- Average user rating: 3.0 stars out of 138 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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108 out of 109 people found this review helpful
4.0 stars
"REALLY good but some quirks & minor drawbacks"
Pros: Functions well, very easy to use, great value for price, firmware v5 will be huge improvement
Cons: Menus a little quirky, keyboard small, screen glare, map software quirky too.
Summary: Most people who have posted comments have summed up the good points already. The unit is small, stylish and looks good in your car. The screen is bright and very sensitive. The controls are intuitive and easy to master. The unit has a good number of options, such as: many different voices, day/night colors, different map colors, 2-D vs. 3-D map views. I like the ability to explore maps at will, and create routes without being in the car or using the GPS--this makes it like a mapquest.com and GPS navigator in one. The unit is very good about allowing you to avoid certain streets. It calculates routes quickly, and is quick to help you when you miss a turn.
Some people complain that the unit does not give you the BEST route. It is asking a lot for software to find the absolute BEST route available. This unit will get you from point A to B along a REASONABLE route, which is what it was designed to do. If you want the BEST route, you might be expecting too much.
I've used the Magellan units with Hertz and their voice prompts are annoying, especially with the bing-bongs. This unit has about 77 words it can use, which is enough to tell me clearly what I need to do. It warns me about the turn coming up and gives me the distance (in yards), then tells me to turn at the turn, and that is it. I find it just the right amount of info.
The built-in speaker is incredible. I read a review showing cut-aways and the unit is almost all speaker. Volume control that is speed-sensitive will be added in firmware v5.0.
The Secure Digital (SD) card came pre-loaded with a Major Roadways of America (MRA) map, and all the voices. This map is MUCH more complete than the MRA map on the included CDs. My impression is that the MRA map on the SD card is a compressed version of the entire US. I installed my local region to the card and can't see any difference between the two... I bought a larger SD card and instead of installing everything anew from the CDs, I copied the files from the old card to my hard-drive and then from the hard-drive to the new card. If you use *ix (Mac OS X, linux or unix) you can easily mount the unit as a USB drive and copy with cp, rsync, etc. My main point through is that the 256K card that came with the unit is big enough since the included MRA on the card seems incredibly complete.
The ASN feature (dead-reckoning, whatever you want to call it) works OK but not great. Going through a tunnel, it thought I kept accelerating and had me going 110 mph by the end of the tunnel. No big deal really since it then realized it was wrong, the map went grey and it sat idle until I reestablished GPS signal.
Many features are missing from this unit with firmware 4.*, but will be added shortly with version 5.0. I can't wait for that to come out!! It will make an already great machine that much better.
Now for some cons.
1. you have to navigate through a few levels of menus to get to some common features. That is why I say the menus are quirky. I think that changing volume or brightness are very important and should be in the first page of options under Preferences, but they are burried much deeper. So it means a few extra clicks to get to things you need more often.
2. The screen is a little small and as a result, the keyboard is small. I've had to correct spelling a few times since my finger hit the letter next to what I wanted. Solutions include being more careful, or using a sylus. On my wish list would be a stylus holder for the car mount.
3. Since the screen is small, so is some of the text that it gives you. I have good eyesight but I would have liked the info on the bottom right to be a few points larger
4. The screen is very shiney and suffers a lot from glare. A few companies market screen protectors especially for this unit (search google) but they all seem over-priced to me. However, as with any PDA, if you touch the screen much, you really need a protector. I bought a pack of protectors from Fellowes for my Palm Pilot, and just cut one to side for the TomTom. Voila!
5. The current map software (v 4.42) does not let me choose whether i want to take/avoid highways, use shortest time or distance, etc. This will be included on v5.0. As I noted above, it doesn't always give the fastest route, i.e. puts me on a street with a lot of lights when I know the next one down has fewer. As I said above, I don't expect the BEST route, just a reasonable one.
6. I don't like the map-installation software at all. You get 8 CDs with maps on it, and each CD has its own executable to install things. First, why not put it all on one DVD. Second, why not install a program on my computer that I can run, and it figures out which CD I want. Right now, you put in CD1 and navigate through 4-5 screens to say install <state>, and it says "put in CD 3", so you put in that CD and navigate through 5-6 screens, install the map, and then you start over for the next one. This is a minor annoyance.
7. The TomTom website is a little hard to navigate when you are looking for support. But there are a lot of great users groups out there who are very prompt on responding. There are links at tomtom.com, but 3 I like are mytomtom.com, pocketgpsworld.com, and expansys.com.
Executive Summary: This is a great machine, will get better with the newer firmware release. The cons are small compared to the pros, and at $550, this is a great value.
- 5 replies to this review
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Thank you for your indepth review. Very helpful? Where did you buy it for $550?
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If I mount that inside my dash do I need an antenna?
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In looking at this unit for the last several months I found this artical to be very helpfull thanks Islandbound
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I appreciate the thought and time you put into it. Thank you!
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but would like to add a little to this excellent review.
I have had my TomTo Go with 1GB SD card for almost a year and would not want drive in a strange location without it. As stated in the review, it has its limitations, but is terrific for anyone with reasonable expectations.
To me, the TomTom Go's best feature is its 3-D view with "Reader's Digest large-type" graphics, which are much clearer than the small graphics used by other systems. Another notable attribute is its touchscreen interface, which is so good that Garmin copied it on its own StreetPilot c330. Finally, the booming "Rick Astley" speaker is unrivalled in its clarity.
On the con side, the TomTom Go's maps are not up to date; I figure that they're about two years out of date. However, other GPS systems I have used and seen, including the factory-installed systems in Lexus and Infiniti vehicles, also appear to me to be similarly out of date. Another notable con is the inability to map detailed routes from one regional map to another. For example, you cannot map a complete route from 100 State Street in Chicago, Illinois, to 100 Wall Street in New York, New York, although you can map a route from Chicago to New York on the Major Routes of America map.
Bottom line: the TomTom Go is a terrific tool for anyone wanting to use a GPS system.
TomTom GO:
