Since I have problems with short term memory, recalling directions when driving can be a real burden for me. So, when my wife purchased a TomTom ONE v3 (approx. $149) as a Christmas gift for me, I was very happy. To try it out, we used it on our trip to Virginia which we made the day after Christmas to visit her parents. To see how well the "ONE" would do compared to my wife's Garmin c550 (approx. $349), we took both devices along and ran them at the same time during the trip. At first glance, the Garmin is bulkier and not as "cool" in appearance as the TomTom. One advantage for the Garmin, however, is that it came with its own carrying pouch. The TomTom did not. Before I tell you about the "side-by-side" results, I want to tell you about my "setup" experience with the ONE.
From the point of opening the package until setup was completed, TomTom made everything an absolute chore. We had to cut the ONE out of its molded plastic packaging with heavy duty scissors. After that, I followed the setup instructions, step-by-step, and not until yesterday (January 2, 2008) was I able to create a passcode for the ONE. In addition, I had great difficulty getting either the ONE's software or TomTom's Home 2 software to recognize that I live in the United States. I had repeatedly tried to purchase accessories from TomTom for the ONE, but every price was listed in Euros instead of U.S. dollars. I finally uninstalled and reinstalled TomTom Home 2 after clearing all my temp files. This allowed me (at last) to see prices in U.S. dollars but also made me aware that I could not purchase John Cleese' voice clips. Apparently only those who live in Europe can purchase his quips for their TomTom devices.
You would think that the TomTom Home 2 software would be able to automatically determine which device I own since I had the ONE directly connected to my computer via USB, but that was not the case. I had to enter a "device code" in order for the ONE to be properly identified. Oh, and if you want technical support from TomTom, forget it. It's only by email - at least if you live in the U.S. - and even then you get quoted the same garbage that is listed in the FAQ information on the website. After a week's time and much frustration, I was finally able to have the ONE completely registered with the correct information and setup properly, no thanks to TomTom.
The Garmin was so much easier to setup that I am not going to bother commenting on it except to say that the c550 blew away the ONE in this area.
Ok, now for the side-by-side performance comparison - with both the Garmin and the TomTom given the same ending point, we headed out from our home in Pennsylvania to my parents-in-law in Virginia. My initial impression of TomTom's mapping was not favorable because it sees my home location as being one block west of my actual location. I still have not been able to rectify this error. Other than that, I would have to give both GPS devices very high marks for mapping and turn-by-turn highway directions. The TomTom does a slightly better job of directing you by telling you which lane to be in before turning instead of simply instructing you to stay to the left or to the right - like the Garmin, which is of little help if there are four lanes of traffic and they eventually split into four different directions. I also preferred the visual mapping on the TomTom to the Garmin. My wife preferred the visuals on the Garmin.
On to the POI (Points of Interest) - as TomTom calls them (restaurants, gas stations, rest stops, shopping centers, etc.) - this is where Garmin leaves TomTom in the dust. With NO exaggeration, for ALL 4 OF OUR STOPS along the route, the Garmin gave pinpoint directions to each location, while the TomTom misdirected us by 2 blocks to 3/4 of a mile for each location. In wide open rural areas, this was not such a problem, but in heavily congested areas, it made navigating a real headache. Even the new option of having Google maps send information directly to the TomTom did not help it do a better job in locating these points of interest. In trying to find one of the restaurants, the ONE directed us to go past the restaurant by another half mile.
Ok, now for the final destination - although neither device could locate the exact point of my parents-in-law's house, at least the Garmin got us to the right street and only two doors away. The TomTom became completely lost once we entered the community. It had no idea where the street, let alone the house, was located.
Here are my final marks for the TomTom ONE and the Garmin c550. The top mark is 4 
| TomTom ONE v3 | Garmin StreetPilot c550 | |
| Setup |  | |
| Highway Mapping | | |
| Verbal Instructions | | |
| Points of Interest Number of locations Accuracy in directions to POI | | |
As you can see, the Garmin c550 is a clear winner. If Garmin tweaks its verbal instructions a bit, the c550 would not receive a single demerit from me. TomTom, however, has MILES to go before it is in the same league with Garmin. The final question is, are the advantages of the Garmin worth $200 to you? Considering the amount of time I wasted on setup with the TomTom and the amount of gas and time I would have wasted using only the TomTom on our trip to Virginia, the Garmin is certainly worth the extra $200 to us. I will be donating my TomTom to a local charity and picking up a Garmin of my own ASAP.
