TomTom GO 700 Portable GPS Navigation with Hands-Free Calling Review
November 6th, 2009
TomTom GO 700 Portable GPS Navigation with Hands-Free Calling Review from Jacob Samuel Salamon. Excellent interface, mediocre performace, buy the 300 instead, The TomTom Go700 is great! I own a Garmin c330 (also phenomenal product), but this one is equipped with excellent new features that keep it bleeding-edge car navigation.
First off, the Bluetooth connectivity makes this product a winner in itself. The phone calls are crystal-clear with my Ericsson T637. Callers also say they can hear me perfectly. The connectivity is awesome, plus with web access on your mobile, you can collect current weather and traffic data from TomTom. The voices are loud and clear, and the 3D navigation outperforms the Garmin.
Navigation-wise, the product is also awesome. Route planning is easy and intuitive. If you don’t like a certain route, you can select alternate routes on-the-fly. You can select from a large number of route views (text only, map, both, etc.), and route demos can be sped up or slowed down (unlike c330).
Other awesome features include tips and tutorials for learning the intracacies of the product. You can also download new voices to the device (such as John Cleese) for added customizability. This is so much fun! The features go on and on….
All in all, this is a significant improvement over the Garmin c330. It adds all the functions I wished were available on the Garmin. This is so greatly customizable and easy-to-use. I consider it the Mac version of GPS car navigation.
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One week later…
After owning the product for a week, I decided to return it. I had a few issues with the unit powering up; I needed to reset it several times. I also found a few annoyances with looking up points of interest. Unlike the Garmin, you must first select a category before searching for a POI. This made it impossible to search for Dry Cleaners, Banks, and many other very necessary locations!
Map data is also a bit outdated. Entering my office address didn’t work on the unit. It only registered a certain range of “house” numbers, with mine not being one of them. TomTom also uses TeleAtlas maps, which (in my opinion) are not as nice as Garmin’s NAVTEQ ones. They both work, but I find usability easier and more efficient on the Garmin.
Also, reading cell phone text messages via the unit was practically useless. Messages were encoded with a string of strange text before the actual body of the message.
Many fun features (such as Traffic & new POI’s) are not yet available in the US, either. This product is a little bit of everything rolled into one. It’s a really cool unit, with tons of features, but I think it’s a bit flawed. I hope TomTom continues to support many of the features it advertses (Weather, Traffic, Voices, etc.).
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For the price of a few printed maps you can own this model GPS. It is extremely easy to use. You must have a computer if you are going to update maps. For those who travel a lot and would rather choose a place that you like to eat rather than stop at the first place you happen to pass by, this provides a solution. I love it so much I have bought this version for myself and larger models for my wife and mother.