Avoid this unit!

[pbishopp28]

I bought one of these and am now regretting it. If anybody is considering buying one of these be forewarned of the following serious problems:

1) The unit comes advertised with FM transmission of spoken directions but as soon as you upgrade to their latest firmware they disable this function. Reasons are listed in other parts of the forum.

2) The latest firmware also causes the computer voices to seriously stutter as reported by many owners (including me). Good luck if you are going to rely on voice directions as you will likely miss many turns due to the stuttering.

3) You have to go through a bunch of gyrations (again directions posted in other threads) just to get a decent set of POIs. The POIs that come with the unit are skimpy at best.

4) Many report a "lag" in the spoken directions of several hundred yards or so. In other words you may not hear "turn left until you are right at the intersection.

5) I found the text to speech to be of marginal benefit. Street names are spoken about 20% of the time in my area. Most directions are similar to: Turn left at 100 yards (without mention of a street name).

6) Responses from technical support regarding many of these problems is a cut-and-paste response often not even addressing the problem at all.

If you want a unit that you have to tinker with for hours on end to get to function correctly and have to use old firmware and other adjustments than this is the unit for you. If you are looking for something more robust out of the box that remains robust even after updating firmware I would avoid this unit at all cost.

 

[Mathew J]

Sadly as someone who just bought one and is afraid to open it and use it I must agree....the fact that these problems surfaced in November and are yet to be addressed is really concerning. I loved the feature set, and the price was more than right, and I was somoene who wanted a tom tom since last year....I will give it a little longer but if they don't update to fix the problems then sadly I will have to move into something else.

 

[canderson]

Sadly as someone who just bought one and is afraid to open it and use it I must agree....the fact that these problems surfaced in November and are yet to be addressed is really concerning. I loved the feature set, and the price was more than right, and I was somoene who wanted a tom tom since last year....I will give it a little longer but if they don't update to fix the problems then sadly I will have to move into something else.

Better yet, just move BACK ... none of the problems the OP mentions are an issue with firmware 8.010.

The only two features of note that came with 8.300 are two that I was previously living without, and can continue living without --

1) lane guidance ... life ain't that tough around here and
2) >=8GB card support. I have the entire NA and Europe map sets, my favorite computer voice, a copy of the movie "The Sting" (courtesy MobilNova software), the large 920 POI set, and several of my own POI sets for geocaching ... all on the base unit plus my 4GB card.

I'm perfectly happy with my prior map and 8.010 for the time being. Sorry to the OP that the other crap came along with 8.300. It was a dirty trick, but with a firmware rollback, the x20 or x30 units perform perfectly well. If the issue is lack of support of the 8.15 maps with 8.010, just call TomTom and tell them to push you a copy of the 8.10 maps as you do the firmware rollback. And while you're talking to them, give them an earful for the rest of us for putting us through the inconvenience of having to do a software rollback to begin with.

As for speed of correcting problems, you don't want to hear how long it took me to get a readable screen in cold weather on the last Garmin I bought. Took them about forever to get a firmware update out that corrected that, and they never did say what the problem was.

 

[dhn]

Good post for your 300th, Canderson! (extra hand, eh)

 

[Mathew J]

Better yet, just move BACK ... none of the problems the OP mentions are an issue with firmware 8.010.

The only two features of note that came with 8.300 are two that I was previously living without, and can continue living without --

1) lane guidance ... life ain't that tough around here and
2) >=8GB card support. I have the entire NA and Europe map sets, my favorite computer voice, a copy of the movie "The Sting" (courtesy MobilNova software), the large 920 POI set, and several of my own POI sets for geocaching ... all on the base unit plus my 4GB card.

I'm perfectly happy with my prior map and 8.010 for the time being. Sorry to the OP that the other crap came along with 8.300. It was a dirty trick, but with a firmware rollback, the x20 or x30 units perform perfectly well. If the issue is lack of support of the 8.15 maps with 8.010, just call TomTom and tell them to push you a copy of the 8.10 maps as you do the firmware rollback. And while you're talking to them, give them an earful for the rest of us for putting us through the inconvenience of having to do a software rollback to begin with.

As for speed of correcting problems, you don't want to hear how long it took me to get a readable screen in cold weather on the last Garmin I bought. Took them about forever to get a firmware update out that corrected that, and they never did say what the problem was.

Problem for me is that I really wanted lane guidance...was one of the sellers for me, I will see what the sales offer tomorrow, if they all stink then I might take a gamble on this unit and hope they fix the firmware issue.

 

[BigRed]

Mine works great. No issues at all. I love it.

 

[lsuber]

Mine works great as well, and I have firmware 8.3 and the 815 maps..... No issues with stuttering, lag times, etc. etc. I've had no problem adding POI's and color schemes, and have been VERY happy with my 720.

 

[canderson]

Problem for me is that I really wanted lane guidance...was one of the sellers for me, I will see what the sales offer tomorrow, if they all stink then I might take a gamble on this unit and hope they fix the firmware issue.

Ouch. That surely does mean living with 8.300 for the moment if that's a key feature for you. Depending upon how you feel about the trade-off of not being able to use "Home" to operate the unit via your PC, you might consider the "Work" version of the firmware that's been mentioned here and on the UK site. Everyone who has applied that firmware seems to be satisfied with the driving results, if not the results on the PC side. Now that I'm building my ITN files with my own hacks, I probably don't need to operate the unit on a PC either. I used to build ITN files by using the "Operate my go" on the PC, but it's been a while since I've done that.

I'd certainly agree that a) they didn't test well enough before releasing 8.300, and b) given the nature of at least a couple of the problems, the fix is far too slow in coming.

What surprises me is that not everyone with the 8.300 firmware sees all of the problems. Then again, perhaps some of it depends upon your local situation. If you have a local interstate that, when built, overlaid two US highways ... resulting in at least three highway numbers for your TT to string out in a long description of the road name ... that seems sure to get the stuttering started! Out here where I live, as an example, we have "Interstate 25, US Highway 87, US Highway 85..." etc. Susan doesn't manage that mess very well. Another local road is a combination of US Highway, State Highway + local street name. She can't get through all of that without stepping on her tongue, either. But the short stuff seems to do pretty well.

 

[crislevin]

Problem for me is that I really wanted lane guidance...was one of the sellers for me, I will see what the sales offer tomorrow, if they all stink then I might take a gamble on this unit and hope they fix the firmware issue.

then you might want to just keep it plugged, i don't see any stuttering problem when the unit is plugged.

PS. I do like the lane guidance and VR. quite nice.

Anyhow, for a device of $180, really is much better than any other product out there, now if you paid $300, that would be a different situation.

 

[canderson]

then you might want to just keep it plugged, i don't see any stuttering problem when the unit is plugged.

I operate mine only in "plugged" mode (as do most of us), and saw the problem immediately.

 

[Mathew J]

Well I am opening mine tonight, figure I will take a gamble as everything else isn't what I want...hopefully they get this squared away.