TomTom GO 930 4.3-Inch Widescreen Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator
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TomTom’s award-winning software means ground-breaking new technology for the ultimate driving experience. Switch on and go right out of the box. Just enter the address on the touchscreen or use voice address entry and start driving anywhere in the US or Canada. TomTom guides you door-to-door with turn-by-turn spoken instructions, including street names. TomTom has the most accurate maps and with TomTom Map Share technology you can instantly modify street names, street direction, and POIs on your own device. New IQ Routes gives you the fastest route every time by using actual average speeds of travel to calculate your trip rather than posted speed limits. Enhanced Positioning Technology gives you uninterrupted navigation even in tunnels or highly built-up areas. And now, Advanced Lane Guidance brings even more clarity to complex multi-lane exits so you can be even more confident on the road. The GO 930 makes driving even safer with handsfree calling. And with the Help Me! menu, there are added safety features so you can easily access local emergency providers. The TomTom GO 930 is the ultimate car navigator.
Features
- Touch-screen: 4.3 inch full TFT color LCD (480 x 272 pixels, supports 64K colors)
- TomTom Map Share updates
- Memory: 4 Gb Internal Flash (SD slot for additional storage)
- Maps: Pre-loaded maps of USa,Canada and Europe from TeleAtlas
- Bluetooth: for Hands-Free calling, PLUS services, remote control and audio output
- Dimensions (W x H x L): 5 x 1 x 3 inches
- Weight: 0 pounds
Nice but company behavior a problem
-DO NOT GIVE TOM TOM ANY MORE CUSTOMERS- I had this unit 6mo. The power is delivered to the bottom of the unit by a mini usb which is poorly designed and creates too much leverage inside the unit which cracked the connection inside the unit. Thus it would no longer power. First I like the Garmin approach where the power goes into a stand and you snap the unit into the stand (less wear and tear when you take it down to prevent it attracting car burglars). So I sent it back…6 weeks ago after a 10 day process to get a RMA#. They have no idea where my unit is in the repair process and no record of even receiving it. Customer service is in Riyadh according to the not helpful script reading automaton on the phone. It certainly is not this guys fault but I cannot see giving this company any more money until they correct their corporate contempt for their customers. I hope Garmin takes their map updating and traffic flow notions and gives us a better alternative.
WARNING when making updates
I’ve had many GPSs, I traded from a Garmin Nuvi that got me lost from Italy to Germany to this GO 930T. The Tomtom is better in my humble opinion, both in Eurpoe and the US, but I’ll tell you what I hate about TomTom that no fine print will tell you: When you do a map upgrade it will wipe your “favorites” (saved addresses) and your downloaded voices. If you were lucky to Backup your device, you can go fish this file called MapSettings.cfg that resides under the map folder. But even copying this back to your device might put it in an endless loop of shutdowns without ever coming back to life until you dig the tomtom forums for an answer.
It would have taken one day of programming for TomTom home to ask you: DO YOU WANT TO KEEP YOUR FAVORITES AND VOICES? and then let the software do just that and not let users have to resort to hours of Googling trying to get your favorite destinations back.
Another WARNING. This GO 930T comes with both European maps and North America, BUT if you upgrade either, the maps will be larger and you’ll have to remove one of the two, unless you get an SD card of over 2Gigs…and that is not an easy to do operation if you’re not a techy nerd like me!
Very Accurate Directions
The GO 930 hasn’t let me down in the six months that I’ve owned it. The 4.3 inch screen shows maps very crisply and the large size makes it easy to view directions while driving. The directions have been very accurate and I have not gotten lost once since owning it! I am most impressed with the IQ Routes feature, it gives the best shortcuts allowing me to not be stuck in traffic unnecessarily. This helps me cut down the time I am in the car. All in all, I am happy with the GO 930.
great
Couldn’t be happier. Travelled through europe and australia also with this. no problems buying and downloading extra maps. great product.
Too many flaws
This is my thrird TomTom GO, and my last one.
