Review of the awful TomTom XL 330 GPS

I have a Garmin c320 GPS unit and wanted to upgrade to a model with more features – particularly coordinates and “Where Am I” features.  After reading the reviews, I really liked the features in the TomTom XL 330.  The only hesitation I had was with the speaker volume.  The Amazon reviews showed some buyers that had speaker problems with their units.  There were enough positive reviews to make me buy it.

PROS:

1. Lots of customization.  You can change color schemes, choose your voice, change viewing angles (Garmin c320 & 205W can’t do that).

2. “Where Am I?”  This is far superior than Garmin.  It shows in what City, Township, Municipality, etc. where you are and the nearest address.  This can be very valuable when calling for help.  Garmin only gives nearest address and nearest intersection (which I like to call “some random intersection within a few miles”)

3. Alternative routes.  If you don’t like the route you’re given, you can ask for a new one.  Read more in the Cons.

4. Tons of route control.  You can look through a list of every turn ahead of time and ask it to avoid a certain place.

5. Compact, attached mount.  I didn’t use it, but it was a cool idea.  The mount would detach from the unit or you could leave it on and fold it in.

6. Fixing map errors.  I never got to see this in action, but it sounded really cool.

7. Results as you type.  I loved this feature and will really miss it with my new Garmin 205W.  As you type a street name or city, it will show you the results as you narrow them down.  This can really save time and effort.

CONS:

1. Routing.  (Deal-breaker one)  The routing seemed to have a large bias toward driving on interstates.  It seemed to me that the reason was insufficient non-interstate speed limit information.  For example, I asked the Garmin and TomTom for a route from Irwin, PA to Oakland, MD.  The Garmin used state routes and backroads to get us there in 2 hours.  The TomTom insisted we take mostly interstate (and adding many, many miles) at an estimate of 2.5 hours.  The TomTom alternate route was even longer.  (Google Maps, Yahoo! Maps, Mapquest all were similar to Garmin’s route.)  When we took the Garmin route, the TomTom said it would take over 2.5 hours (adding existing travel time + time left), but as we drove, the time remaining kept decreasing super fast.  The Garmin’s arrival time was rock steady all the way.

2. Address entry without City.  (Deal-breaker two)  There are many occasions in which I have a street address, but don’t know the city.  You know — maybe someone lives in a Township with a city’s mailing address, or any area known as “North Hills” has many post office names, but you don’t know which one.  Garmins give you a “Search all cities” option.  TomTom has no option.  You must enter a city.  If you don’t know it, you won’t get there.

3. SPEAKER. (Deal-breaker three)  I had read two problems with the speaker; 1) too quiet, 2) garbled.  I figured that if I got a bad one, I’d exchange it and I’d get a good one.  How widespread could the problem be?  Well — the first unit was very quiet.  If you have the radio on, you can’t hear this thing.  I called TomTom and the nice rep seemed to be very familiar with the problem and suggested returning it to the store.  So fine, I shipped it back to Amazon.  The second unit was much louder.  Wait — you couldn’t understand it, it was all garbled.  Well, third time should work.  NOPE — just like the first, you couldn’t hear it.  See the end of this post — I will post WAV files of what I heard.

4. POI annoyances.  On my first unit, when searching for a POI, it would show the distance you were from the POI, but not which direction it was from you.  This made it unusable.  I won’t make a big deal of this, because my unit #2 did have a directional arrow for each POI.  This may have to do with software version on the unit.  Secondly, though, it only listed a few pages of POIs.  I would have liked to see more choices.

5. Graphics.  The graphics rendering was very jagged and old-looking.  Garmin is far ahead here.

After doing all this testing, my decision was easy.  Even if the speaker actually worked, the first two cons make it unusable for me.

My final question is — TomTom, don’t manufacturers test products before they get shipped to poor American consumers??

Garmin c320 without music while driving

TomTom XL 330 #1 (the quiet one) without music while driving

TomTom XL 330 #2 (the garbled one) without music while driving

TomTom XL 330 #1 with music while driving

TomTom XL 330 #2 with music while driving