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TomTom GO 300 Portable GPS Navigator with Maps of US Pre-loaded on SDdUser Review: - TomTom GO 300 is not perfect, but very goodThe product and accessories included in the retail box are all that you need, ready to GO. For the USA, you really don't need to view the enclosed CD to get GOing. The little manual is short and generally satisfactory to start using the TTG 300 right away. The bracket for holding the TTG attaches simply and securely to the windshield. The TTG can be adjusted in practically indefinite number of ways to suit the user. The suction cup attaches easily, and disconnects easily, with a nice "locking/unlocking" mechanism on the bracket. This makes it extremely portable, transfering from one vehicle to another. The graphics and voices are very clear. You can select from among a small variety of color schemes for the map, one for either day or night viewing. You already know about the many languages voices featured in the system. The on-screen menu selection is intuitive. And, if you select the wrong icon, a convenient "Back" button on the lower tab makes it easy to GO back and try again. In bright sun, the screen becomes practically useless for me, but I have some sight limitations. Still, the voice is always clear and loud enough. (I bought it for the verbal directions, anyway.) I like the pre-planning feature. You can view maps or text direction on your planned route. The TTG even will run a demo of your planned route, showing how you would travel alonmg with the same voice prompts that you would receive. Really DECENT! I consider the map reasonably good, not great. To be fair, I doubt that any company can maintain very recent updates of new or changing roads. Still, I discovered that some roads that have been in existence for several years are still not in the latest version. (Most likely this is attributable to local communities not participating fully with TomTom.) One item that is absent is that the voice command does not state what is the NAME of the road on which you should turn. It simply says either "Turn left," "Bear right." etc. Very rarely have I found the voice directions to be confusing. For example, at a 4-way intersection at which a highway route continues at a 90-degree turn, and that the direction would take you straight through the intersection, the directions instruct making a turn. It's confusing because, in fact, you should GO straight, but it seems that the system envisions you turning off the route. Only once did I come to the end of a raod at a T-intersection, and the system did not say which way to turn. No problem at that time because my sense of direction was good enough to make the correct turn. The points-of-interest (POI) are numerous. However, for the users in the USA I find that updates are less than satisfactory. It seems changes within the past two years have yet to be recognized. Also, unfortunately for us in the USA, there seems that there no 3rd party vendors that can fill the need (as is the situation in Europe). TomTom's website is decent enough. It includes a link for contacting TomTom about errors or changes. I have no idea how quickly or how often any of these such changes are updated. OK, so it's not perfect. I can state with confidence that it won't be perfect. (Read some of the other reviews for confirmation.) Still, given the limitations, ever-changing landscape and time constraints, I consider this to be very good. I read reviews of other devices that suggest that no other device is any better. I would like for more frequent and comprehensive updates, especially with POI's. User Review: - The good & bad of Tom Tom Go 300 GPSI bought a Tom Tom Go 300 a few months ago. It works as advertised 95% of the time. It almost always gets you to the right street but will usually be off by 50 or 100 yards from the specific address. It sometimes mistakes the shortest route for the fastest, guiding you through city streets when a highway via a longer route would be faster. New roads are not in the data base. Restaurants a year or two old are missing from the "points of interest" data base. When searching for the nearest gas station, it may guide you to one that closed 6 months ago. Sometimes this GPS will tell you to turn where there is no road (shows roads that don't exist) or shows a road 50 or 100 yards from where it really is, directs an illegal U-turn or a wrong-way turn on a one-way street. One reason I bought the Tom Tom Go 300 rather than Garmin C330 was the claim by a previous reviewer that with the Tom Tom Go 300 you can enter an itinerary of several addresses (e.g., if you are a sales person going to ten addresses in a city) and that the Tom Tom Go 300 will compute the shortest or fastest route to all 10 addresses. The Tom Tom Go 300 does NOT do that: You can enter an itinerary of several addresses, but it will give you directions to each of the 10 in the order you entered them, not in the order that will get you to all 10 via the shortest or fastest route. This GPS does work the minute you take it out of the box, insert