Cons:
- Maximum display brightness is much darker than on my GO 920
- Bluetooth remote takes 10 sec to connect
- Bluetooth remote works for the first three times after turning the device on, then no longer. You have to reset the unit (!) for it to work again, very annoying!
- One button on the Bluetooth remote requires you to push it hard in order for it to detect you pressed the button.
- Accuracy of house numbers is not perfect – sometimes 0.2 miles away.
- TomTom seems to be reluctant to fix such issues and instead rests assured that nobody will return the product for 2 weeks repair since they may not be able to live without it for so long.
Nothing but technical problems from Day 1
My husband works in IT for a living and is very gadget savvy. Even he was not able to navigate through the mess that Tom Tom took us through. You would think that a unit that costs more than $400 would be packed with features and run effortlessly, not the case at all! We have had all kinds of errors, such as file access errors, random shutting down and rebooting, being unable to find a route ANYWHERE from certain locations (in the middle of the city, you can’t find a route home?????) and now, the backlight has just gone out, and it is not even 4 months old. This thing is not even worth $100, let alone $400. This is the experience we had AFTER we returned the first one. My coworker has the same model and she is on her 3rd Tom Tom (returned the first two) due to technical issues. Save yourself the headache and go with another brand. I will never buy another Tom Tom product again. We have a low end Garmin (Nuvi 260) and while it doesn’t have the same advanced features, it also has never given us any problems at all.
Started well but finishing badly
I had used TomTom on my PDA and I liked the interface. There came a time when I needed to get a dedicated GPS. I needed coverage for N America and Europe and the 930 fitted my needs. The first 6 months was great and then I needed customer support. The RDS function failed after several weeks of email messages I was informed that the service was down – why did it take so long to get sense out of them. At the same time TomTom Home informed me that I needed a new European map and made me back up and delete the old map – there should be no need for such user intervention – you do not need to do this when you update the US map. After that it has failed when it attempt to download the new map. Customer support is next to useless. I have had a series of messages requesting updates to my .Net framework operating system and other stuff. But no resolution. It seems that you need to be an IT expert to run one of these devices. In the meantime I had a computer crash, fortunately my TomTom files were backed up but there is no simple way to restore the European maps. During all of this they updated the way that the graphical compass works and in my opinion it is dangerous. You now have to figure out your direction by computing the angle between the direction that the arrow points and straight up – yes this is the way a true compass works, but this is an advanced electronic gizmo. In the old version the arrow pointed in the direction of travel relative to north which was straight up. Now if it points west you are travelling east! I would not buy another TomTom. There customer support is abysmal and you need it too much, and apparently they are always experiencing abnormally high volumes of traffic so don’t expect an answer for days and then it is unlikely to be of much use.TomTom GO 930T 4.3-Inch Widescreen Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator with Traffic Receiver
Great Product
Great product. Used it in a European trip and it was invaluable. Bought a refurbished model and it works great.
Way to Go TomTom! Perfect for my Needs
I wanted a GPS under 250 dollars with a wide screen and able to carry a map of the US and Canada and a map of Western Europe at the same time. By first bought was a TomTom XL 330 which not only wasn’t able to carry both maps at the same time but to be fair it was a lousy product and ended up returning it for a full refund. After the poor experience with the 330 XL my first impulse was to go running into Garmin’s arms, but their GPS with what I wanted ended up horribly expensive (250 dollars for a map of Western Europe. Are you joking right?), way over 500 dollars. So I realized the Garmin was out of my budget and to tell you the truth, a rip-off. How much better can they be to charge you twice of even three times the price of a TomTom? Believe me they are not. Besides, TomTom is unbeatable in Europe maps and POIs, which I needed for my road trip. So I ran into a very good offer from Amazon for a new GO 930 for just 249 dollars and I didn’t hesitate. Considering it can go up to 500 bucks, I grabbed it as fast as I could
The maiden trip of my 930 was a road trip to Disney World in Florida and to tell you the truth I was a bit disappointed on its accuracy and chosen routes -some times I ended up in the middle of an empty forest, my “destination”- but then realized it was not only my TomTom as by brother’s Garmin did exactly the same thing and we both ended up in the same forest, so I gave is a problem common to all GPS, or at least to these two brands. However, during my road trip within Europe my 930 was a tremendous asset, I never got lost and it found all the POIs I put on it, and got me there with accuracy and on the estimated time. It even found remote locations on unpaved roads, any name and location I threw at this TomTom it got them: restaurants, castles, famous locations, vineyards, natural wonders, supermarkets with specific types of foods, free wireless access points, etc, etc. It also recalculated routes pretty quick if I missed an exit or that turn or decided to take a more scenic route. Overall a great help on my trip, I have no regrets whatsoever. It even still guided me accurately on long tunnels without satellite signal using the Enhanced Positioning function, and when the satellite was again available it picked-up the route at the estimated point with no problem. The Advanced Lane Guidance also saved me of many easy to fail exits or turn on very complex highway intersections, and it popped-up every time there was one, even in those no that complicated.
