TomTom ONE XL-S 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator
by TomTom
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List Price: Our Price: $45.00 You Save: $304.95 (87%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: GPS or Navigation System See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of TomTom ONE XL-S 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator
Customer Review: Good device for the price
Summary: 4 Stars
Having previously owned a Garmin iQue1600 (GPS/PDA) I have a little experience with how a GPS should work and what they should be able to do. The TomTom One XL-S impressed me as soon as I turned it on with how quickly it locked onto the satelites even in the house.
The wider screen is deffinatley worth the extra you pay for it; as is the text-speech. I love the options for choosing different colours for the maps, and having a separate setting for the night display. The TomTom is a huge advance in when and how often it gives spoken directions compared to my older Garmin. My wife would never use the older one because she couldn't figure out when to turn without taking her eyes off the road to look at the map, which you can not do in heavy traffic. With the way the TomTom repeated directions it was easy to navigate without even looking at the screen. A quick glance at the screen was all that was needed to confirm you were turning in the right place.
3 drawbacks to the TomTom:
1) They offer multiple different voices for download from their website. But with the text-speech you can only have the one that came with the system as there is not enough memory to download and added a second.
2) TomTom advertises the most up-to-date roads; my estate has been here about 4 years and is not on the map
3) The 2 resturants I tried getting directions too while on vacation, it failed. When the TomTom said I had reached my destination I could see the resturants anywhere in sight.
Customer Review: Returned it.
Summary: 2 Stars
I got this as a Christmas Gift. I returned this item. I am a Mac user and found the Mac software was poorly designed and trailing far behind the windows software in features. The Mac software crashed 3 times. I borrowed a friends windows laptop and was finally able to get to the free map software update feature. It was not updated because the unit already had current maps (I question this -- there is a thirty day limit on free maps -- what are the chances a new map will be available 30 days after Christmas?). A lot of work to find that out! However, the software updated some features of the unit and the voice part completely stopped working. Restored from backup and it was fixed. Reapplied updates and the voice broke again. Restored from backup again. Unit came with nearly full memory - might be related to problem. This is a UK manufactured item. All items for cost (such as maps etc) are in british pounds. I'm sure that the brits might be used to looking at prices in US dollars ( don't know), but be assured that the reverse is in no way true. TomTom has come on strong in the US market, but I think these guys are not serious enough about this market, and they are having a bit of a problem with SW quality control. I predict they will loose the US market because of a lack of attention to detail. Maps in my area (southern california) are out of date. Tried to route me over a 50 ft deep drainage ditch where there is no street, never has been. Next I will try the Garmin Nuvi 650 at the same price. I'll let you know.Customer Review: Fills my needs
Summary: 4 Stars
This is my first GPS unit of any kind. Overall, I am very please with how well it works. Having it for just a month now, I am still exploring its capabilities. I had heard of problems with GPS if you don't follow its directions, but have seen none of that. If I choose a different route, say, around a traffic problem, than the one suggested, it just recalculates and shows me the way. The one thing that I can downgrade the unit on is the text to speech. While it is helpful about 80% of the time, it does have a tendency to mangle the street names. If the name is a straight up name, it has no problem. But, sometimes it destroys the name. It's a good thing that you can glance at the screen and see the written name. Without that as a backup, there are times that I would not have known what it was talking about. An example would be the street name "Pacifica". The other day I got what sounded like "pa-fee-ka". And when I drive a little north of here, it destroys the word "Sacramento". But these are really minor things and I would not say that it is a problem.
Overall, I would have to rate this unit very high. I drive around finding address every day and this little thing has saved me a lot of time. I have gotten to the point that I don't even think about where I'm going, I just let TomTom take me there. It's never wrong
TomTom ONE XL-S 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator
Customer Review: Nice but watch 7.161 update
Summary: 4 Stars
Got this unit for my wife. Tried it out today going to work and back--about 30 min each way. My first car GPS experience. Impressive. The pronunciation of some street names was poor, as I expected, but most were understandable. The worst aspect of my TomTom XL-S experience was the attempted software update. The unit came with 7.14 software, I installed the TomTom HOME client on my iMac and dutifully installed the 7.161 update that was detected. Reboot the TomTom - no sound. No voices, no beeps, no nothing. Called support, they lead me through a hard reset (paperclip in hole near SD slot for 6 secs), soft reset ("Reset to factory/default settings" icon). The only sound that I heard during this process was the initial drum sound right at the beginning of the boot. Otherwise, still silent as a mouse. They had me download version 6.5xx and install. Blinking red X, at boot time, failed boot. The tech seemed ready to give up, I suggested I try to revert to the 7.14 backup I made (TT HOME prompts you to backup before installing an upgrade). Using TT HOME, I deleted the Main application on the unit and restored from backup to version 7.14. Success! All sounds came back. Thanks goodness I backed up when prompted!
Who knows if I'll ever get to experience the (reportedly minor) improvements of 7.161 -- I'm going to let that sleeping dog lie. I'll wait til the next version comes out before trying another update. 3 hours of troubleshooting is enough.
Customer Review: Very Pleased
Summary: 5 Stars
I had debated which unit to purchase but am very pleased with the XL-S. I was using it in 30 seconds out of the box. I never once had to look at the directions (although, I do work with computers for a living). I love how it gives plenty of warning before a turn and different views of the route so you can review it ahead of time. If you don't like the route you can have it figure an alternate.
Some have complained about no external volume control. There is no need for one. A simple touch on the left-hand corner of the screen gives you a volume control slider bar you adjust interactively while it says something; nothing external to get dirty or break.
Also, someone complained they could not get updates without paying for them. There simply may not have been any new updates to the maps from the time they purchased. I live in the US and all the US and Canada were preloaded. No purchase necessary.
I love all the extras too, like restaurants, gas stations, hospitals and many other points of interest. Although, my wife drives me a little nuts because it also shows exactly how fast I'm going. The screen also has plenty of extra info, like ETA that changes dynamically with speed, time traveling, distance ... etc.
I was sorry to read some have apparently had mechanical problems. I guess you can get a lemon with anything. Mines been great right out of the box. I highly recommend it!