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TomTom GO 920 Portable GPS Vehicle Navigator ReviewEdited 10/5/2008I've had a chance to use the 920 for about 6 months of heavy use and here's an update to my prior review:
1) Mapshare really works. It's great to get updates from users all over the country. What a great idea.
2) Map updates have refined the product over time. I got the 920 when it came with the original 920 maps. Mine had the 1 year map guarantee, so I have now gotten about 3-4 map upgrades (I forget the exact #) and with each update the maps have improved. The application has also improved. The latest 920 app and maps include Lane Assist and Intelligent Routing which come standard on the 930.
Lane assist is like Reality View on Navigons. You get a very nice highway view with clearly delineated flashing lanes that tell you which lanes to stay in. So, if you are on a 5 lane highway and you should stay in any of the 3 left lanes, Lane Assist will clearly show you that.
I have not had a chance to compare the IQ Routes to non-IQ routes as I just figured out how to turn IQ routes off in order to do the comparison yesterday; but the new routes have served me very well in terms of minimizing time. IQ Routes take traffic data from different times and days that are accumulated in a data base and use that to predict the best route. This isn't very intuitive to me, since I would think that the Traffic function would do that better; but maybe this works best for situations where there are no traffic sensors or you can't access the Traffic features.
3) Cell Phone Traffic. Let's you connect the TT920 to your cell phone (mine is Sprint) and downloads traffic in near realtime. I have noticed lately, with the latest mapset, that it is predicting delays, when in fact there aren't any; but don't know if that's because the traffic conditions are changing and there were delays. It is certainly possible because I find that this occurs in construction zones. It might also be a function of IQ routes. I need to investigate this further now that I can turn IQ routes off.
Biggest complaints:
Because of the primitive data entry interface described below, I have found the need to use my cellphone's GPS function to locate POI's and addresses, and then use the TT for routing on many occassions. This is so absolutely ridiculous for such an expensive and premium device in other ways. It's really a shame that TT can't / won't address these issues.
1) You need to know the something about your POI before you can search for it, so you need to enter the city, or the route first. You can't just search for Grand Canyon; you need to know it's in Arizona.
2) Brain dead address entry. This is where Magellan and Garmin are worlds ahead of TomTom. There are millions of address of the form ##A### such as 12W234 and these can't be entered into a TomTom. You won't be able to navigate to these locations; you'll need to know a cross street, perhaps, but how would you know that? Why can't they fix this?
3) Need to know a City to enter an address. Again, an absolutely dumb idea. In suburban areas, a street can pass through multiple communities. Needing to know the City to enter an address makes no sense. Both Magellan and Garmin figured that out years ago.
So, while TT has evolved in many positive ways, it is still very primitive in the way it handles some basic navigation data entry.
Edited 2/14/2008 TT Home reported a new European Map available for the TT920. So, in the process of downloading this I have some interesting observations.
1) A distinct TT advantage, and one I really hadn't thought much about since my 920 is only a few months old, is that Map Updates are downloadable. With Garmin you have to order a DVD. For my i5 it took weeks for the DVD to arrive.
2) But even more interesting than that is that the new Euro maps would not fit on my TT920. It said I needed to delete 110MB to free up enough space, but I didn't have 110MB of stuff to delete. So, now I thought I had a real problem. What I found out is that there is a feature in the TT920 that neither my Garmin 360 or Magellan 4250 have.
Specifically, I put in a blank 8GB SDHC card into the TT. I selected removable drive from TThome. I then downloaded the update to the TT DOWNLOAD folder on the HDD of my PC.
I then formatted the 8GB card to 4GB while it was inside the TT. I then went to Files on My Computer and ADDED the new Euro Map to the 4GB SD card. I copied the contents of the 4GB SD card to my HDD. I then removed the SD card from the TT and reformatted it to 8GB on my PC. I then copied the the contents on my HDD that I copied from the 4GB card to the 8GB card and inserted the 8GB card into the TT
3) At this point, TT920 recognizes Guam, North America and Western and Central Europe.
4) The real impact here is that I can hold 10GB of maps between the internal and removable flash. This is great news. On my Garmin 360, for example, if the North America maps exceed 2 GB, then you have to split the installation of Upper Canada and Lower 48 US. You can't just switch between them, you have to reload the maps. On the i5, I can drag and drop upper and lower maps, but again, can't have both on at the same time.
