TomTom GO 720 4.3-Inch Widescreen Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator
by TomTom
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of TomTom GO 720 4.3-Inch Widescreen Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator
Customer Review: Perfect! Excellente!
Summary: 4 Stars
- Great buy!
- If you are looking for a great, functionally rich GPS system at an exciting price. TomTom 720 is the way to go. I bought it at $357. Comparable products from Garmin/Megallan costs around $500 as of this writing.
- Basic GPS models are available starting $150 (TomTom One), so i was not very sure its worth to pay $200 more to get all these 'bells and whistles' comes with 720 (ie BlueTooth, MP3 player and FM transmitter, MapShare technology). When i ordered it, i was only 50% conviced all those options will be useful. BUT NOW that i used, i can vouch for 200% it was worth it. HERE is WHY, few examples of the functionality i successfully used
- I was looking for a store, so did a serach in the point of interst store showed up, with the details (including phone number). Wanted to find out the hours, just hot the call button, which dialed the store and spoek to the person and got the details (made possible through blue tooth technology)
- I like music, so in the last 4 week i have downloaded about 100 songs (mp3) from the web onto Tom Tom and it keep me entertained during my drives to work (i have a 30 minute commute). Made possible by MP3 player on 720
- The greatgest part of the MP3 player is i can hear the music through the car sterio system. Really beautifyl and the quality is really good. Made possible by the FM transmitter
- Real fun part is when you are following a route and mp3 player is on, your favourite songs will play between the instructions. Tom loweres the volume and read out the instructions and back to the songs again
- Also if you receive a phone call on your mobile, its tranferred to Tom Tom right away and you can pick up the call hands free. The mic is so sensitive, my 3.5 year old daughter sitting in the car seat can talk to mom through tom tom!!!!. Also call is noise free and very clear
- ANother fun part, you can download all your phone book to tom tom and to make a call just tap through the phone book entry. Cool stuff!!
- MapShare as of this writing this feature is only available in Tom Tom and this is great!. All other products will be coming with this feature near term. Idea is users worldwide contribute to improve the maps and POIs (remember wikipedia.. similar concept where users collectively bring about the best)
- It spells out the street names. This is good and really usefull. Beauty of this feature is you dont need to look at the screen and then the road to find the next street to turn.
Overall very very happy with Tom!
Customer Review: Functional and Effective
Summary: 4 Stars
Let me begin by saying, this product is a good device. It is everything I expected it to be for the money that I paid for it. When I purchased the TomTom GO 720, I knew that it was discontinued and I didn't expect it to be the best possible product on the market. That's not what I was expecting. I had been using a Garmin that my wife has. It was a tiny screen and everything was accessed through a scroll wheel and 2 buttons. This was a nice leap into updated technology.
The most significant pros are as follows: The touch screen is easy to use and understand. Even if you have giant sausage fingers, you can access all the options with relative ease. The Screen is also a great size and it's easy to read the on screen information like arrival times and current speeds. The voice-directions are also fairly clear - but you have to pick one that's not too strange. There are a few that I couldn't even fathom having as my co-pilot.
The most significant cons are these: The touch keyboard is not as nice as it could be. I find that I have to 'aim low' when I am typing and I have to take my time. Not something you can just punch in quick and head off. The other con is that if you are not connecting it to a computer at least once a week for Updates, the Tom Tom seems to forget the satellite paths and it takes a while to figure out where one might be. Once you have a signal, however, you have a hard time loosing that connection. I went camping in the middle of Northern Ontario a while ago and it even pin-pointed where I was in the middle of the woods. Pointless, I know, but at least it knew - it also even had some of the back roads to my favorite camping site. I was pretty impressed. The last con I would say is that it doesn't do Time-Zones. I feel like with it being connected to a GPS Satellite in outer space, it should know when I cross time-lines and should adjust my arrival time, if not when I cross, then as it plans the trip. This isn't a huge request and I didn't think anything of it until I started traveling on long trips all around the states. You have to go into the options and change the time manually, and that's pretty lame.
Overall, I do like the device. I didn't pay very much for it, so it was a good investment. It takes me to the places I want to go and the standard map is good enough to get me around. I have only had minor course problems with it (it takes me to the house next door to the destination), but as long as it gets me through and around the network of highways that pollutes the United States, I'm good.
Customer Review: Simply the best!
Summary: 5 Stars
So I've recently been in search of a replacement for my old Garmin c330 (which was a great entry level unit in itself), and I've finally landed on something I'm in love with - the TomTom 720. I originally bought the Navigon 7100, and all I can say about that thing is STAY AWAY!
PROS...
- The unit itself is compact and sleek, but has a massive widescreen. The mount is simple yet ingenious and the sturdiest I've seen.
- Sound is exceptionally loud and clear - and you are given several options for how to hear the unit (through the internal speaker, built in FM transmitter to your car stereo, or through the AUX output). The unit comes preloaded with several voices... sounds like just an added gimmick, but nobody likes a bitchy voice that many GPS units come with - now you can choose from several already in the unit, or download them from the internet pretty easily. Text to speech engine is pretty good on pronounciations from what I've heard so far.
