A superior GPS with exceptional features
Pros:
Fast acquisition / re-routing, advanced features and extras. Europe and US maps. MapShare & Price
Cons:
Not as simple as Garmin and requires some practice. No included carying case.
The Bottom Line:
If you don't mind learning the features, it is the ultimate GPS. And you can find great prices on it.
|
|
Overall Rating:
|
 |
|
Author's Review
I bought this GPS to replace a Garmin 370.
The TomTom 920 is very elegant and beautifully finished with rubbery/soft-touch materials. The screen is very clear and very responsive. The box includes a bluetooth remote, a windshield-mount, and an adapter to mount it on your dashboard, a car battery charger, CD-ROM, and USB docking station. No carying case...
The 920 includes pre-installed maps for North America and all of Western Europe and most of Central Europe. The processor/memory on this unit contribute to a very fast GPS. For example, recalculating the route after missing a turn while zooming through downtown San Francisco is fast enough to be ready before the next turn. With my old GPS I had to slow down, or sometimes miss a couple of more turns while it re-routed. I also tested their feature that estimates your bearings when the GPS signal is lost, and it worked great through a long tunnel.
The list of included features is simply staggering, and may be too long to cover here. The outstanding features include the MapShare feature, allowing you to download and share map corrections. The custom voices you can download (at a fee) that may make your trip less mundane (John Cleese is a must). Custom icons, colors, points-of-interest are just some of the extras. For example, I found free night-mode color schemes to fit a lot of car interiors, so it blends with your dashboard lighting colors. I also found a free points-of-interest for cycling trails.
Bluetooth performance works great, connects fast and has stereo capability. One feature I found unique was the ability to dedicate different sounds to different connections. For example, I have my GPS instructions through the built-in-speaker while music plays through the line-out. This GPS also includes an FM transmitter so you can tune to an FM chanel (adjustable) to play the GPS sounds through your car stereo. Unlike other GPS systems, this is a full-featured MP3 player, with organization features that rival dedicated music players. It also can connect (extra cable) to your iPod and allows you to control the iPod from the touch-screen.
I am a tech-oriented person who likes gadgets and am into all these features and extras, but I did notice that all these features overwhelm the average user the first few times they use it. There is a learning curve compared to a Garmin which is simply easy to use right out of the box.
As for map accuracy, I find that Garmin and TomTom compete for the top-spot, you can't go wrong with either product. With either brand, I find the most useful feature of a portable GPS while traveling is the Points-of-Interest near you. For example, just search for a gas station near you while traveling, and the GPS will take you to the closest one, same thing for a parking garage, a hospital and so on.
I haven't used the remote yet, maybe for a larger vehicle. The 920 accepts spoken words for a new route which seems to work. It also speaks out road names, so for the most part, you can follow navigation instructions without looking at the screen.
More important to me is the ability to plan routes and stops ahead of time, so it's all programmed and ready before you get in the car. For example, I took it out of the car when we stopped for lunch on a trip with friends, we discussed our plan for the afternoon, saved a new route into the TomTom while finishing our coffee, then got back in the car ready to navigate, brilliant!
Finally, only TomTom allows you to find your locations in Google maps and save them to your GPS before your trip.
Update June 2008,
I just came back from vacation in France and the Netherlands. The TomTom 920 comes alive in Europe, parts of the screen came up that I hadn't seen before. First and foremost, I downloaded the free speed camera maps for my destinations, and they are a must-have. The GPS will make an audible ding, then flash the upcoming camera location with the expected speed for it, so you can slow down and pass safely. Accuracy was astonishing.
The other amazing feature I found was the new speed display, in the US it always displays my current speed, but in Europe, it displayed Actual/Speed Limit. So driving down the highway, it showed me the speed limit on that section and my current speed, which turned red when I was above 10kph. This was available on most major and secondary roads, only rural roads didn't have that info. It also updated for reduced speed sections.
Finally, it also received instant signals for construction zones with construction messages and the reduced speed expected. Wow, I can't wait to have such features in California. I didn't use any live data download using my phone because roaming data connections are not cheap, but I didn't need them. The pre-downloaded data was more that sufficient. If you are traveling to Europe, I simply recommend you grab one.
Update Sept. 2009
Tom Tom is now offering a yearly map subscription update. for about $48 a year, you get updates for a year. This only applies to your current region. For example, I have North America and Europe maps. My current subscription only updates US maps. If I wanted to update the European maps, that would require another subscription.
One of the best additions to my USA maps is the speed limit information. That is a feature I had commented on when I saw it on my European maps, but now they added it to the US maps. On highways and Interstates, the Tom Tom will display your speed and the speed limit on that section of road, turning it red when you are more than 6 mph more than the speed limit.
They also now have a trip planning feature where you can use their website to plan a trip and have it check traffic information on the route before saving it to your GPS.