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TomTom GO 720 ON THE ROAD - PROS AND CONS

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PROS AND CONS - COMPARED :


1. Fortes : Smooth map display, quick POI/address search, alternate route menus, setting a via point for an town (Garmin forces you to choose a street), quick POI recording, an informative route list that shows the towns you will be crossing, to highlight its main fortes.



2. Unfortunately the ETA problems seen on the previous generations of the US models remain with a 25% overstatement in some cases (very annoying on long trips, ok in town) and as a result it chooses routes that don't always make sense. Oddly enough the Mio H610 that uses the same TeleAtlas maps doesn't have that ETA problem.
   
   UPDATE - more trips and more problems, a Sunnyvale to Monterey trip comes up at 1h49' on the 720 for an 81 mile trip via the 101 and 1h51 for a 73 mile trop via CA-17 the better route unless you drive a large truck. The garmin 680 and iNav v3 suggest that same 73 mile route for respectively and 1h20 and 1h22'. The Navigon 7100 suggests the 81 mile route in 1h33' and blocking 101 the 73 mile route in 1h28. The actual travel time was 1h20, so the overestimate by TomTom is 30' for a 1h20' route, i.e. 40% !
   
   While some may think this is a detail, I've found over the years that the best assistance I get from a GPS system, other than the route to get to my destination, is the time it will take me to get there, barring any incidents. The 720 fails in this respect.



3. Being a "tourist" here, I'm finding myself using POIs a lot more than I do in Europe and while the search feature is convenient, it lacks a lot of POIs compared to the Mio or the Garmin 680 (the Garmin searches slowly though).



4. Using the SD card : unlike the other TomTom unit with built-in flash and and an SD Slot, the ONE v3 and XL, the SD slot can be used to store maps and MP3s (place in \mp3 folder)



5. Voice recognition : (not available in the US at least with my test model) it works ok, can't say I find it very useful since you still have to press a key to get the process going, you might as well type the address the directly. I would rather have a remote control like on the 910



6. 720t vs 680 : if I had to choose I'd pick the 680, in spite of its shortcomings compared to the 720 (mostly the graphical guidance), for its better ETA and also because the MSN Traffic feature with the "flow" data is quite accurate. TomTom has not announced any plans to support traffic information via RDS in the US at this point.



7. Plugin compatibility : Roussillat has explained that there was little hope that his plugins would work as TomTom has once again changed its code and have stated that there were no plans for a new SDK.



8. 720 vs 910 : those who own a 910 and don't have GPS reception problems can probably pass on the 720 at this point especially with the v7 update being planned for the fall. The 720 feels like a glorified ONE XL, that also lacks a holder with connections (power, audio, antenna, TMC), a powerful loudspeaker and a remote

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Smith said they get about 80,000 requests a day for corrections or additions

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Originally posted by RedRover1

But isn't that what people do when they report the errors now to TeleAtlas and NAVTEQ? I don't think the data coming out of MapShare will be of the type that TeleAtlas could/would want to drop into their database without verification.

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