TomTom GO 740 Live 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable Live Internet Connected GPS Navigator by TomTom
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Digital camera reviews of TomTom GO 740 Live 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable Live Internet Connected GPS Navigator
Digital camera Review: Avoid Tom Tom--especially if you need Hawaii
Summary: 1 Stars
Tom Tom does not support it's product. After living in Hawai'i - we vacationed on the mainland USA and the Tom Tom could not make the conversion. It died on us the second day there as it took forever searching for the routes. When we called tech support- they said that it had gone 6 months past their one year warranty so they could not do anything. We stated we would pay for repairs...they would not even take it to look at it. PLUS-- IT DOESN"T WORK IN HAWAI'I. Many of the addresses in Hawai'i have a dash in the number. The TomTom does not recognize it so, you are always guessing the closest intersection to where you need to be. Their maps are not updated, so with all of the construction going on -- the TomTom still takes you the long way around.Digital camera Review: Avoid TomTom at all costs. They will NOT be a good vendor.
Summary: 1 Stars
** Please skip to end for an important update. 2009/01/06 **
This is a great product with lots of potential. Unlike a lot of the other Navigation devices out there, this one will actually intelligently route you around traffic issues -- and it works, I used it on a long Labor Day trip recently and it cut 15 minutes off of my trip each way.
There are a few bugs in the product. It will reboot itself occasionally for no reason. That didn't bother me as I expect a future update will fix it. A really annoying thing, though, is how map updating works. If you update the base map, it will wipe out all of your favorites and saved Home address, etc. At least, that's what it did for me. It seems to store these in the same directory on the device as the base map and when it swaps maps it just blows all of that away. This was particularly annoying for me as I had spent an hour or two manually inputing my favorites from my old Garmin Nuvi into the thing, only to have them wiped out after I updated the map.
Also, updating the map broke the live traffic updates on the unit. It said that my subscription had expired, which was a false error. It turns out that TomTom's software has a bug when updating to at least the 835 map in that it zeroes out two very important files on the device - traffic.dat and tmccodes.dat. Both of these files contain information that is required for the traffic service to function. After waiting a day or two for a reply from the clueless TomTom customer service department, I decided to just fix it myself. I learned that the two files in question are fine in the downloaded copy of the map. It is only when the map is installed to the device by the HOME software that the two data files become corrupt. I was eventually able to unzip the map update on my computer, find the two uncorrupted .dat files, and copy them over to the unit. After a reboot, traffic magically started working again!.
Anyway, I would give this device itself a 4 star rating, but I can't rate it 4 stars overall because TomTom's customer service is very very poor. Beware. If you need to ask them anything they will take over a week to reply to you. I think they have outsourced their customer service to a cheap shop somewhere. Also beware of their "30 day map guarantee". The guarantee only covers the map that comes with the device. The map that came with my device was over 4 months old and I had to purchase the newer one because their guarantee only covers updating the existing map (doing a diff). You MUST purchase the newer map in order to qualify for their map update service that updates your map every quarter. It's kind of dodgy.
[EDIT: I have now had the 740 GO LIVE for several months and it has won me over. TomTom released a new firmware for it as well as updated maps and they installed fine and preserved the traffic and favourites. I also have not had any reboots recently. The only thing that still annoys me is that the unit doesn't have a setting to power on when it receives power. This makes it extremely annoying to use as a fixed device in a car. It will power off when the power goes away, if you set it to do so, but no power on option. TomTom support are just as useless as ever, as well. ]
[Second EDIT: I have had the 740 GO LIVE for almost four months now and I have swung back to the disappointed category. One of the features I liked about the TomTom GO 740 LIVE was that it had an automatically updating Safety Camera database. This is the thing that will warn you when a red light camera or SPEED camera is nearby. Please don't judge the fact that I am wanting this feature. If you live in the Phoenix metro area, you will understand how frustrating it is to have constantly changing speed limits due to construction and cameras around to zap you if you don't notice the new speed limit. Anyway, that WAS a major feature I wanted when buying this thing. Well, a couple of weeks ago, TomTom BROKE that service in the USA. They say they don't support it any longer. Full stop. That's it, tough, sorry. That is the worst treatment I have ever had from a vendor for a device this expensive. They just decided one day to take a feature away. They didn't even bother to NOTIFY the current owners that it was going to go away. They just... BROKE it. BUYER BEWARE with anything TomTom!!]
