwise the address is gone forever. The TomTom unit will NEVER show you the address again. It will simply say you've arrived at your destination... There is no way to extract the address from the favorite after you've renamed it. This is terrible!
If you've planned a route and saved items as favorites only to refer to them while on your trip, good luck finding the specific house address you were looking for. Hope you wrote it down on a piece of paper! Ain't technology great?
The TomTom Go910 GPS is so heavy, that while hanging off the windshield mount it starts to droop, slowly, until it's screen faces the dashboard, even if the car is off and there is no vibration.
The celebrity voices are a kick, but getting me to my destination, accurately and with the address information displayed on the screen (ie, favorites), is more important.
Goodbye TomTom and your terrible TeleAtlas maps! Hello everyone else (Google, Yahoo, Magellan, Garmin, etc...) who use the more accurate NavTeq maps (for the USA)!
I took the money from the sale of the TomTom Go910 and purchased a Garmin Nuvi 350 for the same price. It's important to note that I had to call Garmin customer service concerning my new Garmin Nuvi 350 GPS, and an American answered the phone, speaking accent-free English, answered all of my questions and sent me the pre-loaded maps on DVD, through the mail, free of charge simply because I asked for them. Imagine that!
I am reducing my initial 3 star rating of this TomTom Go910 GPS to 1 star, and would make it lower than that if I could.
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