94 of 94 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A really remarkable accomplishment; but ...., August 30, 2006
This review is from: TomTom GO 510 4-Inch Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator (Electronics)
I have been using my TT 510 for more than a month, with over 2000 miles of local and cross-country travel, mostly without the need for a map. Our family now has three of them, all working properly right out of the box, and we love them.
But the manual is sparse and not indexed. Some of the data entry procedures are peculiar and require experimenting to get right. (If in doubt, or you can't find a particular icon, back up a couple of steps.) There are some amusing program quirks: a "Main Street" address may throw you into a nearby town, rather than the one you have specified! That happened to us in two different locations in Massachusetts, once from Concord (to Acton) and once from Reading (to Tewksbury).
The data base entry for the Chesapeake Bay Bridge/Tunnel must have been a little wrong, because the display showed us moving along in the water parallel to the bridges, despite good signals! The unit repeatedly recalculated the route while trying to deal with that problem. A similar thing happened on the Wright Bridge, eastbound on Rt 158 to the Outer Banks of NC. Amazingly, the TT projected our motion through the tunnels without receiving any signal, plotted out "progress" on the display, and instantly found our location again as we emerged!
The TT does not always respect numbered routes, and sometimes put us on local roads through residential neighborhoods when the path seemed to be a little straighter than the official highway. In local traffic there were a couple of inexplicable times when it directed us into the wrong lane for an approaching turn. The projected arrival times are sometimes quite accurate, but in some cases have been very wrong for no apparent reason.
On a couple of occasions when a unit did hang up, we reset it, but had to use a sharp pin or a thin needle because a paper clip doesn't fit into the tiny (and well hidden) reset hole. My wife once borrowed an earring from someone nearby to reset hers, and now keeps a safety pin stuck in the cloth case!
The windshield mount works well when you remember to retract the clamping ring when setting the suction cup, and then to tighten the clamping ring fully, and the TT is easy to fit to the mount once you learn to thrust it deep enough onto the stem.
Those minor nuisances aside, we love the TomTom. The display is easy to use and brilliantly arranged for driver convenience. I give this amazing product 5 stars because I would not hesitate to get another one, and most of what it does is just fantastic! It has been especially valuable for finding unfamiliar local addresses and for getting onto and off of Interstate Routes in unfamiliar places, normally a special pain for cross-country travel. When you deliberately depart from your planned route for a detour or a different plan, the TT quickly recalculates a route for you without really cursing, so we have had no difficulty that way.
One remarkable feature of the display is the way it shows nearby streets and roads that are hidden behind trees, as along the Jersey Turnpike and some of the other highways that are landscaped to appear isolated.
We found telephone support available and very helpful when we needed it once. We picked this GPS unit partly because it is compatible with our Mac computers, but haven't yet had occasion to hook it to one.
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