Digital camera Review: Awesome routing and maps - so-so hardware and UI
Summary: 3 Stars
I'll vouch for the reviewers who say Tomtom has muddy looking screen, mushy touch, horrid UI that takes 5 clicks to get anywhere, the unit resets itself on occasion, etc. I was formerly a owner of a Tomtom Go 720 which I updated to enable IQ Routes and absolutely loved it, it was like driving with a local that knew all the shortcuts around heavy traffic areas. Well that broke (my fault) and on advice of almost everyone I got a Garmin (1490T) Hardware and UI wise the Garmin is a Rolls Royce compared to the Tomtom. Plus everyone said the maps were more accurate and it had faster routing. Well that simply wasn't true, the maps were inaccurate telling me to make left hand turns on main artery that hasn't allowed left hand turns since before I was born. It would take you the long way around to get the destinations and it was stubborn about re-routing. The Tomtom on the other hand has the awesome IQ Routes as I mentioned above, if I'm driving in an area I'm familiar with the Tomtom would take me the way I would go without it. The Garmin would take me into rush hour traffic. Plus I'm currently using my 3 month free subscription to Live services. You can tap the screen and see all the traffic delays on your route and it's automatically always checking for faster routes, it will pop-up say say "We found a route that's 15mins faster" Very cool.Digital camera Review: Best Travel Companion
Summary: 5 Stars
My recent purchase of the Tom Tom GO 740 is one of my smartest purchases ever. This GPS was ready to use out of the box and I love the voice command features. I travel alone quite a bit so I don't have someone to look at a map while I'm driving. The clear turn instructions are wonderful although I must admit sometimes annoying as they are repeated a little too much for me. Otherwise, great product and keeping it updated online is a cinch.Digital camera Review: Better Traffic Than Garmin
Summary: 4 Stars
[Edit 12/7/10: This will be my last update. I've since switched to an Android phone. Google Navigation Beta is so much better at traffic than what either TomTom or Garmin can do it's not even funny. It's possibly even better than the Dash was. The only complaint is it offers very little customization, but that seems to be the trend in GPS software.]
[Edit 9/11/10: I've put four update edits below, but I'm putting this one at the top because it's important, and overrides much of what is written below. With a software change made in either August or September, TomTom offers two new features. First, it's much easier to switch between 2D and 3D, and you can turn on/off auto-zoom for each. This allows it to work much more like the Dash Express, where you could easily switch between zoomed and wide views by having 2D a wide view and 3D a zoomed view. The second change is it's now much better at showing traffic, both in the expanded 2D view, and in a pop up window you can get to by hitting the bottom right of the screen (which shows traffic on your entire trip). This allows you to see traffic in your area better, and make your own decisions on whether to re-route for traffic. While I'm not particularly crazy about the color schemes chosen (e.g. the default route color with no traffic is red rather than green), with these changes the 740 Live is possibly even better at traffic than the Dash Express, and clearly better than the Garmin I returned as explained below. Still, the annoyances in the 4th edit below remain, and those are significant annoyances. That they improved traffic though leave hope they will fix those annoyances some day.]
I'm a prior user of a Dash Express GPS, that I replaced because it started acting up. My first choice to replace it was a Garmin 755T. That was a disaster. Not only is the touchscreen on some of those models very bad, but the traffic service was simply not very good compared to the Dash Express. It didn't give you enough information about what was going on, and when it gave you information about local conditions, it was often wrong.
Starting from the point of time of taking the device out of the box, the TomTom software (TomTom Home) to update the device is much better than the Garmin software, which often leaves you wondering what if anything it's doing, and if additional user input is needed. That said, despite the superior TomTom software, I still have not been able to figure out whether I have the latest maps. I'm fairly certain they were not updated as part of the initial process. [Note: They were not.]
Access to the live data from the GPS either had a several hour delay, or required that you actually set up your TomTom account on line. Either way, my first trip out I didn't have access to any of the live services, or traffic.
As to traffic, the TomTom is much better than Garmin at letting you know what's going on. Both show you how many minutes of delay you have due to traffic, but the TomTom is better at showing you where the delay is, and giving you the choice of avoiding that area. Also, the TomTom seems to be better at automatically rerouting you (with your permission) when traffic appears during your trip. It isn't as good as the Dash Express at showing you the traffic for the entire region, but it is reasonably good at showing you traffic along your route. Also, the Garmin needs to be plugged in to show traffic information, and since the traffic service is free, you get on line coupons on your GPS display (Shop at Sears!). The TomTom will cost you $10 a month after the first three months, which is the same monthly cost as what the Dash Express was. The difference is, TomTom and DashExpress give you two way communications, so you can search Google or Yahoo respectively, where the Garmin 755T only gives you inbound traffic information.
As to traffic, TomTom's IQ Routing apparently routes you different routes at different times of day, based on historical traffic patterns. You get this service even without the subscription or access to live data. I have not been able to verify how well that works just yet.
One of the things I didn't like about the Garmin 755T is that it didn't allow much customization of the device. If anything, the TomTom is actually worse in that regard. Apparently there is a way to turn off Autozoom on the TomTom, but I haven't figured that out yet. There are relatively few other choices. One I do like though is you can turn off the pronunciations of street names. That leaves text to speech turned on for highway exits, and major highways, but turns text to speech off at the street level. Locally the street signs are not big enough to be able to read them very far away, so having them pronounced is not that useful. Also, the TomTom's pronunciation of street names, especially "native American" names, is not as good as the Garmin, so it's better to have it off. [Note: I-405 is pronounce "four west five."]
