Review
Review With an effective in-car navigation system at your side, you can say goodbye to the good old days of pulling over and asking directions. But designing an effective system, one that brings together the right mix of speed, accuracy, and simplicity has been a long, hard road for many manufacturers–leading many folks to stick with the human touch of the gas station attendant. The latest in-car GPS units deserve a serious look, though, especially by those who’ve sworn them off as too inaccurate, too complicated, and too expensive. The TomTom GO 910 embodies much of what’s really great about the next generation of systems, and in many ways it’s successful at making drivers feel as if there’s a helpful guide along [Read More...]
Buy TomTom GO 910 4-Inch Portable GPS Navigator at Amazon
First of all the good news. The display and automatic panning on the Tom Tom 910 are second to none. It is MUCH more visible than the Garmin Nuvi 350 and the automatic panning works much better. The actual mapping algorithms seemed to be approximately the same in both units neither, insofar as I was able to determine, having much of an advantage over the other. Mapping details on both units are excellent. Bright light visibility is outstanding - much better than the Nuvi.
The unit, compared to the Nuvi 350 and 360 is considerably larger and more cumbersome. Additionally, the mounting solution on the Nuvi is slightly better than that on the 910 - more compact. The voice prompts are loud, clear and timely. The ease of use is just great (with the exception of the POI implementation) and the visibility and quality of the display are great.
The bad news: POI access is cumbersome and poorly implemented. Hopefully a firmware upgrade will fix this problem in the near future. As it stands now, you cannot enter the name of the POI that you wish to go to without going through an intervening category screen made even more cumbersome by the fact that you may guess the category wrong! Then, the POIs only come up in alphabetical order or by distance. For me, this particular deficiency was the deal breaker. Selecting a POI must be as simple as possible in a AIO (all in one) GPS navigation solution. There are so many capabilities that you give up in these simplified AIO solutions that they should perform their designated functions easily and efficiently. The Nuvi does this, the 910 does not. The nuvi allows you to search POIs by name. The TomTom 910 does not.
This device is intended as an extremely simple point to point navigating AIO GPS navigation solution and is not intended to enable the use of way points or easily changing the course selected by the unit. You have essentially two options: the shortest route and the fastest route. Fortunately, the mapping program selects routs that are very acceptable. Personally, I like to look at the overall route and fiddle with it. This unit is not designed for such use. Microsoft Streets and Trips is ideal for this kind of tinkering, but terrible for point to point navigation while on the go.
Make sure and get the most recent firmware updates on the Tom Tom website which will fix the known bugs and further improve the functionality.
I give this unit a 3 star on form (compared to the elegant Nuvi), a 4 star on the functionality for which it was designed, and a 5 star on the beautiful bright display. You will not be disappointed in the beautiful display, the automatic panning, the actual map functionality or the bright light performance. But the POI solution is cumbersome and frustrating.
I love this little machine. It’s incredibly intuitive, has clear graphics, reasonable reception in Manhattan (no GPS is great with tall buildings), but it seems to konk out after a night of charging.
Have no fear! It’s not dead, just do a soft reset! Use a pin and hold the soft reset button for 5-10 seconds (the reset is not on the face, but in the hole at back where the unit connects to the base; opposite side of the gold circle, up just a little from the green strip). Apparently the battery shuts down if it’s overcharged, so if you charge it for more than a few hours it might not turn back on again. Reset it and you’ll be on the road again!
First of all let it be known that I read ALL of the reviews before writing this one of my own. I found one thing to be the common factor in each review. If you run the firmware update this GPS comes to life and will make you happy. The TomTom Home software makes this as easy as connecting it to your computer and runnng the program. The software does the rest! Remember, it’s new and many changes will come along to improve the functionality as TomTom analyzes the product and gets feedback from it’s users. Don’t be afraid to contact them to offer your input!
Next, the scores given for this GPS have been greatly reduced by customers who are unhappy with the companies they purchased it from, not in the quality and performance of the 910. Others are complaining about other TomTom GPS units and NOT the 910. If you are complaining that you paid too much then hear this—I PAID $1400.00 for the Magellan 700 when it came out two + years ago and although a good GPS, it’s now dead and had been locking up constantly for the past 6 months. Try getting a hold of Magellan support in Canada and you’ll find out how much the Canadians “like” Americans!! I have tossed the Magellan in lieu of the cost and frustration involved in repairing it. Additionally, the out of box mount was useless and $50.00 later for a windshield mount was little improvement!
Pay attention to the alignment of the suction base when you mount the 910 on the windshield and turn th lock until it clicks (just like it says in the book!) and it will stay tight. Oh ya, how many other units come with the home charger, docking station with a USB cord, a car charger and a remote control for the money you just paid? Let me help you answer that: NONE!!!
The hands free phone (Bluetooth) is great, the remote speeds up the navigation screens and if you take the time to customize the screen with all the toys they include it becomes a cockpit of information!
OK, so the moral of this review is rate the finished product, not your lousy experience with your vendor or shipping problems or your inability to follow simple instructions from the manual. Thsi GPS deserves 5 stars and nothing less.