hi all I'm new here but not to tom tom. i was just wondering if any one has ever played around with a tomtom and a garman at the same time. I like garman but I love tomtom however I noticed that when you turn a corner the tomtom goes a little off mark and the garman stays right on track. I have all the updates for my tomtom that there is like the map updates (4 per year) and I update it once a week. Thanks for listening..............
You mean Garmin?
I had an old Garmin for a long time and recently have bought the Tom Tom.
The menu system is certainly short and sweet on the Garmin.
On Tom Tom it is a bit involved and there are so many of them.
The Garmin I had, had a more user friendly built in MP3 player and I could use it as a stand alone MP3 player quite easily - it also had a headphone socket which would allow me to use stereo headphones - the Tom Tom does not have a headphone socket.
On the Garmin when it was able to connect to my mobile phone via bluetooth, it showed an icon on the screen always which allowed me to press that icon and control the phone - but the Tom Tom just reads out loud a message saying phone connected - if you miss it you miss it and there is no easy way to know at a glance whether the phone is connected or not. This gains more importance because often the connection to the phone is lost and you would not know - so while driving you often do not get the handsfree functionality at all.
On the Garmin it showed an icon on the screen when MP3 player is active and by pressing it one could control the MP3 player - even change track, pause, mute etc etc. With Tom Tom no such luck. The MP3 player remains in the back ground and if it plays it plays if it did not it does not - you hardly have any control over it. Access to the MP3 player is buried deep within menu system and hence not safely operable while driving.
However this Tom Tom I now have has a FM transmitter built in - so the MP3 player can transmit to an unused FM channel and your car radio can play it for you - this provides independent volume control for music independent of navigational instructions. The transmitter is not strong enough though - if there is another active radio station on the chosen FM channel then the radio station may over ride your MP3 player music.
The Tom Tom allows you to specify a few specific menu items to show up on a short cut menu that can be accessed from the map view menu and the fact that this can be customised to a certain extent is a good feature - but the menu items allowed are few and not very intuitive.
The Tom Tom model I have is supposed to recognise voice commands and execute several of them - but one would find oneself alternatively shouting and whispering alternatively to get the device recognise the commands. Due to this it becomes more of a gimmick rather than a useful feature.
As per navigational ability, I have been disappointed by both Garmin and Tom Tom. To search for an address they both expect a door number and if you have a building name instead of a number then you are on your own. Showing your exact location in real time is equally bad on both Garmin and Tom Tom - this may be deliberate on the part of the Satellite signal that is given out by the satellites which were originally meant for USA Defence forces but now used by general public.
