TomTom GO 920 Review
Ξ March 17th, 2008 | → 5 Comments | ∇ Geeky, Science, Software |
I have a new GPS – well it’s about a month old now – so I thought I’d share some thoughts about my Go 920, and its shortcomings.
The first thing I should say is that overall, I’m more than happy[ish] with it; so I should start with the …
PROs
- It talks blue!
The first great thing is that, as it talks to my Nokia 6500 via Blue Tooth, this single unit does away with any need for a hands-free kit. Additionally, the supplied software [TomTom Home] allows you to sync between your phone and your 920. According to everyone I’ve called, and asked ‘can you hear me ok’, the quality’s good too.
- It plays music.
The second thing is that I’ve also been able to do away with my iPod, as the GO 920 also allows me to store gazillions of music tracks, audio-books and even pictures [but see a 'con' below on this]. One really great feature here is that if the unit wants to talk to you ['Turn right in 100 yards' etc] while you’re listening to ‘The Boss’, it first fades the music, and pauses it. Once it’s done chatting the process is reversed, so you don’t lose anything [nor have a nasty transition from music to speech and back again]. Of course, it’ll also pause whatever it is you’re listening to if you’re on the phone.
Lastly, I’ve also been able to do away with my expensive iPod FM-transmitter add-on thingmy. Yup you’ve guessed it, the 920 can broadcast on FM too [or even via Blue Tooth if you have a really fancy car-radio].
- It listens too!
Another of the 920’s great features is the voice-recognition – although this didn’t work right out of the box for me [I had to download a file from TomTom's website first]. With this you can talk to the 920 and tell it things like city, street and number.
A downside though is that you can’t activate the 920’s voice by voice, i.e., ‘tell it’ to navigate you to an address without first having to touch it [three touches are required to turn on voice recognition]. That’s a pity as you may as well stop and touch it [or else you might find yourself up the nearest lamppost!] See also a ‘con’ on the ‘Quick’ menu here.
- It speaks in strange tongues.
Of course, you’d expect to be able to change the voice the 920 uses, and you can. You can even download extra voices using the TomTom Home software. I have several free ones [created by the TomTom community], and one paid for [John Cleese]. But, fun as having Stephen Hawking, NASA or ‘the lord’ JC direct you, the best voices are the computerized ones – as these can say so much more; like street names. They’re not too bad either, in fact, apart from the American one, that says ‘Rod‘ for ‘Road‘, they’re truly excellent.
A slight software annoyance here is that to find new computer voices you don’t select ‘Voices’ from TomTom Home, but navigate ahead two further screens and select ‘Computer Voices’ – something that I found confusing at first [goodness knows what the folks at TomTom were smoking when they thought this was a good idea].
On the ‘Rod‘ thing, my theory about this is that street names, or should that be ‘road’ names are stored internally in an abbreviated form, e.g., instead of being in the form ‘Old Kent Road’, they’re stored as ‘Old Kent Rd’ … now, how would you pronounce ‘Rd’, ‘Rod’ right!? As I write this I’ve just downloaded a UK versions of the computerized voice, but haven’t yet tested it. Fingers crossed then.
- It has software!
The TomTom Home software is pretty damn good [if not entirely intuitive], and the connection to your computer is through USB and a nice desktop cradle. You can even operate the 920 right there on your desk from it – so pre-configuring routes etc is a doddle. See another ‘con’ below though.
There are tons of other great features available via the TomTom Home software too: Map Overlays [only seven listed at the time of writing though], Points of Interest [POIs], Routes, Icons, Colour Schemes, … lots! The software is also your point-of-contact for updating the 920’s ‘Safety Camera’ database! Um, to you and me that’s the ‘Speed Camera’ database of course [vital stuff!]
Before the ‘cons’, I must repeat that I’m happy[ish] overall with the 920, e.g., the built-in antenna is fantastic … even when you consider that mine’s not only transmitting on FM and Blue Tooth, but listening to satellites too.
However, good as it is, now for the …
CONs
- You can’t ‘automagically’ turn on voice recognition [see above].
Why it can’t ‘be listening’ for a special phrase I just don’t know, ‘Oy, listen to me, I’m talking to you!’
