TomTom - GO 930 Portable GPS

I originally had a TomTom 130, and I liked it well enough that I exchanged it for the top of the line model. Only to feel I got less out of this unit for the money.\ The Bluetooth hands free calling works great, the FM Transmitter is very strong and works well, IQ Routes is good, Map Share is invaluble, Dead Reckoning is great for heavily covered areas where you do not have a clear view of ths sky. Overall, this unit has an incredible amount of features for a very reasonable price (450.00 on sale), most of these features you could only find on Garmin units or other brands for 200 dollars more. It fails at a very basic level however, a basic GPS unit... now this isnt to say that it doesnt get you where you want it to, which it does. What I mean is... the screen even at 100% is too dim in bright days, you constantly have to pivot the mount to keep the display from washing out. The Speaker on the unit for directions is terrible, its okay at best around town with your windows up (at 100% volume), however rolling around 35-40 mph with the windows down and the radio up a little, and you have to start listening hard. Mind you, the TomTom 130 at just 60% volume was MORE than loud enough at 70mph with radio blasting. The menu system is just too cluttered, you have to make way too many touches to even just clear a route (5 I believe!). The Text to Speech voices are horrendous, the pronuciation is mediocre at best, and it always sounds "hurried" like someone tries to say something within a 2 second period... so it just sounds odd. Voice Command, you cant just push a button and have it run you through menus (like the garmins), where it will ask you city, state, steet, and building number... you have to --- Nagivate to>Address>Voice input... so you are still taking your hands away from the wheel to get it ready to listen to your commands. These basic cons here, is what makes me tell people to skip this unit, its the top of the line TomTom and it cannot deliver. The IQ Routing is excellent! Really a life saver in those afternoon rush hours and you need a nice clear path around it, although sometimes its off, it does a great job most of the time. Bluetooth works great! It found my iPhone and imported my contact lists! I was talking hands free in no time, and everyone I talked to said they could hear me just fine! Though, at 60-70mph, the weak speaker made it difficult for me to hear the people. Dead Reckoning (Enhanced Position Technology), works without a hitch.. I can go through a tunnel and make turns and it keeps track of me without a sat signal. Overall Routing works just fine, no complaints. Mapshare is awesome! You can make changes to your maps on the fly. Like blocking a road thats under construction... the TomTom will keep this is mind and steer you clear of that road until you unblock it. You can also upload your changes to TomTom and share it with everyone else! So you can even get some of the road changes you might not have had time to put in, or havent seen yet... this system is awesome! Technically it offers the most up to date map system of all the GPS units out there. Overall though, the "fluff" (all the cool extras) doesnt out weigh the fact that you spent 450-500 dollars on a unit that fails at most of its basic functions. Save some money, and get a TomTom 130S or 330S as they will do everything you need them to do, or look into the Garmins, which are much more expensive per feature, but Navteq maps are extremely accurate.

Not too pleased here! I have been a huge Tomtom supporter ever since I purchased the 910 a couple of years ago--I just bought the newly released 930 after owning a 910 and it doesn't match up to my older version. I was really disappointed with the screen brightness even after changing it to 100%. You cannot see the screen very well. If you plan on driving with the Tomtom attached to your windshield while the sun is out, don't depend being able to see the screen. I am going to try exchanging it to see if it is unique to just the unit I happened to get. Also, the text to speech option is not working consistently. It will sometimes blurt out the street name after I have made the turn. I waited for this unit so I could have the "newest" technology especially with the feature of the "Advanced Lane Guidance" and I am not impressed. I live in Dallas (lots of highways) and I have yet to see that feature (which is turned on) actually work or appear on my screen. I was told by Tomtom that it just depends of the area as to whether or not it will work. My opinion on that is, if that won't work in a huge Metropolitan area like Dallas, where will it work? Not to mention that my Blackberry Curve with bluetooth is NOT compatible with any of Tomtom Plus Services (i.e. weather, traffic, fuel prices, etc.), except to make calls which is touch and go. I have contacted Tomtom about my issues and they said that they could not assist me since it is such new technology and they are waiting for more feedback to come in so they can come up with troubleshooting ideas. BOTTOM LINE: I am not ready to give up on Tomtom and will try exchanging my unit for another 930 tonight. Sorry for the lengthy comment but I know how important it is to get good solid advice before purchasing, hope this helps!

Evaluated this unit for 30 days in the US and in Europe. The TomTom Go 930 simply does not perform as advertised; the product should be re-branded as DumDum. The interface is cumbersome; too many keystrokes to get to where you need to be. Claims of complete European maps (including Russia) are simply not true. But worst of all, it correctly routed us to our destination only 2 of 5 times; that's only 40%. The much touted lane identification feature is lame at best, showing the same image regardless of the actual road/exit configuration. And battery life is atrocious: 1.5 to 2 hours max. On the positive side, the FM transmitter and Bluetooth telephone connects were simple and reliable. The one instance where the detour function was employed was correct and useful. Would not recommend this unit to a friend at any price. I was happy to return it to Best Buy and pay the 15% restocking fee just to be rid of it.

