Tom Tom and Magellan Differences

Ok, this has been stored in my flash drive for almost two months now and I haven’t posted it because there were other things to talk about. Just keep in mind that these are older products and not even last year’s models.

I hinted at this purchase briefly in my post about Black Friday shopping. Well, I happened to order a refurbished Tom Tom XXL GPS which has a bigger screen than my old Magellan Roadmate (5 inches as opposed to 3.5 inches). Why I ordered it when I hardly used the old one, I can’t really justify other than wanting a bigger screen and the cost was too good to pass up. There was also no sales tax plus free shipping.

When the product arrived, I set it up, downloaded the latest updates, then tried it on my way to work. The first thing I noticed was that it wasn’t announcing the street names the way the old Magellan did. It was actually better to read the text directions because you can see which street is the next turn. The problem with that is you have to divert your eyes off the road briefly to read the directions. Of course, the device would still say turn left or right at the next street and announces how many yards to go before the turn. The Magellan would give a 2 mile and 1 mile warning, announce the upcoming street name at which to turn, then makes dinging sound when you reach it. Well, at first try, I was disappointed with the Tom Tom because of this lack of street name announcements. Wow, did I make a mistake in buying this? Maybe I’ll discover better functions later.

Upon further review and after fiddling around with the settings, I found out that I had programmed the device to use human voice for directions rather than a computer voice. That was the difference, the human voice only gave turn by turn directions without announcing the street names while the computer voice, which was a bigger file, announced the street names. That takes care of that problem.

One difference I noticed is that the keypad for the Tom Tom is in QWERTY format while the Magellan is A to Z format. Maybe the newer Magellans are now QWERTY, I don’t know. Another difference between the two: when I divert from the suggested route, the Magellan announces “recalculating route” while the Tom Tom just shows this in text on the screen. There is another advantage that the Tom Tom has. It doesn’t need a separate mounting bracket because it already has a foldable one at the back. You just unfold it then attach it to the mounting disk on the dashboard. I still have to take it through its paces of course but as far as first impressions, I think it was a good buy. Anyone wanna buy the Magellan Roadmate? 

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My Second GPS Experience

About three weeks ago I wrote about my first automobile GPS experience, which wasn’t a good one. I have since returned the device to the manufacturer and they sent me a replacement last week. It was also refurbished like the first one and it even included an SD memory card which the previous owner probably forgot to remove. But first, let me tell you an error I made while returning the original unit. I misunderstood the verbal instructions given to me by customer service and instead of keeping the mounting device (the parts used to attach the unit to the car’s dashboard), I sent it back as well. So when I received the replacement unit, I didn’t have anything to attach it to my car with. It was back to exchanging emails with customer service and I was told that they would send me back the parts but I would have to pay Fedex for the shipment. What other choice did it have? Buying a new set of parts would have cost more than the shipment price, so I agreed to the terms of the company. A few days later and $10.00 poorer, I received the parts and was finally able to mount the GPS unit on my car. That didn’t stop me from trying to use the device beforehand though. I charged the battery, upgraded the software, set the device in the cup holder and off I went driving to and from work with it. Surprisingly, even though the unit was a couple of feet below the windshield, it detected the GPS satellites very well. I then programmed my home and a couple of other addresses into the unit, and on Saturday morning, took it through its paces again. I input the location where I was meeting a friend for a run, and later where the family had the surprise birthday for my aunt. This time the GPS unit hummed along and performed perfectly, and didn’t have the problem of it turning on and off unexpectedly like the first one. So now, despite having to pay for shipping back the first one and for getting back the missing parts, I’m quite happy with this second GPS experience. With the free SD memory card, I ended up breaking even. It’s a keeper! (***Read the original post here: http://noeldlp.blogspot.com/2010/02/my-first-gps-experience.html)

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