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| TomTom GO 920 Portable GPS Vehicle Navigator | 
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| Brand: TomTom
Category: CE
List Price: $449.95
Buy New: $295.00
You Save: $154.95 (34%)
New (25) Used (3) Refurbished (1)
Avg. Customer Rating:  82 reviews
Sales Rank: 147
Color: black
Media: Electronics
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Batteries Included: Yes
Native Resolution: 480 x 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2
Dimensions (in): 4.6 x 0.9 x 3.3
nv:Type: Receiver
Display: LCD
Expansion Slots: SD Card
Battery Life: 5 hours
Special Features: Bluetooth
Special Features: FM Modulator
Special Features: RDS-TMC traffic compatible
Special Features: 4GB internal flash memory
Special Features: Integrated Microphones And Speaker
MPN: 1M00.980
Model: 1M00.980
UPC: 636926018319
EAN: 0636926018319
ASIN: B000VLHN9E
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 GO 920 Europe Maps Incomplete June 20, 2008
I had a TOMTOM GO 910 and Greece was included in the European maps. I upgraded to GO 920 and expected improved maps. Greece was not included in their new maps compatible with GO 920. Plan to return unit. If they omit countries in their product upgrades I question their commitment to improved quality and functionality in their new products.
 Customer Service is TERRIBLE !! and that's real important with GPS units June 16, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Some months have gone by and I feel I can give an assessment based on experience of using the unit AND using their tech support & customer support.
This is the fifth GPS navigator I have owned, my first TomTom.
With most consumer electronics products the after-sale support is only important when something goes wrong; with GPS units it's also critical even when the item is functioning correctly. Mainly because of map and technical updates and the complicated nature of these feature-loaded units like the 920.
The other reviews have give lots of info on the technical aspects of TomTom devices, so I'll just say that it works reasonably well if you don't expect to use features like voice-entry and bluetooth syncing with your cell phone. I would give it a 3 out of 5 for operational performance.
It's the customer support that really brings down the score: it's horrible! First, it takes many, many days to get an answer via email. Forget about toll-free phone assistance: you'll miss at least one meal waiting for someone to answer your call.
My 920 package included a fancy certificate with computer-generated code (called "Always up to Date") that supposedly represented one year free map updates of the maps that came with your unit. That's what the certificate said, and it gave instructions how to obtain these. Problem was, it didn't work, so this initiated many email requests for technical assistance from me. First they said I had to fax them my receipt, even though this model was introduced less than a year ago and the guarantee is for one year. Okay, once that was done, the Activation Code on my certificate was apparently inoperable and the 1-year guarantee it clearly stated turned out to be 30 days. And the maps it guaranteed? only North America, not all the maps (namely, Europe) like the certificate promised.
By the time all the delayed emails had been sorted out, my 30 days was up and I was out of luck. Too late to return it to the vendor, too.
Everywhere I asked for advice while shopping for this GPS I was consistently told "Buy Garmin" !! Foolishly I ignored this advice and now I'm stuck with a so-so unit that has one-year-old maps.
Don't make my mistake; Please !! Buy Garmin
 Crazy trip time estimates June 14, 2008
All is fine with the 920 except it is horrible at estimating trip times on anything but freeways. For instance on rural highways, it estimates elapsed times based on approximately 1/2 the posted speeds!! After sending queries through their web site (which they frustratingly label "resolved" immediately), I've given up - their customer support representative was clueless.
My other GPS is an older Garmin, and even though it's screen is smaller, it is a far better navigation tool! (and cost less too!)
 Nana's Tom-Tom June 11, 2008
Took me a bit to see how it works but it was wonderful to have on my last trip back to the Midwest. Screen is easy to view, easy to navigate, I had a little difficulty with the mounting. This is a good product, my friend has one, and I was delighted when I was able to have one as I like to travel and this helps me to end up in the right place.
Not Ready For PRIMETIME June 9, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
My review is based in comparison to the Garmin 370 and Magellan 3140 GPS units.