I can't give it a one-star rating because it seems like a good product - just a buggy one. It gets a solid two-star. Pro: Bluetooth worked like a charm. The matching with the phone was easy enough. It took a little "playing around" to get the wireless data connection to work. Their phone list is rather limited and they're not yet up to date on the whole Cingular / AT&T merger. Pro: GPS signal strength is awesome. This thing picks up signals in placed I wouldn't have thought possible. Con: The UI has a few annoying qualities. When you go deep into the menu options, you can't back out of most. Finishing up with a screen takes you back to the main nav screen. You have to go click through a dozen menu options to go back to what you were configuring. Con: The internal speaker is only worth it if your car is somewhat quiet. It seemed loud enough when I was configuring it in my garage but when it finally hit the road, 100% was not loud enough at all. Con: Using the FM transmitter to play music and/or voice notifications is just about useless. You have to turn up your radio volume up 2x-3x and the signal is just poor. In one of my cars, there was constant static no matter which empty frequency I used. In my other car, the static was better but this let me hear the poor quality of the audio. It was like an AM radio. It had all of it's depth removed. Con: The MP3 player was designed by somebody who last looked at an MP3 player 10 years ago. I put a rather large library of songs onto an 8GB card. TomTom lets you look up by artist or genre but ultimately, it navigates you down to the folder level. You can't play an expanded playlist. You only get 1 folder at a time. Con: The screen in the sun. I had read other reviews about this and I have to say that it's true. As soon as the sun shines on the screen it looks like the screen is made of wax-paper. You can still make out some features but not much. This, combined with the low volume of the speaker makes the unit worthless at this point. Final con: The unit died 15 minutes into it's first test run. I think it had to do with the sun. In the house and garage, it worked perfect. In the car, it worked perfect until the sun hit it. At that point, it started acting strange. Every time there was a voice prompt, the screen brightness would dim. When I first saw it happening, I pulled the unit down to get a closer look at what was going on. When it was close (and in the shade), the problem didn't happen. Back into the sun it went and the flickering occurred again. Then it became progressively worse. The voice started getting "poppy". Then out of the corner of my eye I noticed a big exclamation mark on the screen. By the time I was able to give it any attention, it was gone and the unit was a brick until I hit the little reset button. When it started back up, the same problem was happening except I was inside w/out sun. Turning the volume down to 90% helped but I still hear a lot of random "computer sounds", like R2D2's younger cousin. TomTom will be going back to the store soon and hopefully a Garmin will be better.

I got this one as a replacement for my Garmin nuvi 350, which broke on me a year after I purchased it. Luckily I had the service plane (highly recommended) and I was able to get a new nav. I was hesitant to switch to TOM TOM, as I was used to the Garmin interface, but I could not argue with the features that this unit offers. The bluetooth is so easy to use, once set up it automatically connects. It has that wow factor when others are in my car. The voice commands is also very useful, for safey while driving purposes. I gave the durability rating 3 stars because it does not come with a protective case, which is a must have if you carry it around in your purse as I do. I was able to find a decent one for $20 so that the unit stays protective. It is fairly bulky to carry around when not in use, larger than my old nuvi unit. It picks up the signal faster than Garmin and has more options for finding a particual point of interest. As someone who is addicted to my nav, I would highly recommend this unit.

For a fourth generation gps navigation unit, this is a very weak effort, especially for the price. Screen not bright enough in sun. Fastest routes are not often the fastest. I can usually manually plot a quicker route. And the go930 agrees with me. Inconsistent (bugs) in route time between summary and navigation page. Example, one screen says 4hours35minutes and the other says 4hours50minutes. Map data is poor in some areas (especially New Mexico and Utah) that the unit frequently believes you have left the road. Erroneous directions. Often told to do a left or right when the road is straight ahead. Charge indicator light doesn't show differnece between charging or battery full. Battery last about two hours, NOT the fives hours in the specs.

I use 930 to locate different jobs I must get to. It works well enough but I often find detours in my way. 930 quickly recalculates and finds a way around but should have the detour planned in its routing. I have reported a detour near my home more than a week ago. I have yet to see any indication of it when I update the 930. Perhaps the least it could do would be make note of it on my unit so that trip calculations in that direction would be more accurate.

Overall great system. For the price, it comes with outstanding features like line guidance, remote, EPT etc. However, at least at this point its newest version of the operating software is a bit buggy (TTS stutters and map transition may be jerky). Currently TomTom is working on improved software, so problem should be resolved. It is need to be noted that those problems that I have listed are valid only for OS version 8.300. If you have earlier version of the software, your system will work fine. Now, lets talk about good things. IQ routes work like a charm, line guidance and static pictures also work great. In addition speaker is great and directions as well as incoming calls sound great.