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Product: TomTom 740 Amazon Price: Too low to display Availability: In Stock |
I have used multiple generations of the TomTom, and I have been a fan for a while. TomTom has always had the best user interface, but the rubber meets the road on directions and map accuracy, and here the new GO 740 Live shows solid improvement.
I drive in the Washington DC area, and occassionally commute up I-95 to New York and Long Island. In other words, it’s traffic, traffic everywhere.
I depend on the TomTom GO 740 Live. The traffic updates are frequent, and almost always match what I am seeing in the real world. And IQ Routes are clearly having a positive impact on route selection. IQ Routes is the feature than anonymously gathers actual driving experiences from all TomTom users and then factors that history into its route computation. I suppose it works best in metro areas where there are many users.
Why this matters: Anyone who drives north out of DC knows that 16th Street is much, much better than Georgia Ave. They both appear as normal city streets, and though Georgia appears more direct, it has more untimed lights and more local traffic. Before IQ Routes, TomTom would suggest Georgia, and I would ignore it. Now, TomTom suggests 16th. With IQ Routes, TomTom is gathering the experience that only local drivers have.
After second-guessing TomTom for a few months, and usually being wrong, I now let it automatically route around traffic. Between the traffic reports and the IQ routes, I am getting the right routes and very accurate estimates of arrival times.
My previous TomTom was the 930, which reached its traffic service through a bluetooth connection to my phone. The connection was flaky (I blame Verizon, not TomTom.) and did not work if I was on a call. The new LIVE series has it’s own cell circuitry built in. I stopped paying $15/month to Verizon for “broadband access connect”, and I will gladly pay $10/month to TomTom for the LIVE services, which include traffic, fuel prices, speed cameras, Google searches, etc.
Final note: In addition to the LIVE services, I subscribe to TomTom’s map update service, and I dock the unit to my PC often to download map corrections. I depend on my GPS, so these update services are a positive feature for me, and my review assumes use of all these services.
TomTom GO 740 4.3-Inch Live Connected GPS Navigator
GPS Experience:
- Smartphone: TomTom Navigator 6 (in-use), Garmin XT, Copilot Live 6, Telenav (in-use)
- Dedicated: Garmin Nuvi 885T (in-use)
I had resisted buying dedicated GPS units while the phone apps (while buggy) generally had better traffic and online search capability for what I wanted to use. So I was quite excited when the TomTom Live units were announced.
Unfortunately the first impression is not that great. After having used TomTom Navigator6 with the traffic subscription for the last year or so, I’ve found their traffic data to be generally reliable (Telenav and Navigator6 seem to agree quite often on the amount of congestion and how to avoid). Not so the 740 Live. For example, in the San Jose CA area where I live there’s a stretch of Hwy85 that *always* backs up one way in the morning and the other way in the afternoon for several miles. You can quite clearly see this on MSN, Google, Sigalert, Navigator6, Telenav, … but as far as the 740Live is concerned there’s no traffic. While there are some traffic incidents in the area reported, I’d say I’m generally missing around 1/2 of the incidents on the surrounding freeways. I’ve taken simultaneous pictures of my phone and the 740Live and sent these to TomTom for comment.
I completed a 4hr drive and ran both the 740Live and Navigator6 on auto-avoidance. Luckily I was driving in the car pool lane, so I didn’t have to take the detours offered, however Navigator6 seemed to have the more reasonable suggestions for when to leave the freeway and take surface streets. Again, this seems to be related to the Navigator6 software generally reporting more traffic from what I could tell.
Also while driving tonight (first trip of more than 15mins), the machine all of a sudden rebooted itself. While potentially somewhat of an annoyance, this was downright dangerous the way it happened as it was dark outside and I was in night driving mode – during reboot the device flashed to full brightness for at least 15secs pretty much blinding me.
Anyway, I still find the TomTom UI the best thought out and the 740Live doesn’t disappoint here. I’m sure the problems I’m having are teething issues – however, if you want a rock solid experience and want to rely on the traffic service … I’d wait.
GPS’s owned: Garmin StreetPilot III, Garmin 760, Dash Express, Navigon 7200T, TomTom GO 730, TomTom GO 740.
Summary first: Now if I could only cross-breed my Navigon 7200T with the TomTom GO 740.
My early and as yet incomplete impression is the TomTom GO 740 connected services are about on par with the original connected GPS, the Dash Express, which came out a year ago and withered on the vine 8-months later. TomTom does not offer the ability to integrate 3rd-party applications, which was a fantastic selling point for the Dash. The 3rd-party apps were better than the embedded ones. Anyway, enough about Dash, but I’m not going to be able to get away from the Navigon 7200T.
TomTom’s connected search uses Google, and comes out of the box with all the standard TomTom GO series features. I like the way they’ve implemented the gas price display as it doesn’t force you to look through an entire list, but just shows the cheapest along your route. You can still get a list if you want it. It’s one of those, “less-is-more” things. It is a tad slow when downloading the data, so if you’re in a hurried situation, it might be frustrating.
TomTom’s autozoom (it was this way in my TomTom GO 730, too), bugs me to no end. Even at 70mph, it zooms too close to be useful, displaying only about a minute’s worth of the road ahead, and little detail (e.g. upcoming roads) while in a route. Disabling autozoom and zooming out just a little completed eliminates all detail: It is blank, except for the road you’re traveling. The Navigon displays up to 3 minutes of road ahead at that speed, and provides a reasonable amount of detail without being cluttered.
As of this early writing, I’ve yet to test the traffic services as I do not live near a major city, even though heavy traffic is not limited to those areas!
Unless you must have a connected GPS, go with the Navigon 7200T. Besides being $150 cheaper at this writing, it has free traffic for life and the autozoom is better. TT’s IQ Routing is better than Navigon’s routing, but not by much. Lane-assist is better on the Navigon, offering lane advice in complex interstate interchanges even if you’re staying on the same interstate; the TomTom offers lane assist only if you’re changing interstates.
There were no issues with brightness of the GO 740’s display, from cloudless day to moonless night, and the adjustment range should be enough for any driving condition.
I really wish I could just build my own GPS, or that Navigon would come out with a connected GPS built on the 7200T.
Lastly, if you think this word picture doesn’t match a 4-star rating, realize that I am leaving out much of what made TomTom a threat to Garmin. TomTom has a lot of things right and I’d only be regurgitating all the positive things you could read on the GO730 and GO720 reviews.
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