Whil each unit that I've owned has different bells and whistles, the most important feauture is its routing and user friendliness. The 920, btw, had the latest software/internet updates installed (purchased June 2008).
1.) Based on this, the routing of the TomTom 920 is HORRENDOUS. As other users have mentioned on other sites, the TomTom 920 **loves** LEFT TURNS for some reason. Many times, when I know I need to turn right, the computer voice says to bear left to turn left. The lower left hand corner arrow points left while the larger main map is correctly drawing a right turn up ahead. It's like the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing (no pun intended, LOL). By the time you reach the intersection it corrects itself (late at that). If you're in an unfamiliar area, you'd be in the left turn lane and would need to do a u-turn somewhere based on the voice guiding you wrongly.
Other examples include going from work to home. I took a long irrational route. The 920 corrected itself accordingly as I purposely missed its instructions. And after so many corrections, the machine lost sight of guiding me home and guided me elsewhere...I don't know where, but nowhere near my home. The machine has proven easy to trick.
As I said it loves LEFT TURNS. On the highway, between exits, it says "Keep left". 5 Seconds later, "Keep left". And again "Keep Left". Mind you, it gets annoying when you're on a straight piece of highway. And it does this too many times. Much chattier than the Garmin 370 I have sitting next to it while driving comparing.
Also, sometimes the voice direction CUTS OUT in mid-sentence....i.e. "Turn right on Kirt#@&".... It does this enough times to notice it.
2.) The computer voice is HORRENDOUS. Spanish & English California city and street names are garbled to the point of not being understood at all! My wife couldn't believe the difference compared to the Garmin and Magellan units we had. Knowing that GPS units have been out for some time, it was truly surprising to me how a signature product from TomTom could be lacking so intensely in a refined voice instruction system. It was if it was a 1st generation model (which would be more forgiveable).
3.) The voice input system is HIT and MISS. With a 70%+ MISS rate, especially in the car where there's more noise. It not only gave me the wrong city to start but also garbled the name given to me. LOL. Talk about bad. My wife couldn't stop laughing at how I slowly and clearly pronounced a CA city/street name only to be given a totally wrong choice....it was like a sitcom episode. In the end, due to my frustration, I went back to typing in the names to save time. It's a waste of money to pay extra for this rather useless input feature.
4.) The amount of POIs is **sorely lacking** compared to my Garmin and Magellan units. While it's fun to download user's Starbucks or Borders POIs from their website, it doesn't make up for the fact that there's over 6 million POIs on my Garmin that can almost always guide me to a favorite store. It's truly day and night between these two units.
5.) When entering addresses, the Garmin accepts my addresses immediately and intuitively works with nearby numbers if I input correctly. But when I correctly input "1 Ferry Building" for example, the 920 can't find it/route it or offer alternatives, despite that the Garmin, Magellan, Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, Mapquest find it immediately.
6, etc)
* Other lesser things that irked me with this purchase is that it didn't come with a pleather case to protect the unit or have a wall charger (like my Garmin 370 did on both these counts).
* 10 year old streets missing (in the heart of Silicon Valley). They show up on my Garmin. Unnacceptable, since I'm NOT in the boonies, but in the tech center of the world.
* I also missed the ability to scroll around the map to get a lay of the land like Google Maps or Garmin allows you to do from the get-go (especially helpful if you want to get off the clogged freeway to find alternatives that the routing engine may not have intelligently thought of).
* The FM signal is weak! Virtually useless. Not a fault of TomTom if one knows that all devices are limited by the FCC to limit signal strength for interference purposes.
* Bluetooth only works with GSM phone units (i.e. Cingular, TMobile).
* In order to have the computer name the street names out loud, you're limited to only a "Computer Voice" which is limited to a American and UK woman. The rest of the voices won't prounounce streets. So purchasing Dennis Hopper or Mr. T to give you directions is usless as they can't pronounce street names............Now compare this to the amount of voices Garmin gives you that CAN pronounce street names--DAY & NIGHT difference!
