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TomTom Go920T Review Hot

Hardware GPS

Written by admin

Monday, 28 January 2008

Page 2 of 2

Driving Tests

The TomTom could pick up our location in just under a minute indoors, but outdoors it had no problems - with the location fix being enhanced via the QuickGPS fix utility included with the device. Essentially it uses your GPRS connection to speed up the above location fix.

For navigation you have the standard directional aides placed at the bottom of the screen with the main view at the top, the directional pointer can be exchanged for an image of a car or you can add your own image if you want to.

Though the Maps are featured on a high-res screen the detail was not brilliant, with street names not appearing as frequently for our liking.

However the text-to-speech was excellent and could pronounce road names clearly, as a result you did not need to look at the maps as much when navigating around difficult roundabouts or major junctions.

As for the TMC/FM receiver we will talk about the traffic part first, as mentioned it does not require a yearly subscription, but it is based on the same software as the GPRS TMC subscription option. We found careful placement of the receiver was essential, as intermittently - during our test route - it would try and re-scan for the same station.

We were lucky enough to stumble upon a recently started traffic jam (road works), but because of this the device was not able to pick up the problem (which we did not expect it to do either). But returning to base 20 minutes later we were pleased to see it pick up the traffic we had just left (when we re-inputed the same destination).

When traffic is detected you can get the device to re-route around the problem, so though the above shows it takes a bit of time to get real-time traffic problems, it could detect local traffic as well as major traffic problems.

The FM part allows you to route your spoken directions via your cars speakers – simply tune the radio to a spare frequency and the TomTom will lock onto this. Of course your choice of spare frequencies are limited and you tend to get pirate stations interfering with reception, but the quality is not bad. But during the quite periods the interference is more noticeable, so playing around with the spare frequencies is a must.

As for the safety cameras these were detected in ample time, with visual and audio warnings available. You can also add your own text-to-speech warning to the above - which we had a right laugh with!

Multimedia

Though the hard drive is removed you still get the standard multimedia options, including an MP3 player – which can be used whilst driving, with the directions cutting in when required – an iPod control facility, Picture viewer and a Document reader.

Battery

With a claimed battery life of 5 hours, the TomTom Go920T can last a journeys worth without needing to use the car charger.

Editor review : Final thoughts

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful


Overall rating		8.5
Performance		9.0
Features		9.0
Design		8.0
Value For Money		8.0

The Go920T is a SatNav packed to the hilt with loads of features/ utilities to aid with Navigation.

For sure its TMC receiver needs proper placement to get the best from it, but it does pick up local traffic problems.

The text-to-speech was extremely useful for speaking back the road names along our test route.

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