One of the best features is voice recognition. It's actually amazingly accurate for a device that doesn't require any training. A main problem though is entering the street name. Apparently because a street name can be either a name or a number, it can have a hard time understanding. Thus, it often cannot pick up "275th Street," no matter how you say it, but it can pick up the house number 1325. Where it has trouble understanding, there is a button to hit to manually enter the item. Voice recognition is also good for other things, like ending the routing, zooming out the map, etc. You do have to hit a screen button before giving the commands, because otherwise it might respond to conversation within the car. It would be nice if it simply had a key word, such as TomTom, to activate the VR. To use voice recognition, you have to use a GPS voice that will pronounce street names. At first that seemed strange to me, but the VR does have to ask you questions, so apparently it needs the additional vocabulary. If you couldn't turn off the pronunciation of street names, that would be somewhat annoying.
Another difference between the Garmin and TomTom is the TomTom has a lot more exits covered with their lane assist type feature, where each gives you a graphical representation of the exit you're approaching. I would say that locally (Seattle) they have maybe 5-10 times as many exits covered. Overall TomTom is much better guiding you to what lane you need, even without the lane assist type feature.
Routing is so far very good. Better than either the Garmin 755T (which was worse than other Garmin products I've used) or the Dash Express. It does seem to prefer local streets a bit more than the Garmin, and a lot more than the Dash Express, but they are actually typically ways you would go anyway.
The screen leaves a bit to be desired. The mapping detail is less than on Garmin products (but more than the Dash Express). There's a lot of wasted/useless information. For example, I don't need a graphic representation of satellite strength displayed all the time, and I don't need to know that if it's 7:40, and I'm scheduled to arrive at 7:50, that I will be there in 10 minutes. [Note: The Sat. strength disappeared with the 9/10 update.] Don't get me wrong, having the time of day is nice, but I can do the math for the 10 minute calculation. The Garmin unit allowed more customization as to what is displayed than the TomTom. Also TomTom does seem to know the speed limit in fewer locations than Garmin, and the Garmin seems to update your speed more frequently. Surprisingly, the TomTom seems to read a slightly faster speed overall.
The TomTom's anti-theft feature is just an optional icon reminding you to remove the device when you turn it off. The Garmin 755T allows you to lock the device, but with the bad touchscreen that feature is useless because it can lock your device until you return home. If you were on an extended trip, that could be disaster. The TomTom does not automatically turn off when disconnected from power, or turn on when connected.
Overall the edge clearly goes to the TomTom, and it would even if the 755T I received didn't have a defective touchscreen. The traffic feature is worthwhile on the TomTom, while of questionable use on the Garmin. Routing is slightly better on the TomTom, but that alone would not be a reason to pick one over the other.
Edit: A few points after having used it a while. 1. I knew it didn't typically tell you what side of the street your destination is on, but I had no idea how annoying that would be. 2. Related to that, when you arrive at your destination, it doesn't display the address on the screen for very long, making it even harder to find your destination. 3. The voice recognition continues to work fairly well, with the exceptions of street names, especially street names that are numbers. 4. I've had some sort of an odd glitch that I haven't figured out, navigating to favorites. I'm not sure if it's just when I use voice recognition to call it up, or when I deviate from the route, but it seems to sometimes so some place entirely different than the favorite it was navigating to.
2nd Edit: The glitch navigating to favorites only occurs when using voice recognition to select it. It seemingly selects the right place, and then takes you to another place. More disturbing is that today I downloaded map updates and software updates. It wiped out all my favorites, home, etc. Since I did both types of updates at the same time I don't know which did it, but I'll be very reluctant to download another map update again, and totally lost interest in their plan where you can buy a year's worth of updates at the same time. Still more disturbing is the routing seemingly got worse with the updates, but I've only taken one trip so perhaps that was a glitch.
3rd Edit: The routing has changed, but some of it for the better. I've only run into the one instance where it was worse.
4th Edit: I've now owned this for several months, and two things really bother me. First, most of the time where there's a freeway "exit only" lane, it warns you to stay on the main road. That is totally unnecessary and very annoying, and impossible to turn off. Hopefully a software fix will fix this, but in the meantime it means I drive with the volume very low so it's not as annoying. One thing you can't fix is where there are such exits, it won't tell you on the screen the distance to the exit you actually need to be taking.
The other thin that bothers me is that the Garmin method of inputting an address is far superior. With Garmin you can select "Any city," the house number and the street number, and then you'll get choices from there. With TomTom you have to select the city and the precise street (e.g. 3rd Ave. S, not just 3rd). That make inputting addresses a lot slower. Perhaps if you lived in a larger state, like California, the Garmin system wouldn't work as well, but in a state like Washington, Garmin is far superior.