42 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A plethora of features, fast boot, amazing clarity, lousy website., October 25, 2011
This review is from: TomTom GO LIVE 1535M 5-Inch Portable Bluetooth GPS Navigator with HD Traffic and Lifetime Maps (Electronics)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?) I've updated this several times: After unpacking, you'll see that this is a cool looking GPS. It's patterned to look like carbon fiber, and is all black and sleek. The suction-cup is attached and features TomTom's locking wheel - this also doubles as a place to wind the USB cable (provided.)
So I opened the box while in the car and took it for a test drive. The 12v plug (what we older drivers still call a cigarette plug) has a standard USB outlet - so it can power other devices as well. The TomTom uses the smaller USB port common to cell phones and newer devices - so it will also charge and power my Droid. I plugged in the power, stuck the GPS to my windshield (It includes a dash mount, but I prefer windshield) - and was stuck. It would not turn on. Time to open the manual. Turns out the power button has to be held in for 10 seconds. That solved, I was ready to go.
The opening screen looked like a mini-hidef TV intro. After the opening screen closed I was given the option of taking a short intro/tutorial covering navigation. I took the tutorial. It only covers the very basics and takes about two minutes. I added my "home" location - took another couple of minutes and drove around. The GPS starts up and finds satellites blazingly fast - only a few seconds. While it discovers the satellites the GPS shows tips on using the GPS.
It's highly accurate - more so than my previous TomTom or two year old Garmin. The large screen is gorgeous and crisp. It's less cluttered than other GPS unit's I've used. The new interface is akin to the minimized Google maps you see - smaller icons that expand when you touch them. There are no buttons except the power - everything else is touch-screen based.
The features list goes on and on and on. Voice commands, traffic avoidance (updates every 2 minutes), built-in Google places, Expedia, TripAdvisor and Yelp, instant twitter updates and more. The "live" services are incl uded for one year (currently $60 a year.) One big reason to take a serious look at this GPS - FREE LIFETIME MAP UPDATES ($100 value! That's worth the price of the GPS alone. If you keep it plugged in, the unit will turn on and off automatically. It also pairs with your phone via BlueTooth - it acts as an extension of your phone - displays caller ID and can even place calls. HOWEVER: The volume is terrible. Even at 100% the car would have to be parked to hear anyone.
Pretty much every feature can be customized, so you can tailor the GPS to your tastes and needs. You can mount the GPS right side up or upside down - the display flips automatically. There's even an area where you can create a custom menu. Other settings include removing non-essential items from the display, selecting what is spoken (signs, text messages from phone, etc.), call answering options and more.
Pairing with my DroidX took moments (after I made the Droid discoverable.) The GPS su pplied step by step instructions - nice. After pairing, the GPS had my phone book, calling history, etc. Great! Now I have a new hands-free device to try.
One thing to be aware of - the TomTom website is quirky. You can't hook the GPS up to a hub (no idea why) - it has to be plugged directly into the computer. If the update hangs it WILL lock-up the GPS. The software does not provide this warning - but if you contact TomTom support, it's the first thing they'll tell you. Speaking of support - TomTom uses volunteers for the majority of their support (this is according to the couple of TomTom tech support people I have dealt with.) I went through this with my TomTom Ease. The software turned it into a paperweight and I had to do a factory reset (easy once tech support told me how.)
So when you hook it up to your computer, use a port ON the computer. Don't use a hub!
This part I'm entering/editing while using the TomTom website, a work in prog ress...
The "My TomTom" website: Still needs a lot of work. I already had an account. It took a five (yes, five) logins to work. I would login, click a link and had to log in again. Every time I clicked a link, I had to log in again. The next thing I knew I had 6 browser tabs all open to the same page. This is the only way to update your GPS and add custom content.
Once I was finally logged-in, updates were detected. I downloaded the three updates and watched the status portion of the browser flash, change size, disappear, and finally stop with the blue status displaying only the top half, stating "Your navigation device is up to date. There are no updates waiting for installation." All the while in the other part of the screen displaying pending updates.
The included instructions for activating the lifetime map updates did not work - again, website issues. There is no place to enter the code! Plus the help screens sometimes calls it an activ ation code and other times a promotion code. The option is missing from the menu. I'm also forced to update my profile every few screens. It looks like TomTom has two different sites they are trying to merge and all the links have not been updated. After clicking on the "MyTomTom" menu literally 50 times, the "Activate Code" finally showed up - and the other screen issues cleared up as well. Time to enter the code. Or so I thought. I had to "connect the device" - although it was already connected because of the previous update. So I unplugged the GPS and plugged it in again. I was then able to enter the code. After doing this, I was forwarded to the update detection screen. It displayed the "No Updates" message and a status indicating the device needed updating and that updates would be done in 4 minutes. 5 seconds later, that message was gone. Sheesh.
I still give the device 5 stars, but the website gets 3. They really need to update it. Since they use the websi te to communicate with and update the GPS, this is no little thing. My other issue with this is that the TomTom software (even though it's web based) takes up 4meg of RAM whether the GPS is connected or not.
OK, back to the software update. It started at 24 minutes remaining. 5 minutes later it was at 6 hours and change. A couple of more minutes and it was at 1 hour, 15 minutes. Then it moved around between 45 minutes and 2 hours. I'm on a business class broadband connection - this bizarre download estimate is not from my end. The total time was closer to 30 minutes. After this was complete, it displayed that the update would take 2 hours and 22 minutes to update the GPS. Then it displayed 44 minutes. Then 22. Then 35. As I watched the display on the GPS (and monitor) it would constantly jump up and down. Really bizarre and very annoying. this is over a period of 20 minutes) It in fact took 1 hour 11 minutes. At the end it jumped from 8 minutes to 0.
Hopefully not everyone has these issues. Once I was past all these problems everything worked fine.
If you do have issues:
First try unplugging and plugging the GPS back in (as long as no updates are installing.)
Try a computer reboot.
Try a GPS reset - hold the power button in for 20 seconds.
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