* Traffic info. is outdated by hours and thus, largely usless.
* I disliked the offered color options of its maps (especially night, blah!). For a more knowledgeable person, this can be tweakable by going to their website and dowloading an option.....non which appealed to me aside of the Garmin color option.
* BTW, the map colors you download are apt for buggability. When changing colors on the unit, the unit sometimes would grey out (black and white) with no colors. Rebooting sometimes helped, sometimes it didn't......Sometimes, changing the screens would fix it, sometimes not. And then other times, as you're driving with a grey colorless map, the colors would eventually return to one of the stock maps that came with the unit.
* The unit has a light sensitive and sound sensitive option system. Unfortunately, it gets darker when you don't think it should or stays brighter when you'd think it should get darker. The voice is the same....it gets louder when it shouldn't and quieter when it shouldn't. So I turned both options off as they became frustratingly useless. The night option doesn't automatically come into play when the light sensitive option is taken out, so you have to do it MANUALLY! Blah! I never had this issues with my other units! Thus, you have to put up and leave the finicky light sensitivity option on to get it to go into night mode. The Garmin goes by official sunset times, and it always seemed to do it right. Why o' why doesn't Tomtom do the same thing?
* The lines drawn are JAGGED from closest to furthest zoom settings. It looks like an old Atari game for crissakes! Annoying considering how much you're paying for this unit.
* The screen washes out a little more in strong, direct sunlight than my 370 (tested at same time, same positioning side-by-side). I can still make out detail on the 370, while the 920 washes out to nearly being useless.....amazing considering the 370 has older screen technology.
* Battery is weak due to large screen.
* As others have said, menus are very deep (one screen has 8 pages) and non-intuitive. A menu redesign is in serious order.
* Size is bulky and bulges out in the middle back. Not as easy to pocket vs. the competition w/ 4.3" screens.
* Unit is rubberized. Bank on that the rubber will change colors and peel after some use. Chemistry...."It is what it is."
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Now the plusses:
+ I liked the loud voice of the unit (though it distorts at high volume). Louder than the Garmin.
+/- I like its ability to download the evolving content from the website (this is the future!!). The actual content, however, is more bells and whistles than truly functional. The POIs are good additions, but still pales to Garmin's 6M POIs. The POIs downloader is a **TIME WASTING PAIN** as it takes you to the first screen every time you download something from another screen....so if you downloaded a POI on page 10, you get sent back to page 1 and have to click thru several slow web screens to get back to the last POI download screen.
+ I like its fast calculation of routing a destination (a good speedy computer chip).
+ I like the FAST satellite lock (indoors or out). The best I have encountered!
+ I liked the sale price, especially vs the overly expensive less feature rich Garmins (though they're much more polished).
+ I liked that it had the Euro maps (the **main reason** I bought it), but will never get a chance to test it out since the unit performed so poorly in the States and thus returned.
All in all, this product has a HUUUGE feel that it was rushed to market a year early by an ambitious gun slinging product management director. The 920 has many bells and whistles, but the functionality and "common sense" of many things is lacking. This product could be refined and made better by simple tweaks....non which will probably be addressed until years later on more expensive models.
TomTom uses maps from a different maker than Garmin/Magellan. I always heard that the Garmin maps were better but I didn't want to believe it. Silly me! The difference in the States was staggering (although I hear TomTom's forte is in European maps). The longer/less rational routing algorithm that TomTom (vs. Garmin) uses is pretty bad--is this the mapmakers fault?...I don't know or care...as the unit is going back.
The ambitious bells and whistles give this product a 2* rating. Without the features, a 1* rating is validated as the performance was, YES, that atrocious. This review is objective and not emotional. I really wanted to like it/keep it. Truly!
This is my first TomTom unit. What an introduction. I'm soured on the company.
My advice is buy something else....anything but the 920.
Wake up TomTom! You can do MUCH BETTER!
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