10 comments:
I agree with you, Tom Tom one sucks! I purchased my device less than 30 days ago and I have had nothing but problems. It started about two weeks, losing its signal and yesterday it just stopped working. I moved to a metro from a small town and thought a gps would be helpful in the transformation. I have had nothing but problems with this product and would never recommend it to anyone. I am currently on hold with there customer service.... over 45 minutes. I am getting more angry with every second passing.
I have a ONE third edition and a GO 930. I've noticed big improvements with the newer models. I was satisfied with my ONE, but I can see a great improvement with the newer devices. Try checking out the 130S if you're still in the market for a basic device
Brett,
If TomTom has made improvements, I would be glad to learn of them. However, from what I have read in reviews, TomTom still severely lags Garmin in quality and reliability. I still say "no thanks" to TomTom.
Lon
I loved my Tom Tom ONE XL...until I made the huge mistake of downloading "updates" today. When I was done, the ONE couldn't find any satellites. Of course, I gave up eating minutes on my cell phone long before any customer support person answered my call. So I tried downloading an application that was supposed to help locate the satellites. The attempted link between the ONE and my phone's Bluetooth failed, and now the phone doesn't work...at all. The only slightly bright spot is that the Tom Tom was a gift, so it won't cost me anything if I throw it away...however, that won't restore my Motorola phone. I'm no tech wiz, but I'm guessing that the Tom Tom corrupted my phone's memory files, rendering it useless.
I loved my Tom Tom, which I activated a month ago, until I made the huge mistake of downloading "updates" from my PC today. When that process was completed, my Tom Tom ONE XL couldn't find any satellites. Customer "service" kept me hanging for so long that I gave up and tried to find answers online. An application called "QuickGPSFix," which was supposed to help the unit locate satellite links, and which was supposed to automatically work when the unit was attached to the PC, didn't work. But there was a second option: use a Bluetooth phone connection to download the app to the Tom Tom unit. I tried it. The first time, the download not only failed, but now my Motorola phone is fried...won't work at all, except to display a weird Motorola logo with some cryptic text below it. Eventually, I managed to link the Tom Tom to my other cell phone, which still seems to be working all right. And now the Tom Tom finds satellites, but not nearly as well as before.
Bottom line: I went today from being a fan to being another extremely dissatisfied Tom Tom customer. The Motorola RAZR is not a cheap phone, and I had a lot of photos on the now-inaccessible memory card.
Question: Why do tech people so often write software updates that screw up functional applications? Is it simply to justify their place on the payroll by attempting to improve things that already worked fine before they corrupted them with badly written updates?
Sirs:
I followed your suggested action steps! No joy! These steps included shutting down the firewall.
After several attempts at getting TomTomHome to boot up without the Go920 connected, I connected my GO920 and then – GREAT IMPROVEMENT – I, at least, received the following error message:
“TOMTOMHOME RUNTIME.EXE failed with error 0: Process failed to start up correctly. If the condition persists – reinstall”
Finally I did use another computer on our home network, which has a previously installed copy of TomTomHome. Then I was finally able to obtain updates when I initiated the action by first connecting the GO920.
Quite frankly, your response was meager at best, and I’m not a happy customer. For instance, it did not answer the obviously implied question of why I suddenly, without any other changes, was unable to get your software to work.
Another – totally unrelated - issue is the quality of your map database. Although somewhat better than the first version I had, it still doesn’t even come close to the detail, and accuracy, available on a version of Garmin’s that I have on my OLD Garmin PDA/GPS – for which updates have not been available for the last four years. I must, however, admit your European map database appears, based upon my experience, to be very good.
Van
I have a Tomtom one, what a friggin joke. I have been to the BBB, the attorney general of Mass, the NTSB, no one wants to hold these people accountable for their terrible product. I have a serious problem with their un-mechanical windshield suction cup, this friggin thing works like a set of week old pampers. Their customer service is a joke, some morons sitting there with no phone numbers for their corporate headquarters or who runs the show. I had to do a google. No satisfaction through the BBB, attorney general or NTSB. This company sucks !!!!!!!!!!!!!
I bought a Tom Tom GO 720 for a road trip this summer. We did it in a Class C RV and rarely got a signal. I assumed the large overhang was the reason it had a really hard time finding a signal. On the rare occasion it found a signal, it would never hold it. You would just have to hope it had a signal when you were about to make a turn.
