bodacious222's Full Review: TomTom GO Plus Car GPS Receiver
I purchased a TomTom navigator system six months ago based on good experiences with renting cars with Magellan's Neverlost. The Magellan unit was very expensive and I found the TomTom had a superior user interface, was portable and less costly. So I purchased the TomTom Go Plus.
I can't give enough praise to the user interface. It is very intuitive. The graphics are large and easily read from a distance. Its speaker delivers loud and clear speech. Being able to put the TomTom in my pocket and have it guide me in a city while I'm walking is a plus. The battery lasts 4-5 hours.
All of these advantages though, are overshawdowed by an error-ridden map and POI database that is incomplete and old. Some examples from my trips:
- It seems 50% of the POIs in the database no longer or never existed. Conversely, TomTom misses 50% of the existing POIs.
- On every trip, TomTom will not recognize a stretch of highway. TomTom thinks I'm driving through a meadow or woods and constantly tells me I need to get back on the highway. Fortunately, TomTom's volume will mute.
- TomTom thinks some interstate entrance ramps are clover-leaf instead of stoplight, guiding me to turn in a wrong direction.
- Monticello may be Thomas Jefferson's famous home near Charlottesville VA, and featured on US currency, but TomTom cannot find it.
- In southern MD, TomTom guided us to a farmer's house instead of the desired restaurant three miles away.
- In Alexandria VA, we needed to find a hospital. TomTom guided us instead to a restaurant, four miles from the nearest hospital! This incident lost my wife's confidence in TomTom, I still had some hope.
- Heading to a friend's wedding near Hilton Head SC, TomTom guided us to a continuous loop through a remote neighborhood 15 miles from the destination. We had to stop at a gas station and ask where we were. This was the final incident that lost my confidence in TomTom.
Now I'm back to using paper maps and written directions. I use TomTom as a secondary device mostly for tracking and measuring distance. I'll give the makers of TomTom sixty days to produce a better database, otherwise I'll sell the unit and purchase a Magellan, which is now my recommendation to anyone considering the purchase of a GPS navigator.
Portable vehicle GPS navigation system with 1GB Secure Digital memory card 32 MB of internal memory; includes preloaded U.S. maps Crystal-clear 3D or ...More at Amazon
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