the SD card, and turn it on - you have to choose your language (English, Spanish, French, etc.) but no programming required. The USA data base takes up almost all of the provided 1 GB SD card, so to load maps of Western Europe I needed to buy another 1 GB SD card. East Europe & Russia maps are not yet available for the Tom Tom, according to Tom Tom Customer Service on October 28, 2005. One advantage of the Tom Tom Go 700 is the larger capacity of the hard drive. However, I've found the amount of RAM and 200 MHz processor in the Tom Tom Go 300 quite adequate: When you don't follow its directions it computes a new route within about 5 seconds. The suction cup windshield mount works great. So does a sticky pad on the dashboard if you have a flat place to sit the GPS. The 5 hour battery life claim seems to be accurate: When traveling I take the 110-240 volt a.c. charger but don't take the car charging cord. Despite its limitations, I'm finding I no longer want to go anywhere without my Tom Tom Go 300. User Review:  - I'm sold!My husband had a Garmin GPS which he used for vacation travel and hiking, but I could never take the time to figure out how to use the thing, so I printed out my step-by-step instructions from Maps & Streets or Mapquest. And I have to admit that I put myself in danger more than once trying to read the next turns while driving. My husband likes his gadgits, so when his Garmin went kaput, he went into hyper research mode. He bought the TomTom even though his Mr. Fixit buddy repaired the Garmin. He loved the pre-loaded maps and the long battery life. He downloaded his own POI data and when he was messing around with it, he contacted user support and received good technical support within a day. I wasn't happy he bought another GPS when I wasn't thrilled with the first one, but I let him have his toy... I was converted when we had to go to a wedding of a distant relative in the NYC area. It routed us the same as Maps and Streets, but without any effort. We easily were routed to restaurants and gas stations along the way. We stayed at a secluded state campground and it even had the campground's "roads" in its database! When we came back home, several bridges were washed out from severe rain, and we easily re-routed to avoid the closed roads. Just be careful not to use the "shortest route" feature in rural areas, because you may need a 4X4! We also let our friends borrow it for a few days while they were visiting from out of town. They were skeptics too, until they used it. They know what their getting for Christmas this year! This thing is so easy to use right out of the box. I really like the feature of letting you know what turns are coming up and that it calibrates when to tell you and at what volume depending on your speed. I highly recommend this for the Mr. Gadgits and the people like me who just wants it to be easy to use right out of the box. BJ User Review: - Not ready for prime time.Jan 06 Since writing the original review, I've had more experience with this unit. Although you can't realistically expect a GPS to know all the shortcuts, the TTG 300 routing is so poor and so unpredictable that I'm going to sell it and look for another unit. On our last trip, it calculated the route from A to B one way and the return route a differnt way. Neither made a lot of sense, and unless I'm mistaken, it switched routes on us halfway back to the airport. We'd have been better off without it. Getting it to use the route *you* want is is almost impossible. -------------------- Oct '05 For in-car use, the TTG 300 is an enormous improvement in every way except for the maps. Its interface is extremely easy to use and surprisingly intuitive. It's easy to hear. You adjust the baseline volume and it varies automatically to compensate for road noise. In bright sunlight the display is adequate. In more forgiving light, the display is excellent. Unfortunately, its maps aren't all that good. It isn't just a matter of not including new neighborhoods. Some well established roads and street addresses don't seem to be in the database or aren't used in route planning. Routes can be needlessly awkward and time-consuming. If it is missing an address you need and you enter one that looks right but isn't, you can find yourself driving to a destination miles from where you want to be. Despite its shortcomings, I'm very happy with the TTG 300. I can arrive at the airport in a strange city and know that I'll get where I'm going with a minimum of wrong turns and plenty of warning when it's time to change freeway lanes. I take a paper map along, just in case. User Review: - TomTom Good Good!My husband & I purchased the TomTom just before leaving on vacation. It was terrific! It was fun watching the turns in the road - especially when we were in the mountains! Not only did it save us time finding where we wanted to go, but it probably saved us from a lot of arguments as I am not a very good navigator! We also enjoyed the feature that tells you where gas stations, restaurants, motels, etc. are. |
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