TomTom GO 730’s award-winning software means 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 use voice address entry and start driving anywhere in the United States and Canada. TomTom guides you door-to-door with turn-by-turn spoken instructions, including street names. Ground-breaking new technology for the ultimate driving experience. Click to enlarge. Includes windshield mount. IQ Routes Technology gives you the fastest route every time by using actual average speeds of travel to calculate your trip rather than posted speed limits. Advanced Lane Guidance uses photorealistic images to bring even [Read More...]
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We purchased the Tomtom 730 unit about 1 week ago and really like it. We were Garmin fans but decided to give the Tomtom a try after my brother swore up and down about how well it worked. We have owned and used Magellan and Garmin GPS units.
Likes:
Voices are good
Routing is execellent
Ability to reroute around 1 road is awesome
Tomtom support is very helpful. They speak english and seem to be located within the US.
Much better software than other GPS providers.
Most accessories for the 720/920 work for the 730 including the Traffic antenna
Dislikes:
Screen washes out in sunlight - We will have to look for a sunshade
Mounting system - What were they thinking? It fell off the window twice and doesn’t even clip into the mount. Had to purchase a 3rd party mounting system (Ram mounts work)
Should come with some type of case to protect the unit.
Really wish the speeding and red light cameras were supported in the US
POI doesn’t seem to be as robust as a Garmin. Tomtoms have millions of POI but just not the stuff we normally look for such as grocery stores, etc.
We almost took the unit back because the screen washes out in sunlight without some type of sunshade. We took the 730 and compared it directly with the Garmin 770. The garmin seemed to find more points of interest around us and everything was much easier to see in direct sunlight. We finally decided to keep the Tomtom because it calculated the routes much faster and allowed us to reroute around a single road, the garmin doesn’t give you any control and reroutes the whole route which was the deal breaker for us. My wife also noted that the Garmins felt very unrefined after she had experienced a Tomtom. The Tomtom 730 is a great device but plan on spending at least 50 dollars more to purchase better accessories such as mounts, sunshades and cases.
9/30/08 5 months later
I still have a few gripes regarding this unit. The battery life is awful. When turned off, the unit will keep a charge for 4 days before it needs to be recharged by the computer adapter. The car charger does not charge the unit but instead supplements battery power. In the case of low battery, the unit will run totally off the car adapter but will not charge. I have called Tomtom two times regarding this issue and was told this behavior was normal for these types of electronics. REALLY? A co-worker has a Garmin that can go a couple of weeks turned off before it complains about a low battery.
Another complaint I have is the screen, it just wasn’t made for the Arizona sun. It washes out and becomes nigh impossible to read during the day. Sunshades help reduce the issue but it is still an issue.
I am tired of spending money on accessories just to bring the unit up to what it should have been. If I could redo this purchase, I would get a Garmin. I know they aren’t perfect either, but the Tomtom just isn’t pulling its weight for the price paid.
Since this is a newer TomTom model and I haven’t found much of anything in regards to reviews I will post some of my findings about what I liked and disliked with the unit thus far.
Likes:
- Helio: “Ocean” users can connect to this unit via Blue Tooth even though Helio was not listed as a vendor. I would imagine that means that most if not all Helio phones with blue tooth can connect. I am able to only do Hands-Free calling from the unit which is fine and the calls were very clear from the 730’s speakers. I didn’t remembers seing Helio listed as compatible so this is verification for all of you Helio “Ocean” owners.
- Voices: My wife and I thorougly enjoyed the free voice downloads, some really good ones from the TomTom community. My wife likes British voices and we found some excellent ones for her including some funny community driven/created for me, the geek, like C3P0, Daleks from Dr. Who and Stephen Hawking
Keep in mind most of these voices are Free and I wasn’t expecting that much. The voices you do need to pay for were very good if not somewhat cheesy and didn’t cost too much $6-13 US. I did like the John Cleese voice, maybe I’ll splurge.
- IQ Routing: My first thought was “Yeah right, bull@#$&” it won’t know my local short-cuts, no other GPS I have used was able to. I entered and locked in my home address and the machine began to route. It recognized I was deep inside the parking lot(No Mans Land) of the store from where I purchased the unit so I was surprised to see the unit pick up my location within about 5-10 seconds(very fast) then navigate me to the parking lot exit via a dotted line to show me that in about 200 feet I would hit the road it wanted me to be on.
