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"READ THIS IF YOU LIVE OUT IN THE COUNTRY!!!!!"
2.0 starson by chileheadplumberPros: The Suction cp is great, but the mount is poor.
Cons: 1) MAPS SHOW RURAL ROADS AS LARGE NUMBERED HIGHWAYS, even when the roads have NEVER been labeled as Highways.
2) Mount is too easy to pop off base.Summary: Read closely. I have lived in my area for nearly 40 years. I run an emergency company that deals with residential addresses, so a GPS is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT to me. I own many, and have owned many. I don't mind paying for a great unit, but this XXL540s is NOT it. Please consider this as you compare my opinion to someone who has just purchased this as their first unit. I have lots to compare it to, and more experience using them than many that have commented here.
I know my area well, and the streets and roads that my Tomtom is showing are NOT labeled as Highways. They are not known as highways. They are streets and roads, NOT highways. My street for instance is known locally (and on every other map in existence) as _____ Road, It is a ROAD, and everyone knows it as that. Its NOT "Highway 18476". No one in my area has EVER called my street "Highway 18467". Its a short road that leads to another short road. Some of these supposed "highways" are actually DIRT ROADS not even 1/4 of a mile long!!! What's up with THAT??? Maybe thats common in other parts of the US, but not here. There were times where the street was called North State Highway 52 / Old Winston Road. I can understand a situation like that where the road is known as BOTH a road AND a Highway, but there were times in the week I owned this thing that it would refer to the road as 5 different names!!! Try to imagine a GPS saying something like "Continue North on New Business Highway 85 South / North Highway 52 South / Highway 601 / Highway......" I was thinking "What the heck??? This highway has 5 names???" By the time the GPS finished pronouncing all 5 names I had missed my turn.
I called Tomtom and the man told me that that was how the maps came, and that there was no work around. Too many roads in my area were identified as highways with mysterious numbers that I had never seen. These same roads appear on my Garmins as the roads they are called, not some mysterious state number that no human in my area knows.
When my customer says I live on "Hickory Nut Road" I want my GPS to label it as such. Its hard to navigate to a highway that no one in my area knows exists.
I also hated the mount. The unit (also like the prior tomtom) popped off the mount far too easily. I actually liked the suction cup twist mechanism better, but its in vain when the unit falls into your hand when you turn it to adjust it away from sunlight.
I returned this unit, and bought the Magellan 1700 with the 7" screen! I will give a review of it as well after a week's trial. I will not buy a Tomtom again. That was 2 different models that both had the same problems. From now on its Garmin or Magellan.
- 1 reply to this review
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I'm wondering if you can change the name of the streets. If not, you should be able to. If Tom Tom will not let you do so, maybe the company that makes the maps could tell you how to do that. They should. Many names of roads change through the years, and in the local vernacula there are many different new names.
Also, I wondered if those numbers for the roads might be the identification numbers of the US Quadrangle maps. If so, it would be nice to assign names to those numbers. This may sound like we shouldn't expect to be able to do these things. However, many programs allow you to do this sort of thing. Look at caloriecounter.com. If the product is not in their database, you may enter a new product, and just enter the nutritional values on a form, and it will be in your program.