The voice stuff just stops short in other ways too – for example, you can’t read out a number when you want to telephone someone – so you’re back to touching the thing, and risking a visit to the nearest tree when you do so. Having to pull-over or risk life and limb is not my idea of true ‘hands-free’.
- Too much detail!
I wish that I could tell my 920 that one announcement is enough. For example, it’s not uncommon to get four or five announcements when one would do … ‘Exit ahead’ … ‘In two miles take the exit’ … ‘in two hundred yards, take the exit’ … ‘take the exit’ … ‘take the exit’ – enough already! This is something you just have to endure – very frustrating when you’re singing along to The Verve’s ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’ and the music keeps on pausing! To be fair, there is an option to ‘disable early warning instructions’ but this only turns off the very initial ‘exit ahead’ warning – still far too chatty for me.
- Not enough memory.
My 920 came with maximum memory installed [I think they all do] – which isn’t enough if you want to load up a good collection of mp3s etc. However, there’s an SD slot, so off I went to eBay and back I came with an 8Gb SD card!
Downer – the card needs formatting as FAT32 [think Windows 95] and therefore only supports upto 4Gb! Result, I have 4Gb of unused SD card. If anyone knows a workaround for that, I’d be most grateful to know what it is!
- My radio’s crap. And most likely so is yours’!
The built-in FM transmitter just isn’t powerful enough. There you are listening to Billy Bryson’s searing wit when you suddenly get ‘break through’, sometimes to the point where Billy disappears completely and is replaced with some local DJ [git] who likes the sound of his own voice too much!
Now I know the 920’s transmitter has to be weak[ish] – else as you drive by people on the motorway you’ll possibly treat them to a blast of whatever it is that you’re listening to; which will come as a shock to them no doubt [that'd be fun though]. But it needs improving if you’re not to be constantly re-tuning the 920’s output frequency [touch, touch, touch again – watch that tree!]. I’ve found that setting mine to use 107.9 is best, or failing that, I just unscrew my car aerial. No interruptions now, but a bit of a bugger if you’d like RDS traffic reports. And that’s another thing – even with the antenna still attached to the roof, my 920 seems incapable of getting any traffic reports – the built-in FM transmitter’s too powerful perhaps? Argh! Well, it’s either that or TomTom want you to use their own traffic stuff; available now – for your credit card number. Who knows!
- It’s a bit of a numpty!
If I leave home in Cheltenham, heading for some remote destination, I’d really rather the 920 keep its trap shut until I need it – when I’m out of my own home town! Like, I know my way around here better than you do – so shut the f**k up!
A small example here. Last week was Gold Cup week in Cheltenham – so the place was full of ladies that lunch [well, fuller than normal], and tweeds topped with flat caps – and the Irish! So, to escape all this I went to Alylesbury [if the local punters are all stoned, go look at stones I say]! Now, do you know where the 920 wanted to take me? Right past the racecourse, that’s where! No thanks, I know all the ‘wiggles’ around Cheltenham – and I sure as hell know how to avoid the racecourse. But, would it listen! Nope, all I got for about ten minutes was ‘Turn around when possible’. Why can’t I tell it that I live here – and to only start directing me when I’m outside of the town I’ve lived in for twelve years?!
- It doesn’t like my ‘other’ books.
The only audio books the 920 ‘likes’ are those from Audible. Now I have a few of those, and it’s great that 920 knows where I got up to the last time I listened to any of them. But, how about all the other books I have – in mp3 format? Well, in a nutshell, it tells you they’re as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit would be, i.e., to go stuff ‘em where the sun doesn’t shine, i.e., they have to go with all your other mp3s. Result, when ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’ finishes you *could* go straight into some random chapter in ‘Truckers’ [a Terry Pratchett 'must read/listen' I hasten to add]. And ‘no’, you can’t simply rename a .mp3 to .aa and get it to work [I've tried it]!
To be fair, this is partly Audible’s fault – why won’t they let anyone convert an existing mp3 into audible format beggars belief – they could even make you pay for the privilege. I would!
- Not everything is available via the software.
Whilst the TomTom Home software is pretty good, it’s a pity that ‘Operate my GO’ doesn’t make everything on the 920 available. For example, whilst you can test voices over your PC’s speakers, you cannot select the 920’s Jukebox; so you can’t listen to your current audio book through your PC. I could do that with my iPod, so maybe it’s time I went back to that?
- Shuffle sucks.