5) So, the SD cards on the two Garmins I have really serve no purpose for mapping and navigation, whereas on TT the SD card can be an extension of the internal memory. What a great design.
As you are probably aware, with the release of the 2008 maps, Many Garmin units ran short of internal memory to handle the larger maps, requiring the splitting of Upper and Lower north america. This is far less likely to happen on TT920's. SD cards on the Magellan are for backup only and custom POI's.
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Edited 2/9/2008 The i5 refurb is now $99. The Nuvi 360 is going for $249. Prices are dropping and this is very good!
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edited 2/7/08
Well, there is a serious problem with the TTx20's. This may be enough to take them off of your short list. I am debating what to do here. The situation has to do with address numbers. TT does fine with an address in the form of, say, nnn street address. Like 414 Janes Street. What it can't handle is any street number that has something OTHER THAN A NUMBER in it, like 55N123 Anystreet, Anytown, CO. There is no way to enter 55N123, because all you can enter are NUMBERS, not the letter "N". Now this might not be so bad, but I'd guess there are millions of addresses that either have a special character, like a hyphen "-" or a letter N, S, E, W, embedded in the street number.
Both the Garmins and Magellans referenced above, can handle the forms of address numbers that have alpha+numeric combinations. Others who have reported this to TomTom say that the problem is known, but there is no indication as to when or even if TT plans on fixing it.
So, if the TT920 didn't have that nifty Bluetooth Traffic feature, I would go with the Garmin i3... or the Magellan 4250. I can buy 4 i3's or 1.6 4250's for the price of 1 TT920. I should note that the TT720 has the same feature, but I got the TT920 for just about the same price as a TT720. The price has now gone up $90 on the 920 in the last 30 days.=======================================================================
ORIGINAL REVIEW
During a recent illness I think I read nearly every review of the most popular GPS's on the market. I also have had the chance to use
Garmin i5, 200, 360, 550, 680.
Magellan 4050, 4250
TomTom 720, 920
Navigon 2100t
I bought the i5 for my daughter, the 200 for my mother, and the 920 for me. Different markets, different needs.
After reading all reviews and using these products I have concluded that there is a cult-like following for GPS's. There's the Garmin, TOMTOM and Magellan Cults. Probably the Mio, Sony, HP and other cults that I am not following as well. They will banter and chatter on the relative merits and demerits of the various technologies. In the end, the following summarizes my analysis of the comments and products. Note that for the most part when you look at the distribution of Positive and Negative comments, there is almost always a plurality of positive comments for all units. I attribute some of this to the Cult-Status of GPS's
1) They **all** produce goofy routes at times, but overall work about the same. If you had the choice of either having any one of these or not having anything, I'd take any of them. One needs to acquaint ones self with the manual in order to get all of the value out of the products. They all do some things in arcane ways, at times, so it may not be obvious how to make it do what you want it to do. Even the easy to learn Nuvi's have some cryptic functionality.
2) None of the maps are 100% accurate, but all are pretty good. I don't see a big difference between products based on Navteq and TeleAtlas maps, considering all the chatter that is written about Navteq being better than TeleAtlas. There are probably differences in maps, algorithms, routing engines, etc. that all play a part in determining the optimal route, but they all do pretty good on average and badly at times.
3) The best value for a basic GPS is the GARMIN i3 which can be had for $100 refurbed with 1 yr Garmin warranty. The i5 is about $130, also a great deal. If you have expensive nails (ladies) it's nice because it has a touch wheel instead of touch screen. It also runs on 2-AA batteries... slick.
4) For simplicity, the Garmin 200 series is great. Rechargeable, Garmin Lock, nice form factor, fits in pocket or purse. Handy when leaving car with a...Read more›TomTom GO 920 Portable GPS Vehicle Navigator OverviewTomTom's award-winning software and innovative features mean ground-breaking new technology for the ultimate driving experience. Switch on and go right out of the box. Just enter the address on the touchscreen or with voice prompted address entry and start driving anywhere in the US, Canada or Europe. TomTom guides you door-to-door with turn-by-turn spoken instructions, including street names. TomTom has the most accurate maps. With TomTom MapShare technology you can instantly modify street names, street direction, and POIs on your own device. Branded points of interest and optional daily fuel prices service add even more efficiency to your travels. The GO 920 makes driving even safer with hands-free calling. And now, there are added safety features so you can easily access local emergency providers.
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