On the technical side, my experience was mostly positive: It found the satellites in less than a minute, the screen is bright enough although it can be challenged under direct sunlight and the battery life is pretty good. You can fix the screen brightness a bit if you download the free bright colors mode, and it will make it easier to see the screen under direct sunlight. The sound was also loud enough and the voice was clear and very easy to understand, even when reading foreign street names in English. The way to hang-it to the windshield is very good even if it doesn’t has a lock like the 330 XL had (although it didn’t work I think). It never fell and was easy to hand the GPS to it
On the not that positive side, the interface can be better, it is a bit complicated to navigate and can be a challenge to find certain functions. Image quality on the screen could also be better. At these times of cheap touch-up displays, even those with HD quality, it’s unacceptable that TomTom equips one of its high end GPS with a screen where you can count the pixels with your fingers and produce broken down graphics at the edges with a poor response time. Sometimes I feel like I was looking at the rendering of a 1970 Atari Gaming Console hooked into an old TV. It also had way too many functions like MP3 reproducing capabilities, blue-tooth (which works only for a few selected phones), picture storage, FM transmitter, remote control, etc which I think are not really needed and just add weight and price to the GPS, but this can be a matter of opinion
But the positives far outweighed the negatives, making it a great GPS
Poor windshield mount
The Window mount keeps coming off the window. It’s ok for for a while, but eventually it falls. Also tried it with a beanbag base. There’s only so many times it can do this before the unit breaks. I searched their web site for help, but the site’s search doesn’t work. I looked at some forums, and it appears this is not a rare problem.
Anyway, I just got it. This problem and the comments on customer service tell me this is one headache I don’t need. I’m going to return it.
Tom Tom GO 930 Review
I bought this GPS for a trip to Spain in September. We used it for three weeks while there and were generally satisfied. The unit is a bit more difficult to use than our old Magellin, but certainly has more features. The US/Western Europe maps are good and the internet update is a definite plus. Spanish as well as other European streets are difficult to enter and many are not in the unit database, so we wound up using Google Earth and entering Latitude/Longitude coordinates to find many locations, which worked quite well. The sound quality is average and we had to try several different computer voices before we found one that we could reasonably well understand. Also, the unit should have more volume. In addition, the computer voices tend to butcher the pronunciation of both English and Spanish cities and street names. The screen is difficult to see on a bright day and we tried various combinations of map colors and brightness and finally found a barely acceptable solution to this problem. All in all, the unit is satisfactory and a bargain at the price. I would recommend it for anyone traveling to Western Europe as well as for use in the United States.
GPS Use in Italy
I took two GPS(s) to Italy for my trip from Venice, Florence,Tuscanny, and Rome. Besides a Garmin 275T I also took the TomTom 930 Live. These devices were both up-to-date with all patches and upgrades. I found there was not one review of which GPS was best for Italy.
