TomTom Go 730

I love the device. Great feature set and features are easily mastered. Problems: battery life, and my refurb'ed unit has some back light issues that have only just started presenting themselves.… Sometimes the unit just appears to turn off, but it is the back light dropping. Mostly, it flickers and returns, that is how I figured out it was the backlight. I have a tom tom one from father's day, that I have used. I like this device and its mount better. All these new devices are better than the old trimble GPS unit I used to survey with, fifty pounds of equipment to get a point within a yard! I wanted the 730 because it could play music. It will need an SD card to store the music, but playback is good and the interface is okay. Better than some cheap mp3 players by far. Battery life is an issue when using music or bluetooth, so you'll need to have the adapter plugged in for those features for any length of time. Without using any bluetooth or mp3 playback, only using routing or just displaying current location, I can easily drive an hour and use only half of the battery reserve. Using any BT or MP3 seems to burn thru the whole battery in less than half an hour. But my device is a refurb, YMMV. Some have mentioned that the current map offer wasn't available for their refurbs, and that was my experience as well. Tom Tom should figure out some other way of making profits than trying to sell map updates. Nominal fees at most. And they should really refurb a unit before reselling it. I would also like to see weather on one of these devices. If they can get traffic, they should be able to get a radar stream and temps. I'd give it another star if the battery life was better and the refurb didn't have backlight issues. For where I live and commute the map updates aren't that big a deal to me. But if I was regularly traveling outside my home counties, I would drop the rating by a star. Maybe two stars if I wasn't satisfied with the update after purchase. See, that is thing about buying map updates, an update is not guaranteed to be current, just more current. The maps I have on the unit now are not completely current for the time frame they were released. My work involves developing mapping software (not tied to any particular GPS device), so be it disclosed. We have had problems with commercial maps not being as current as our customers needed. So this isn't a matter limited to Tom Tom by any means. I don't know the source of Tom Tom's base maps. Clint

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Coming off of a horrible experience with a Garmin Nuvi over a series of months, I was despairing that a GPS unit could actually handle the overlapping/stacked freeways of Houston. The nuvi more often than… not had no idea where I was on the road- whether I'd missed an exit, was on or not on an access road, etc. I grew to dread the "recalculating" announcement so much that I traded it in for this TomTom. And now, I am happy with my GPS device. The most important thing is that the TomTom is precise enough to know which road I am on when they overlap or run parallel. It updates quickly when I miss a turn or change direction. It hasn't gotten me lost a single time since I bought it. And it's actually pretty fun to use! I love the Map Corrections option, as I've entered a few of my own and made use of corrections by others. I also love being able to create and download point of interest maps. The TomTom Home software is easy to use and lets you sample fun things like new voices and icons before installing them. The voices are easy to understand and the screen easy to see- and I LOVE the lane guidance- a feature you can only get in much more expensive, newer garmins. On the many multi-lane roads in Houston it's so nice to know where I should be. The "stay in the left lane" (for example) announcement has made me a calmer driver on many occasions. A bit of advice- before doing any major map upgrade, do a backup with the TT Home software. It's just a good idea, though I haven't needed to revert to a backup yet. (Do be aware though that doing a map upgrade for some reason erases your saved locations, which is easy to fix by just dragging them back to the TT if you have a backup, but a big pain of you didn't back up.) A great buy at the price currently listed here- and far superior to Garmins worth many hundreds of dollars more. I had no problems getting TomTom to provide me with the latest map (came out 15 days after I got this) for free. I just took a screen capture of my Amazon order page and sent it to them via the form on their website! p.s. buy a Dash mount. They make life easier, as there's not a GPS unit I've tried that stays on the windshield well.

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TomTom is without any doubt the WORSE GPS unit/ Customer service / Warranty service of ANY GPS manufacturer. My first TomTom the on/off switch was so flimsy it would turn the unit on by itself while it… was sitting in the car or on a desk. TomTom finally replaced that one under warranty, but the reconditioned repair they sent runs out of battery power after 45 minutes without being plugged in. When turned off fully charged, the battery will be completely dead within a week WITHOUT the unit being turned on. I called TomTom customer service, and their warranty department tells me they WILL NOT WARRANTY REPLACE a GPS unit that runs at least 30 minutes under battery power. Also, they told me it was normal for their GPS units to run the battery down within a week WHILE TURNED OFF, and will only replace it under warranty if the battery dies completely within 2-3 days while the unit is turned off. To recap, TomTom warranty says a fully charged battery only lasts 30 minutes, and a fully charged battery will die after 2-3 days with the TomTom GPS TURNED OFF. So, if you want to be like me and have a hundred dollar paperweight after purchasing it only 10 months ago, buy this GPS for yourself, or even as a gift! Otherwise, I would avoid this manufacturers products entirely. Arthur Penrose p.s. TomTom customer service, if you are reading this, my case number for the facts in this review is 091006-000350. I would not want anyone to think I was making any of this up.

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