I have ’shuffle’ turned on, yet whenever I select ‘Song’ all my tracks are presented in alphabetical order. Surely, as I’ve got it on, these should be shuffled? As it is, I have to select a song beginning with ‘A’ [usually A's 'Nothing'] and then hit ‘next’ to get the thing to randomize!
- The Quick menu sucks.
You can only select from a predetermined list of things to go on this, and you can only select a certain number of things from that [six!] Also, my 920 often seems to forget what I had on the Quick menu, and drops back to some defaults it seems. Haven’t TomTom heard of small[er] icons – coz it’s as though that’s the bit that’s stopping this being really useful?!
- What’s with the auto power-off!
While it’s docked on my desk, one thing that works very well is the hands-free [albeit not through my PC's speakers] – yup, you can do all the hands-free stuff there too – well, you can for a couple of minutes!
When you put the 920 in its cradle it asks you whether you want it to connect to your machine. Answer ‘yes’, and the hands-free doesn’t work, answer ‘no’ and the hands-free works. But, after it’s connected to your mobile-phone, why oh why does the bloody thing switch itself off after two minutes!? It’s as useful as bollocks on a priest if you ask me!
- Volume, what volume?
Sometimes my 920’s volume changes for no obvious reason – not while it’s operating, but between operations. It’s like it wants to go back to some sort of default – although I can’t find such a setting, and the volume slider is at 100%. That too seems iffy by the way – like when I first tested it hands-free on my desk two things happened: 1. it nearly blew out its own speaker. 2. our dog shat itself with fright. On rapidly navigating to the volume slider [at 100% as always], and then just touching it, the volume decreased by around a third – to a ‘non-rattling’ ‘non-shit-yourself’ level – what’s with that then?
- TomTom Support sucks.
Well, perhaps I should wait and see, as my only experience with this was when I found my 920 wouldn’t recognize my voice. TomTom support could only suggest I took it back to my dealer, whereas my dealer said ‘download this file from TomTom, put it in this folder, then …’ – which was all very clear and easy to follow.
Support – are you there? I’ve sent a link to this blog entry to them – and have asked them to comment [and correct me hopefully] – we’ll have to wait and see now.
P.S. I’m sure there were other things – other slight annoyances – but I can’t recall them right now [and recalling the ones I have has left me in a elevated state - as in blood pressure]. However, if I recall any later, I’ll be sure to write them up here. Stay tuned!
P.P.S. I dreamt about this post last night, and my brain reminded me that the 920 comes with a remote control! As my brain did when it first saw it, it/I mused that we have no idea what use this is. So I/we looked this morning. Well it seems as though TomTom don’t really know what use this is either – initially the only reference I could find to it had a picture of the thing, yet didn’t talk about it. So, are you supposed to use this instead of touch, touch, touching the display whilst driving? I doubt that it would put you in a better physical position, spine-wise, for your ‘tree visit’! What to do? Try it! So I did – it’s useless. In the end I thought it might be included so you could have some fun controlling some other person’s unsuspecting TomTom – but alas the 920 asks for permission before it can connect – damn it.
on April 7th, 2008 at 6:23 am
I’ve had a 910 for ages and was interested in your comments above. Agree the UI cant handle big lists like MP3 or contacts. You can directly edit the \contacts\contacts.txt file when it is docked. if you open the device as a USB disk – it comes in as F: on my PC. I’ve arranged my contact name with leading digits to fool the sorting software. eg “01 Switchboard”,”+441 628……” etc
I’d love to find a way to program a pause in the phone number for my voicemail that needs a PIN. My phone uses a “p” but the TomTom strips out the rest of the number. Any ideas greatfully recieved.
on June 4th, 2008 at 3:40 am
I was hoping you had figured out how I can load my audio books that I already have so I could listen to them while I travel. I have loaded my audio books onto my computer but I can’t figure out how to get them onto my TomTom.
If you ever find a fix for this let me know.
globetrotter@verizon.net
Thanks
on June 4th, 2008 at 8:24 am
I have my *Audible* books on my 920. Just use Explorer to find your Go – it’ll show up as a harddrive in Explorer – then drop your books into the audiobooks folder.
on June 27th, 2008 at 4:08 am
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on July 20th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
[...] I was on the way to Swindon if I’d just had faith!