I bought the unit in March 7th 2009. We finished our trip September 15th 2009.
After our trip, I tried the unit in a Ford Explorer. There is no way it should not find a signal in a Ford Explorer. There is a very clear view of the sky in that vehicle. Well, it acted the same. So now that I have internet again, I try their online support again (October 7th 2009). It did not help. They sent me a list of possible fixes that took forever to complete (testing between each possible fix).
1) soft reset
2) Download Updates
3) Download and use "Clear Flash Tool"
4) Delete and reinstall the application
5) Hard reset
Still not working, I find a customer service number on their website (866-486-6866).
After calling them, they say one more thing to try:
6) Quick GPS fix (download this every 7 days to help it find the satellites)
Found a signal that night! Maybe it worked? Next day I have go to use it in the car and it is frozen on the start up page with owner info. I try a soft reset. Problem fixed right? Well, got past the start up page, but no signal. That did not work so I call back again.
Of coarse, one more thing:
7) Format the unit (a few more hours)
This time it found a signal in about 5 minutes! Could it have worked? 30 seconds later it lost the signal. Same old TomTom that does not know where it is.
My advice to you is to send it back immediately if it does not find a signal right out of the box (My Garmin Vista hand-held units have always done that). Do not waste your time with customer service. They just hope to string you out long enough until you give up or their warranty is up. My experience with TomTom was the worst electronics purchase I have ever made.
I am uploading a video to YouTube to show you how my unit functions. Below is a link. This was taken late November on my way from Salt Lake City, UT to Steamboat Springs, CO. It took 3 1/2 hours to find a signal and then this is what happened when it found the signal.
http://eric.ewmeyer.com/mytomtomsucks
I hope you have a better experience than I do if you end up buying a Tom Tom.
Eric
Nothing but trouble. You must have High speed Internet. I'm in an area that does not have low cost high speed access. I'm not willing to shell out big bucks to have them hook me up plus two year contract. Got a TomTom one 130 as a Christmas gift went to down load updates with high speed dial up. Unit crashed and it took two weeks to get support from customer service. Then they told me to do everything I already had tried at least three times. I have invested over 24 hours of my time. I am now returning the gift to the giver which is my 22 year old daughter and her boyfriend. They are crushed that a gift could have failed and caused this much grief. The support staff at TomTom is to greedy to be of any assistance. With the time and suffering they should have sent me an upgraded product. But they are to greedy to be Human.
I'm totally frustrated over Tom Tom's failure to even carry spare parts for any unit that's out of warranty.
I started out with a Rider which I purchased in 2007, Worked fine until I purchased a map subscription and updated the operating system. Up to that point it worked with my Plantronics Bluetooth earpiece, but not after the system upgrade. I called support and spoke with a very pleasant woman to was trying to help, but the call was cut off. When I called back I got a young girl who just about hung up on me when she found out I was calling about connecting via Bluetooth to a non-TomTom device. I called a couple of days later and was lucky enough to get an extremely helpful young man who somehow managed to get the warranty extended 30 days. I sent back the Rider and got a Rider 2 in return.
The Rider 2 worked fine until I (again) renewed the map subscription a couple of months ago. Although it was paid for, it refused to copy to the unit (error message of a corrupt file). The first person I spoke with wasn't going to help because the unit was out of warranty; however, when I told her the unit was fine it was their software that was screwed up she put me on hold then came back a few minutes later and explained that their engineeers were aware of the problem and were working on it. They were SUPPOSED to notify me when the maps would correctly download. Two months and several phone calls later, I finally was able to download & install the maps (after having to establish another account).
The unit will not connect to my bike's power through the charging dock supplied with the unit. I have to make sure the internal battery is charged because it will only work work through that. After determining power was being supplied TO the dock, but not from the dock to the unit, I started looking for a new dock (TomTom sells a NON-charging dock, but not one that charges the unit). Guess what? NO PARTS, NO PLACE, NO HOW! UNLESS the unit is under warranty! The TomTom rep "understands" my frustration, though. I suppose that should make me feel better about having a $600 unit that I can't use for more than 2 hours at a time before having to charge it.
SO..... start writing letters to the CEO! I'll even save you some time:
Mr. Harold Goddijn
Chairman, Management Board and CEO
TomTom N.V.
Rembrandtplein 35
1017 CT Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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