The Garmin was completely useless in Venice. It never found a statelite. Though it searched forever. The TomTom found satetilites and the location within 45 seconds. Using the TomTom in Venice was of limited benefit -it ended up more as a general directional device than step by step to anywere in Venice but still it atleast knew where I was.
In Florence only the TomTom worked and worked well. Unfortunately deep in back streets it did lose statelites so there were times you were on your own. Outside the city and throughout Tuscanny -Siena, Pienza, etc the Tom Tom was amazing. Went to remote vineyards and towns down virtually unmarked roads with ease.
The Garmin on the other hand did find statelite too as we left Florence, suburbs, but it did not display near the accuracy of the TomTom when it cam to directions. Side by side after two days -it went in the bag and the Tom Tom won.
In Rome, I tried the Garmin as a walking tool. Again this proved worthless. Walking from the Pantheon to the any site the devices became radomly confused as to what direction I was heading, showing me on all sorts for different streets and turned a bewildering set of directions. I would rate it worthless for anything other that seeing how far something was away. For example .7 miles walk to the Gardens, etc.
Note. I love Garmin here in the states and prefer its interface to the TomTom. If your going to Italy though either buy a TomTom or if you rent a car all the providers offer TomTom (Avis etc)
Trust, but Verify
Generally good directions, but sometimes off and can be frustrating when it is. However, this is true of almost every GPS, as they get their data from the same set of vendors.
Tom Tom took us around France
We bought the Tom Tom from Amazon for our trip to France. I called to ask about another GPS but this one was recommend to us. The only surprise was that the voice definitely did not have great pronunciation of the French towns and cities! But it got us to all our destinations!
Nice GPS
I purchased this GPS as a refurbished unit from an independent seller through Amazon. I had read all the previous reviews of this as well as similar Garmin units with European roads. After 2 days of practice at home we went to Normandy, France for 10 days where we used the unit extensively, including driving to and from the airport outside Paris. I was thrilled with the performance, even on small country roads throughout Normandy and on major highways around Paris. A few minor glitches of no consequence. This was my first experience with a car GPS so I was a little intimidated initially, but soon became very comfortable using the unit. The pronounciation of French road and town names was not very good, so I just turned the sound off. Using the unit as a pedestrian was less satisfying, but that may be due to my inexperience.
Overall I was very pleased.
Could have been a lot better
I was enormously disapointed with this unit. Viewing the screen during the day is a real chalenge. There is no contrast at all and the screen washes out. Nite viewing is OK.
Fantastic and Fun!
I have been using a TomTom GO 930T for several months now in the USA. My previous experience with a TomTom GPS was in a rental car touring Italy during the month of August 2008. I was so impressed I bought my own. I would never tour rural Italy without one.
I have found the GO 930 T to be very accurate for both routing and traffic information. The Estimated Time of Arrival is helpful and accurate, too. If you get lost or have to change routes due to traffic, accidents or road closures, the 930T recalculates your route in a minute or two.
I have the additional antenna but find that the built in antenna works just as well. The Bluetooth feature for your phone is great; you can use it as a jukebox or photo album with a SD card. The built-in speaker is ok or you can send your directions or MP3 tunes through your car sound system.
The software included is great for loading your TomTom with frequent destinations as well as planning your trip before you leave home using your computer. My daughter has downloaded all her high school friends addresses so that we never get lost looking for their houses. (Believe me you don’t want to get lost while driving your teenage daughter to an all important party!) This is much easier than doing it in the car. The battery recharges rapidly using the computer’s USB port and the charging cradle. The device and maps are updated this way, too. The software is very easy to use.
You should not leave an GPS in the car while parked due to the potential of theft and damage from sun and heat. A carrying case makes it easier to take it with you.
The battery life does not appear to be as reported in the specs especially if you are using the Bluetooth option for your cellphone. The charging plug is always needed.
My 11 year own son loves the voices that you can download (his favorite at the moment is Homer Simpson) – that makes this unit fun! These famous voices do not read the street signs however. If you have the time, you can even record your own voice to read the directions which takes a while but is worth it the first time you surprise an unsuspecting friend.