- The menus are easy to navigate and pretty intuitive. The buttons are large and need only a gentle touch, the touchscreen is very responsive. The device is very highly customizable - down to being able to choose what elements are on the navigation screen or appear on the quick menus.
- MapShare is AWESOME... TomTom is really the only manufacturer that has stepped up to the plate and acknowledged the dynamic nature of the roads we all drive on. Two new rotaries have opened near my home in the past month, and I've been able to update my own maps in a matter of seconds to reflect the new traffic patterns, and broadcast the changes via MapShare. Very cool!
- When looking at a route, the refresh rate on the screen is WAY, WAY quicker than any other unit i've seen - meaning the map moves in a much more fluid manner than the garmin units i've seen, which more closely resemble a very quick slideshow. Purely aesthetic, no doubt, but it's worth nothing.
- Connecting the device to your computer is easy - the software interface is GREAT - very easy to use. (I run MacOS.)
CONS...
I have only a couple of grievances, and they are minor. One is that the unit is customizable to the point that you can easily hide main operating buttons, like the "cancel route" button, which is in kind of an akward place and is hidden by default. In addition to this quirk, I can't seem to find the full manual on the TomTom website.
All in all, a GREAT unit - i've seen many and this is the best. I LOVE IT!
Customer Review: Very Different from a Garmin
Summary: 4 Stars
After using a Garmin Nuvi 350 for a while, it finally was ready for retirement and I started looking for something new. The 720 seemed like a good way to go. Unfortunately for me, I have become fluent in Garminese so switching to Tomtom has been somewhat of a challenge.
The Garmin interface was simple and clean. This Tomtom does alot more so there are more menu choices and more clutter. For instance, if you want to cancel a route, Garmin had a STOP button on the screen. Tomtom requires you to go down 3 menu levels to cancel. Not that hard to do once you know where to go.
Garmin would tell me "In 500 feet, turn left on Main Street". Tomtom tells me the street I need to turn on sometime before but the actual command will be "After 200 yards, turn left". Different especially if you are used to something else. One good thing though is where Garmin said "turn left, then left" Tomtom says "turn left then make third left", better!
Routing seems better on the Tomtom so far. Garmin had a habit of routing me on small, winding, unlighted, hilly roads instead of main roads and highways. If you don't know better, you follow these backroads and it can be dangerous. So far, Tomtom has consistantly taken me to the highways which is one of the main reasons I left Garmin.
Now the bad. Favorites on Garmin are stored by name. When you select a favorite, you are shown the complete address as well. Tomtom by default stores a favorite by address. That doesn't help with a restaurant or store that you will never remembor or recognize the address. You can rename a favorite like "My Restaurant". Thats ok but then the actual address is hidden. There seems to be no way of displaying the real address of the favorite. As a work around I have just appended a name to the address so the name of a favorite will be something like "100 Main Street, Anytown, NY - My Restaurant". Its long,wordy, makes for an ugly favorites page but it works.
The Garmin graphics were generally higher resolution looking but that comes at a price. Garmin updates the screen approx once a second giving a jerky motion to the animation. Tomtom has more jagged graphics but it is smoother. Haven't decided which is better yet.
All in all I am pleased so far with the 720. Only time will tell but so far, it has done better with routing than the Garmin and thats what is most important in the end.
Customer Review: There has to be something better
Summary: 2 Stars
It works, but there has to be something better.
It does, mostly, navigate from one place to another. It is VERY interstate-centric. It's algorithm apparently has a strong penalty function for roads that are not limited access highways, so it pretty strongly steers you toward interstates and away from surface streets that might well be more desirable paths. On the other hand, it doesn't seem to punish routes through high traffic areas. It will run you through the middle of a busy city instead of taking the bypass even though the distances are nearly equal.
It's very hard to specify that you don't want to go the way it says. You have to find a point on the alternate route in order to force it to go the other way. Simple things, like specifying a city along the desired route, don't really work well. Example, from my home to a place 1000 miles away that I often want to go to, there are two nearly equal ways to get there. It picks the one I don't like by default. Telling it to go the other way isn't easy. If I tell it to go through a particular city it will try to run me off the highway and down to city hall. The only way to do it is to zoom in on a particular stretch of highway and put a way point exactly on the highway.
A very stupid thing about it is that it doesn't handle time zones. This device can't. That's really, really dumb. If I tell it I have to be in Chicago by 3 pm, it doesn't have sense enough to correct for the time zone change. It's going to put me in Chicago at 3 p.m. in whatever time it's set to now. If there are two things a GPS unit knows it's where it is and what time it is. From that it should be able to figure out the local time. It also should have no trouble figuring out the time at your destination. The fact that this one can't makes me want to chuck it out the window.
The internal battery lasts about six months before it croaks, and it's not replaceable without sending the thing back to the factory. Terrible.
It is pretty good at re-routing you if you ignore it, e.g. it tells you to turn right and you miss the turn, it does a good job of creating a new route based on your new position. I just wish it had a "stand down" control, so I could tell it to chill out when I pull off the road to get a bite to eat. I don't want to turn it off, I still value the map, I just want it to shut up for a bit.