Being a local in my area, I know all of the back roads and short cuts which have the least amount traffic lights, stop signs and traffic in general in my area and I was very happy to see the unit did as well. It totally detoured me around those typical boondoggles that plague drivers in the town I’m in. Keep in mind it knew the “entire” short-cut I was going to take like it read my mind, not just part of it. What it didn’t know, out-of-the-box, was that they were fixing a overpass on the route and workers had blocked the road. Since this GPS has input to note road blockages, I decided to use it when I got within 200 feet of the blockage. I clicked the appropriate road blockage icon, and the machine immediately noted the blockage and re-routed me around it. I’m assuming now that when I take this route again, should it route me this way in the future it will route me around that blockage, at least that’s what is claimed. I like the fact I can remove that blockage which I know in a few months time won’t be there anymore.
I’ll give it a few more weeks then come back to this review, just in case that was an anomaly with the short-cut. I know other short-cuts to other places I visit, we’ll see if this unit has the IQ.
- Text to Speech: Is not turned on out of the box, I read so many complaints from users who were not getting Text to Speech and realized it must just be their stupidity. You need to turn it on! I’m not sure why TomTom doesn’t just default it, I guess that’s just life. Text to speech worked great, and worked as well as any of the competing GPS models.
- Voice Address Input: Surprisingly, it actually works pretty well, though I’m not sure how much I’ll actually use it.
Dislike:
- Default Language(out of the box)on US Model: I don’t know if this was just me but I’m going to note this to users who purchase this unit(early adopters). My units default language out of the box was in German! Thankfully I knew a little German so my wife and I fumbled our way through the introductory screens and eventually got screen that listed a bunch of countries. Someone with less aptitude with the German language might be extremely annoyed by this and could be frustrated. Was this a fluke? I hope TomTom notes this review and double checks their US machines are defaulting as English.
As I use the GPS more over the coming weeks I’ll add more findings, especially once I start using it on the highway.
Overall, I really like the 730. However, I ended up returning mine to Circuit City and biting the 15% restock fee because of a few serious flaws (see cons section).
Pros:
- Extremely fast interface response. You tap a button on the screen, and it switches screens instantly.
- Very fast routing. A 15 mile trip with many streets takes about 1 second to calculate the fastest route using IQ Routes mode.
- High quality; both the over-all feel of it and visually.
- MapShare. MapShare is great and I use it all the time. If a road was recently renamed, closed, the speed limit changed, etc, I could instantly correct the map while driving and share the changes with other TomTom users.
- Tons of features! Hands-free calling through Bluetooth cell phones, FM transmitter, MapShare, IQ Routes, iPod control, etc.
Cons:
- My main complaint and the reason I returned the 730 was because it would freeze while in hibernate mode about once a week. It never froze when “on”, only when it was “off” (which is really hibernate/sleep mode). The power button would do nothing to turn it back on. I had to use a paper clip to hit the hard-reset button to start it back up. Maybe I just had a lemon unit. If not, hopefully a software update will fix it in the future.
- The second reason I couldn’t keep the 730 was because it was hard to see the screen on sunny days. The screen could be a little brighter, but I think the main problem was the screen itself. I would see a reflection of myself on the screen during the day, even when the unit was on.
- The computer software (TomTom Home) that connects the TomTom to your Mac or PC is horrible. It crashes all the time, is slow, has a strange interface, and is pretty limited. You cannot plan routes on your PC in a real app and load it into your TomTom. You have to use the “Control my TomTom” feature to do this, but that is just seeing the TomTom’s little screen on your PC and using the normal TomTom controls.
- FM transmitter is weak. While I’ve never seen a good FM transmitter, TomTom messed it up with a firmware update. It was a lot stronger in the same place all the time, and with the firmware upgrade, it made the signal weaker.
- Hands-free control of the TomTom is useless to me because you have to interact with the TomTom with your fingers just to start it, and even while speaking commands to it.
- Last, but not least: when upgrading the maps on the 730, you loose all your MapShare corrections. For some reason, TomTom keeps specific MapShare corrections tied directly to the specific version of the map. This doesn’t make sense to me, and seems to defeat the purpose a little.
Conclusion:
A great product that has a lot of potential. If your unit doesn’t freeze and you don’t mind seeing your reflection in the screen, I would recommend the TomTom 730.