Though I have fortunately never had to use it yet, the HELP feature is great. It includes a First Aid Guide and navigation plus phone numbers to the nearest facility needed: Hospital, Police, etc. The emergency route can be calculated for the vehicle or on foot.
All-in-all, I highly recommend this TomTom GO 930T GPS. Guys, you will never be told by your co-driver to stop and ask for directions. That may be reason enough to buy a GPS.
In October TomTom is releasing a new series (XXL) with a 5 inch screen so you might want to wait if you are thinking of a Holiday gift for your favorite driver.
PS: There is a TomTom for motorcycles which can be used in cars, too. It is significantly more expensive because of the waterproofing, mounting system, etc.
Works well – some problems
I purchased the TomTom 930 because it included maps of North America and Europe. When I first received the unit, I installed the software and registered the unit. I was informed that the maps on the unit were out-of-date (later I learned that the new maps had been released the day I got the unit). Updating the maps was not easy – primarily because the 4 Gb Ram that came with the unit was not quite large enough to hold both maps and all of the operating system (as installed by default). Part of the problem was that the new European map was the high detail version and it was supposed to be the 2 GB version (designed to be installed in 2 Gb). The 2 Gb version supposedly is slightly more compressed but contains all the information with a slightly lower resolution for some images. I worked with tech support to resolve the probelm (they were very helpful and easy to reach). I ended up having to reinstall the operating system and the new maps (after deleting some files including foreign language voice files). Everything final fit and I have about 100 Kb left for adding points of interest. An alternative that was suggested was for me to purchase a 4 GB SD card and to put one of the maps on the card. For a top-of-the-line product, you shouldn’t have to jump thru so many hoops. TomTom should have included an SD card with the unit – then updating would simple and you could add all the options avaailable in the operating system.
I discovered a few weird quirks when using the unit in Europe. First traffic circles are called rotaries. More importantly, the unit uses a screwy algorithm to determine whether to say “turn right” or “turn left”. Often, the unit gets the verbal command wrong – but the picture is always correct. The only real problem is with rotaries. Sometimes the unit tells you to go left in the rotary – this is eqivalent to telling you to go the wrong-way down a one-way street.
The only other problem was with points of interest. First, the unit prematurely tells you that you have reached your destination (just keep going a little further) – what it means is that you have ALMOST reached your destination. Second, some of the locations for points of interest such as hotels can be off by a block or more. I called about this and was told that hotels, etc., provide the locations – hence the variability in accuracy.
In general, this is a very good GPS and it is fun to use because of the numerous options you have to adjust the program use and images.
Died within 6 months
This is an update to the review below – the display died in less than 6 months. I was thrilled, but now I’m flat pissed with a $300+ GPS that is worthless. Flat dead. It renders the unit unusable, and I am so highly disappointed – the only worse part is where do I go for warranty info?
I said below it works, but as of now, that’s gone – it sux. Sorry, but for all the international utility, it really bites bad.
I used one of these overseas and decided I realy liked it. Best thing is it comes with both the European and North American maps installed – saves time and money. Only downfalls are (1) it doesn’t automatically switch map bases – which makes setting up favorites on the other map base difficult. (2) Changing language is also difficult – if you get the wrong one (I think it defaults on Afrikkanis!!) and you don’t read it, you’re gonna do hell getting it right. But once you do – Yeah, I LOVE my tomtom, wouldn’t trade it for the world!!
TomTom GO 930 seems to work well.
Found easy to set up using new Apple computer and OS 10.5.x. Had difficulty downloading most recent updates to North America and Europe maps. TomTom support very responsive to tel call and internet posted e-mail queries. MUCH BETTER than numerous problems I had with Garmin Nuvi 770 and awful support from Garmin. TomTom US maps work well, although only have used in SF Bay Area. Will test France and Italy in Sep-Oct 2009. Some features (e.g., play through FM radio) difficult to set up on my car. Positioning seems very accurate, again much better than disfucntional Nuvi 770.