TomTom ONE XL 4.3-Inch Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator by TomTom
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Digital camera reviews of TomTom ONE XL 4.3-Inch Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator
Digital camera Review: Bought as a gift
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought this for my boyfriend as a Christmas gift because he had been wanting a GPS for awhile. I couldn't have gotten a better product for the price! It's works great. The only downfall is that a lot of the newer construction in our area is not on there or the street names are missing, but that's all excusable for the great price!Digital camera Review: Brilliant 4 stars out of 5
Summary: 4 Stars
Worked like a charm on my recent trip down Chesapeake Bay...except did not find St Mary's College, neither St. Mary's City!
Very handy concerning distance, time of arrival etc.
Does not show North, but that's what we have the sun or the moon for...
Love the big bright screen and day and night settings.
Digital camera Review: Business Owner
Summary: 3 Stars
Having used a Garmin Street Pilot from a car rental agency and observed my son's Acura TSX unit (Alpine), I am disappointed in the TomTom ONE XL unit. While others announce the name of the next street/ave/freeway that you will be turning on, the TomTom does not. Here in the Seattle area it has frequently been confused and offered bad directions, once instructing me to turn left into a swamp. The English names for roads is "interesting". Rather than refering to freeways/expressways, the term used is "motorways". Similarly, rather than round-abouts it says rotaries. Oh well... Finally, the menu structure is not always intuitive, rather, quite the opposite.
I now have it and guess I'll have to live with it. Wish I'd bought a Garmin!
Digital camera Review: Can't live without it. A good no nonsense GPS system
Summary: 4 Stars
This is my first portable navigation device so I don't have any experience to compare this product with, but I have to say that I love it! We've been testing this for about a week now and it has always got us to our destination without any problems.
The Tomtom One XL came charged right out of the box. The first thing I did was to take a quick look at the manual. I have to say that the manual could be much improved. It really only tells you the basics and does not go into much details. It took me the best part of 2 to 3 hours figuring out how to get the most of my Tomtom by basically playing around with it myself. Tomtom home (The user interface website) could be a little more user friendly too.
Anyway, backing up the device was the first thing I did, then I set up my PIN to prevent others form using it.
Now for the real test. I installed it in our car. The ball and joint on the windshield holder is stiff, but I am guessing that it was necessary to do this because of the weight of the One XL, to prevent it from drooping when the car is in motion. The Screen does not shake when the car was in motion. It was easy to install and you knwo when it's on correctly because you will hear a little pop sound. The suction pad stayed firm it has not fallen off once. It was easy to take off too.
The screen size is perfect. We have a minivan and there is quite a bit of distance between driver and screen. The big screen came in real handy for when we needed to view it. It was also great for when we need to use the touch screen. No fat fingering problems. The screen was bright with many different color schemes to choose from, the information was informative, no clutter. Even the speed of the car on the screen was accurate to the mile. The User interface is also great. I have read from other comments that there are too many screens for the user to go through, but that didn't bother me. There is an option to view all options or minimize the options menu. Problem solved. You can choose from the type of keyboard QWERTY or alphabetical, to different voices (Anything from British to Chinese), auto volume based on drivers speed, auto zoom in/out map, night/day mode, you could flip the screen upside down and it has the ability to filter out/edit POI's.
Now to the main reason for buying a GPS. How did it perform in getting us to our destination?
It was never confused, it got us to our destination everytime. (We live in MA). There were times it would give us a different route to what we normally would take but I think this was because it was calculating the shortest route, not necessarily the most practical. In other words it may tell us to take a right turn into a side road to get to a "Road A" instead of us continuing on until the next block, then taking a right turn to get to "Road A". (Which was the easier route). We also noticed that one of the road names on the screen was incorrect even though the actual route highlighted on the screen was correct. And I'm pretty sure that stretch of road had not had it's name changed for years. Maybe in this instance, the lack of text to speech was a positive thing, as the voice direction with incorrect street name would have confused a driver.
One feature I did like was when there were going to be quick turns in succession, the Tomtom would give the driver a heads up. "Take the right exit then keep left and turn left".
The recalculation of an alternate route was fast, under 5 seconds for a 13 mile trip, and with me deliberatley taking the wrong route and going on roads I've never driven on before, it was quick to recalculate a new route. I found the accuracy of our location to be VERY accurate. It knew exactly where we were. I read about the problems that some users were having with the Tele Atlas maps, but those issues were with the previous Tomtom One models. The One XL comes with the latest 2007 maps already installed within the GPS. (No SD memory card required). And you can check your map version via Tomtom Home. I think the latest map version for the US is 675.
Overall, this is a great GPS and would recommend it to anyone. I give it 4 stars and not 5 only because of the lack of text to speech. But, in the end it became a non factor because the voice directions were good enough and the street names and route are clearly labelled on the screen if you ever need it.
9/10/07 Update: I've read some reviews referring to the amount of time it takes to acquire a signal. I had a similar problem. After some research I found that TomTom recommend that you open TomTom home and run the Quick GPS Fix. They recommend you do this once a week. In the beginning it was slow acquiring a signal, and to turn on the TomTom indoors it would never be able to get any signal. But as soon as I started running the Quick GPS fix from TomTom home it finds signals really quick after turning it on and also it has a pretty good signal strength when I am indoors too.
Finally, after a couple of months use the GPS has made 1 mistake in terms of not getting us to the destination at first attempt. It took us to a dead end where the road stopped due to rail road tracks. The map thought that we should have been able to cross the tracks but in actuality we could not. We had to take a left then a right to cross the tracks. I sent the update to Teleatlas (The map provider to TomTom), for update and they said that they will notify me when the update is made in their database, which may take a few months.
For the most part when we are travelling to a unfamilar area we have been comparing the route to GOOGLE maps. I have found that in many cases the directions differ a little but the time and distance is pretty much similar. Most of the differences seem to be which Exit to take on the highway. If we find that Google has a significantly better route because it is easier with less turns, we just overide the planned route that TomTom has and take the exit that Google has and let TomTom take us to the destination from there.
Digital camera Review: Caveat Emptor
Summary: 1 Stars
TomTom XL lasted 9 months. As one number on the serial number had rubbed off and I didn't have my sales slip..... Tom Tom customer service disposed of me even though I had registered on line. DON'T BUY TOM TOM ANYTHING!!!
This is not Apple Computer you're dealing with here.