930T is an excellent unit

This is my first Tomtom unit. Touch screen. Voice recognition. I was looking for the latest unit to buy (Garmin 880 had not come out yet) but I did look at the 880's specs. The 880 did not cover Europe with maps which the Tomtom 930T did and the 880 might be a decent unit overall but I did not like the fact that its price was twice that of TomTom's unit. The maps can be displayed either in 2D or 3D but I've found I like the 3D the best.

The 930 and 930T are only different by the traffic cable. It is a cable that plugs into the unit and allows you to receive RDS-TMC. I did an initial review of the unit on Crutchfield's website right after I first bought it. Now that I've had a lot more experience with the unit, my opinion has not changed much though there are improvements that Tomtom could make to the unit.

IQ routes are dynamite. Very accurate. I find myself using the unit constantly for daily trips to stores in order to find the fastest routes. The unit has a decent boot up time but I still want to see it turn on faster. It takes around a 1 minute to turn on from a completely off condition. I would like to see this improved to 15 secs or less. However, it is faster than any other unit I've come across. Again, I have not tried an 880 yet as I have not seen them in my local stores for comparison.

Once the unit is up and running, the software is very easy to use and very quick to move through the various screens. The more you use the unit, the easier it is to find your way around so don't be discouraged when you first start using it.

The touchscreen is perfect to use. It is not overly or insufficiently sensitive and it responds perfect when selecting menu options.

If you tap on the screen, the navigate feature quickly allows you to type in the address, POI (point of interest), cross streets (intersection of main streets), favorites, or recent destinations to get you on your way quickly.

The unit has blue tooth capability and connected quickly and easily with my Motorola RAZR phone.

The unit has a built in FM transmitter that will allow it to connect wirelessly to a radio. The frequency of the radio station can be set on the tomtom 930 unit but it is somewhat hidden in the software. The FM transmitter worked well when talking to my radio but when I went to drive it from my Creative Zen MP3 player, there was no gain even at maximum output of my MP3 player to send my music through the Tomtom unit to my car's radio. It is possible that the cable I used to connect my MP3 player to my Tomtom unit was very poor quality so I purchased a second cable which I have not tested yet. If the first cable was poor quality, it would have caused this issue. An improve would be for Tomtom to allow an adjustable gain or preamp for the mp3 player input. Nonetheless, this is secondary to why I bought this unit and that is the map functions, routing, etc are all extremely accurate.

The traffic feature takes some time to connect to local stations that transmit this information and I have not run into any accident/traffic situations where this functionality was exercised. I did run into a situation where I was driving towards a severe weather condition (bad storm) and the unit picked up the warning to my surprise on this service. That was actually quite neat.

I was able to record my own voice and use it instead of the canned voices on the unit or the free ones you can download from their website. You can also purchase ones from the website but I'm too cheap to do so.

There is a way to create map overlays say for bike trails or Great America, or even convention centers for that matter but my first attempt did not prove successful. When I was at Great America getting lost in the theme park, I kept wishing that I had been successful in getting that function to work. Tomtom has instructions on its website to do this but those instructions need improvement as far as I'm concerned.

I was also able to create my own icon instead of that dreaded "arrow" they default with on many units. I have spongebobsquare pants, WallE, and a number of other characters that I created with Window's default paint program found in the start/program/accessories/ path of Windows XP. Then I create a jpg file and transfer it to the unit using the TomtomGo software. You have to set the pixel count exactly to what their website instruction says and also make the background of the image/picture that you are using red. This can all be done using the Microsoft Window's paint program.

I strongly recommend the $14.95 gas station price subscription that can be purchased off of TomTom's website. It is well worth the money and at high gas prices, this subscription can easily pay for the cost of the entire Tomtom930 unit over time plus the subscription if you own a nice low MPG gas burning SUV like I do. You can download prices for regular, mid-octane, and high-octane fuel. You will need to either connect your unit to your computer daily for the latest updates or if you have a bluetooth phone with a data connection, you can download the prices through the data connection right to your Tomtom unit. Also, you can buy the 930 unit and use the traffic subscription service of the data connection instead of the RDS-RMC traffic antenna service. I do not have the data connection so I could not evaluate this but Tomtom's website states that it is capable of both methods.

The unit has a latest map guarantee. This can be accessed via the "Tom Tom Home" software menu pick: tools/Use latest map guarantee. This will get you the newest map especially if they released a map after you just purchased the unit. This happened to me and they did provide my unit with the latest map through their software.

So far, my battery life is around 4 hours per charge. That's with the screen saver turned off and the unit on constantly. Traffic subscription needed for RDS-TMC antenna. Interesting that the service for the US is included in the "TomTom Traffic Europe - 1 year subscription". Be cautious with the antenna connector. The overall connector has a wider plastic ring, a smaller ring, and then the gold plug. The small ring has to push up into the unit to get the gold plug to hit the circuit in the unit. You have to use more force to get it up there. It is not obvious especially if you think you could break the flipsy cable with any force.

A remote comes with the unit and can be situated on your steering wheel to navigate the unit. The unit also has voice recognition but I have not tried that functionality yet as I like to listen to music when I drive.

Suction mounts do not work well when car is hot. Substitute with velcro but be careful that the glue of the velcro can handle the heat and the cold as well for that matter. Purchase cheap screen protection (Walmart, etc sells this stuff) to cover the touch screen and prevent scratches. Unit could be made thinner as well but the size is not too bad. Also, they need to allow the battery to be accessed so that it can be replaced.4 hours per charge is not bad, but it could be much better and having the ability to swap batteries could help until they improve the battery time.

All in all, this is a dynamite unit, worth every penny I spent on it. This is as unbiased review as I can provide. I'm not hired by any company to write this. I'm merely a very satisfied customer of Tom Tom and user of this device. Take the time to look at other units and compare. Prices and features change. Time of ownership has been now one month.