Review: TomTom GO 300 GPS Review at the GPS Lodge

Over the last week or so, we have been using the TomTom GO 300to navigate around Boston and the bottom line is that we really like it a lot for its good looking design and its sound navigation as well as having a certain personality for being happy-go-lucky. The price point on the TomTom GO 300 puts it in the mid-tier for automotive GPS sat-nav devices, with a good dose of nice features like pre-loaded maps, a nice big touchscreen, the ability to save itineraries, and complex route planning. A big plus for the TomTom GO 300 is that it can use your Bluetooth phone to connect and get weather and traffic updates too.

Navigation
Navigation is easy to do, starting at the "Navigate to" menu that pops right up when you touch the screen to get going. You have the option of navigating to Home, a Favorite, an address, a recent destination, a Point of Interest, a zip code, a point on a map that you pan to and pick, or a center of town. The touchscreen is great and the buttons are big enough to make entry easy. Maps come on a 1 GB SD card (included), that pops in the front panel.

If you touch on POI, then on gas station, let's say, a list of gas stations comes up, with the closest ones highest on the list. Very convenient. The TomTom POI list remembers the last 5 POI categories that you used, and keeps them on the main POI screen. If you want to dig down into less frequently used categories of POI's, you can scroll though dozens more to choose from: everything from Parking, to Concert Halls and shopping centers. A great category in my mind is for Rental Car agencies and Rental Car parking; two potential lifesavers for travelers. One thing that was disappointing here was that the unit didn't list was individual stores. I don't know the address of the Lowes, or the Gap, or the Whole Foods, I just know that I want to go there. The TomTom does list shopping centers, but if you don't know the Mall name, you're out of luck. This may be because of the fact that the maps come loaded on 1GB SD cards, which may not be able to hold the many millions of other POI's that other Car GPS units offer. Some others are using 4-6 GB hard drives for their storage.

Another slight knock on the TomTom maps is that they are a bit out of date. I live on a road that is 2 years old, and it does not appear on the maps. The maps are from TeleAtlas, and not NAVTEQ, which is known to have better US maps. The Garmin StreetPilot that I recently reviewed (see article) uses NAVTEQ maps, and my street was on there. There were a couple of wrong way navigations down a short one way street too. Not huge deals, but a minor inconvenience.

The Recent Destination and Favorites categories are great. They are a real time saver, and you may frequently go to a few places, and bam! They are right there at the top of things. Of course having a "Home" button helps and will most likely be a very frequently used button. The voice navigation prompts are clear and loud enough to be heard over road noise. The TomTom has speed sensitive volume that will go up when the car goes over a set speed. If you are traveling along and you miss a turn, it quickly recalculates a route, and tells you when the next turn is.

Complex Trip Planning
There are a lot of possibilities that the TomTom GO 300 offers in the way of complex trip planning. Obviously, you can plan to go from here to there, but once that is in, you can "Find Alternatives" which may mean traveling via another address, a favorite destination, or a POI. Also, you are able to just Avoid part of a route; might be simple if you know you don't want to swing through a particular section of road. The TomTom presents you with a list of roads that you would be taking, touch on the section you want to avoid, and the TomTom recalculates the new route in seconds. Another useful feature is the ability to load in a set of places that you want to navigate to in one routing. You set the list and the TomTom navigates to those stops in that order.

Traffic and Weather
While using the TomTom GO 300, I was also able to connect through a Bluetooth phone to download traffic data and weather. The Weather was good to have, and may be great for traveling long distances. The screen tells you the current conditions: Temp, barometer, wind, sun/clouds etc. You can select weather for your current location, your home, any favorite location you have set, an address, etc. Not bad, but honestly I would have loved a 24 hour outlook to be flashed up there. Let me know more that I can by just looking out the car window, eh? No big deal but I can dream a bit right?

Traffic - as you might imagine, commuting around the Boston, MA area presents us with a bit of traffic every day. The TomTom GO 300 was able to download traffic incidents and let me know about them with a nice audible signal if there was a fresh find of a traffic issue. The TomTom can be configured to check every few minutes; I was checking every 5 minutes, as things can change pretty quickly. If there is an issue, the TomTom can be asked to re-plan the route and get you out of the traffic on your way to your destination. The traffic incident pops up as an icon on the map, and you can touch on it to get more information about the issue. The trouble for me is that the data feeds didn't have any flow information. The highways around here have traffic flow sensors, that feed charts on the internet on how fast the traffic is moving. The TomTom picked up on big issues (i.e. accident, or stopped traffic), but not the long stretches of stop-and-go that I often see.

Cultural Differences
There are a couple of things that are a bit odd about the TomTom GO 300 that either make it slightly off, or make it a bit more lovable. Since the TomTom was not designed here in the US, it does its best to "travel" across the sea and make itself at home here. The one thing that comes to mind is that we tend to think in feet or fractions of a mile when navigating. The TomTom tells you that a turn is in 400 yards..... um, I guess that's about 4 football fields then? Another might be that when the display offers you a distance to your destination, it might say "40.4 M", or 40.4 miles. What happened to the "i"? Can't I get "40.4 mi"? No biggie, just part of being a TomTom.

Of course if you want a great, customized experience, you can download additional color schemes (made by TomTom and others), additional voices like John Cleese, or additional languages. Very fun, and very cool.

Summary
I wasn't kidding when I said that the TomTom has a happy-go-lucky personality to it. It seems to be the equity that they are trying to cultivate. TomTom has done a good job of taking that soft friendly design element throughout the product development. The rounded edges of the unit, the rounded fonts on the screen, and even the display and how it shows roads, and icons all have a friendly easy going feel to it. I swear this friendly persona helps make you feel at home with the TomTom.

It's hard not to like the TomTom GO 300. I was able to use it to travel all over the place, to stores, restaurants, friends' houses, and home again. I really wanted the traffic feeds to tell me more, like traffic slow downs, but even in the current situation, the feeds already helped me get around big serious issues - I liked that. The directions are on, and I trust them to go into unknown towns and know that I am going to get to where I am going. The on board Li-Ion battery lets you run without 12V power (about 4-5 hours in my use), which is a big help if you suddenly need to charge your mobile phone in that same car outlet as the TomTom. The touchscreen is a great plus and makes life easy when trying to type out a destination. Sometimes the screen gets a bit washed out in very bright sunshine, but for the most part, there's no issue. The unit comes with a little bag so that you can protect the screen and drop it into your carry-on for that trip. It's big enough to see clearly on your dash, but small enough that I wouldn't hesitate to bring it along in a weekend sized bag.

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Posted by Scott Martin at November 10, 2005 9:06 PM