GPS Devices Life

TomTom go 3rd edition - Tomtom ONE 3RD EDITION Europe GPS Receiver tom tom one 3rd edition is excellent. All GPS units work well on the highway when you just want to be shown the ne...

Tomtom ONE 3RD EDITION Europe GPS Receiver Product 1N01.010 Key FeaturesDesignationOutdoorForm FactorFixedMap capabilitiesIn...

I had the misfortune to spend a day with one of these gizmos awhile back. It belongs to my Son in law. It was one of the more unpleasant experiences I have had with a GPS unit and I have been using GPS gear (both civilian and military) for many years now. The Tomtom ONE taught me that sometimes it’s just better to be lost than to have a GPS unit. But we’ll get to that in a bit; first, some general information:

The Tomtom ONE is a small, lightweight and portable vehicular GPS navigation unit. It features a bright 3.5″ color touchscreen display with a small built-in Lithium Ion battery. The battery is pretty light duty and though the advertised life is 2 hours we were only getting 1 hour or less during bright daytime operation. Do not plan on operating a Tomtom ONE for long periods off the power cable.

Also included in the package is a car mount with a windshield suction cup, a USB car charger cable and a standard USB cable. The USB connection on the device is a mini-B, identical to those found on many modern cell phones. This means you can charge the Tomtom ONE with your Motorola Razr wall charger, for instance, or even by plugging it into your computer.

I should note here that suction cup windshield mounts are illegal in California so if you elect to use it anyway and end up doing hard time in Folsom … Well, don’t blame me. Fortunately, or in this case, unfortunately, there is a selection of alternative mounts available to keep California drivers out of the big house. Whether any of them will keep California drivers from long and unnecessary wanderings over wilderness roads is something else entirely.

While the unit was plugged in and operating and sending us on multiple wild goose chases, I did find some very positive traits. First of all the screen is very bright and easy to read. Yeah, it is small, so you will probably need your reading glasses, but you can see it even on bright sunny days. Satellite reception was excellent, anywhere in the vehicle pretty much. My old Garmin unit is sort of fussy and likes to be right up under the windshield to pick up the faint GPS signals. (GPS signals arrive from several low-orbit satellites and a couple of high-orbit geosynchronous birds. The signal level is very low power.) But we passed the Tomtom back and forth from the front seat to the back of the Nissan Titan Crew Cab to see if anybody could talk some sense into it. Nobody could, but the thing had great satellite reception the entire time no matter where in the cab of the truck it was positioned.

Another good feature of the Tomtom was that map redraws were very fast. You could zoom in or out almost instantaneously, unlike my old Garmin which takes a second to redraw.

Of course, when the thing zooms in it never zooms to where you want! Time after time I would get the general area that I wanted to zoom in on centered on the screen. Then I would use my finger to zoom in. EVERY time I did it zoomed in on the wrong spot. So I would have to zoom out a bit, move the map to recenter, zoom again, and then AGAIN have to pan over because the damned thing would NOT zoom to the center. This all happens very quickly due to the almost instantaneous redraws, but having to repeatedly pan to see the part of the map you want is needlessly aggavating. That behavior alone would prevent me from owning a Tomtom ONE.

Once you DO get it set to show the desired location, the Tomtom gives you a bright and readable portrayal of the street level map. Your position on the map is indicated by a moving arrow that seems to keep up accurately both in terms of position and heading. When set into navigation mode the view switches to a 3D perspective you can zoom in or out on, and in this instance the zoom does stay centered around your path of travel. What it does not do is stay at the zoom level you select. No matter what you do, the Tomtom ONE insists on zooming back in to the default setting. You cannot force the device to stay at the level you select.

Also, the Tomtom ONE doesn’t do text to speech. That means it doesn’t tell you the name of the street or highway you are about to turn on. The voice prompts only tell you the distance and direction of the turn. You have to read the display to see the street name.

“NOW,” you ask, “what is so bad about the Tomtom ONE that makes you despise it so?”

This was a couple of weeks ago. I had gone with my two Sons-in-Law on a Saturday road trip from Ridgecrest, CA to a place up in the Tehachapi Mountains called Bear Valley Springs. One of the guys bought a used Quadrunner from a fellow up there and we were going to pick it up. Then the plan was to continue over the mountains and down into Bakersfield for lunch followed by a visit to Costco to pick up some coffee and other supplies. Now, as long as I have lived here in California I had never even heard of Bear Valley Springs. It turns out to be a gated development nestled in the Tehachapi Mountains southwest of here.

Turns out there is NO really good way to get to Bear Valley Springs unless you have a helicopter. You have to take CA-58 through Tehachapi and exit at the 202 West to a tangled knot of country roads and winding streets that lead there. Try this: in Google Maps enter your starting location as Ridgecrest, CA and your destination as Arrow Ct, Tehachapi, Kern, California 93561, United States (not where we actually went, but close enough for illustration) and tell Google to give you the directions. You will see 19 waypoints and 18 turns to get to Arrow Court from Ridgecrest. THAT way does get you there. But for some reason the Tomtom ONE routed us over a FIRE road in the mountains and led us on a wild goose chase that would not end. No matter what, the Tomtom insisted that we turn around and go back to the spot on the road with the big forest service gate with the big forest service lock! We ended up calling my daughter on the cell and got her to guide us back on the right road using Google.

Finally, turning the navigation feature off and just using the map itself we were able to get to the right place and pick up the quad. But we made a big mistake then. I had figured that my SIL had gooned it somehow when he put in the original destination, so I went ahead and programmed the Bakersfield Costco in as our new destination and had the Tomtom ONE route us there. Well, the Tomtom did just that. Over a road that turned out, again, to be closed. But this time it routed us down almost 20 miles of back mountain road before we got to the permanently closed gate! I almost threw the SOB out the truck window and I am not talking about my Son In Law! I was so PO’d! That piece of junk cost us over 3 hours of wasted running around in the mountains going down blind alleys over non-existent roads. Total crap!

Try it yourself. Route yourself from Arrow CT in Tehachapi to the Bakersfield Costco in Google. Now, try the same route using the Tomtom ONE and see what you get.

Yeah, there is a road - it looks like it might work, too. Moreover, it is a beatiful, twisty, road that takes forever to travel. On the way you will see the majestic heads of serene deer and powerful elk. You will also get a good look at their majestic asses on the way out because that road is permanently closed.

Well, we never did make it to Bakersfield. Tired and angry we decided to just head back through Tehachapi, stopping at a restaurant there to eat. To its credit, the Tomtom ONE was able to find the restaurant and guide us there successfully, which is something, I suppose. Still, who wants a GPS that lets you down when the going gets tough? Not me. I wouldn’t trust the Tomtom ONE anywhere in rough terrain with multiple road choices. If I am going to pay for a GPS device I want it to route me logically and reliably every time. I do not want one that makes me worry about its ability to discern between a good road and a forest service dead end. So the Tomtom ONE is not for me. I would not recommend it to anyone for anything other than rudimentary freeway navigation or travel in heavily populated areas. Anyplace else, get a Garmin or a Magellan. Remember, the GPS unit you select might have to be relied upon sometime to get you or your family through tough terrain. Instead of minor annoyance, as was the case with us, treacherous weather could turn it into a matter of life and death very quickly. I think the behavior of the Tomtom demonstrated that it is not suitable for vehicular navigation in mountainous terrain and may actually prove dangerous under certain circumstances.

As I said before, sometimes it is just better to be lost than to have a GPS Nav system sending you miles out of your way. The Tomtom ONE earns one star only and is a definite NOT RECOMMENDED.

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Tags: Garmin, gps device, gps unit, Magellan, Tomtom