TomTom ONE 130 3.5Inch Portable GPS Navigator

Piece of junk, horrible warranty service
Rating:1 out of 5 stars
TomTom is without any doubt the WORSE GPS unit/ Customer service / Warranty service of ANY GPS manufacturer.

My first TomTom the on/off switch was so flimsy it would turn the unit on by itself while it was sitting in the car or on a desk. TomTom finally replaced that one under warranty, but the reconditioned repair they sent runs out of battery power after 45 minutes without being plugged in. When turned off fully charged, the battery will be completely dead within a week WITHOUT the unit being turned on.

I called TomTom customer service, and their warranty department tells me they WILL NOT WARRANTY REPLACE a GPS unit that runs at least 30 minutes under battery power. Also, they told me it was normal for their GPS units to run the battery down within a week WHILE TURNED OFF, and will only replace it under warranty if the battery dies completely within 2-3 days while the unit is turned off.

To recap, TomTom warranty says a fully charged battery only lasts 30 minutes, and a fully charged battery will die after 2-3 days with the TomTom GPS TURNED OFF.

So, if you want to be like me and have a hundred dollar paperweight after purchasing it only 10 months ago, buy this GPS for yourself, or even as a gift! Otherwise, I would avoid this manufacturers products entirely.

Arthur Penrose

p.s. TomTom customer service, if you are reading this, my case number for the facts in this review is 091006-000350. I would not want anyone to think I was making any of this up.

No luck with TomTom 130-S saying the street names
Rating:1 out of 5 stars
I am very disappointed. I received the first one and it did not say the street names, so a replacement had to be obtained. Again! It did NOT speak the street names. This is very frustrating because I did a lot of research before deciding to buy this item to then have all this hassle.

Easy to operate and update.
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
Tom Tom’s 130S GPS is easy to operate and update.The sound helps a lot when driving in heavy traffic. Software Tom Tom Home is perfect. Just the case is not so good (Tom Tom’s logo falled from the strap and got lost).

Great when it actually worked
Rating:3 out of 5 stars
I bought this back in early June and had nothing but problems with it. I always had problems with it turning on. It never actually just turned on when hitting the power button, I always had to do the hard reset. It never came one when it wasn’t plugged in either. When it did come on, it took so long to find the satellites. I will say this, the software is very user friendly and I had no problem figuring out how to use it. Earlier this week, it just stopped working all together. The store I bought it at was nice enough to take it back and give me a full refund. I don’t think I’ll be buying another TomTom.

Easy to use – with a grain of salt
Rating:3 out of 5 stars

Positves:

Inexpensive

Incredibly easy to use

Handy

Accurate

Ready to send you on an adventure, if that’s your kind of thing

Negatives:

Ridiculous logic for choosing some routes

Small screen

Lacking some features of more expensive units, of course.

I’m a truck driver and I received this budget-priced GPS unit as part of a safety award.

I played with it driving around locally in Houston in my personal vehicle. Even though I am quite familiar with the city, the novelty and new perspective of the maps helped me get around a wee bit better – without using the TomTom for routing.

Ah, the routing.

Since I drive to new places for a living, I am acutely aware of the concept of “bad directions.” The TomTom doesn’t necessarily give bad directions, it just seems to smoke crack before giving any directions – especially on long distance drives and especially for the first couple of routes offered.

Locally it is pretty hard to screw up a route- in the end traveling via street “A” is usually not very different than street “B.” The maps are accurate and detailed which is the most important quality of a GPS.

Long-distance? You’ll be well-advised to Google or MapQuest your trip first.

For instance: Today I drove from Houston, TX to Amarillo, TX – a drive of approximately 600 miles. The logical, fastest, easiest, and most obvious route for anyone to take is I-45 North to Dallas and across to Ft. Worth on I-20 to US287 North all the way to Amarillo. Look at a map. Sure, you could vary the route between Dallas and Ft. Worth and use 1-30 or something if you wanted to. Whatever.

(Using the default, “fastest route” setting from Houston to Amarillo.)

First route Suggested by TomTom: I-45 to Dallas, I-35 to Oklahoma City (!), I-40 to Amarillo. WTF?

Okay, let’s have it recalculate.

Second route: I-10 WAAAAAYYYYY out west past Fort Stockton to I-20 and then all the way back east to Big Spring, US87 up to Lubbock and I-27 to Amarillo. No good. Laughable, in fact.

I tried some others and they got weirder and weirder. The closest TomTom came was suggesting I-20 from Dallas to Abilene and up US84 to Lubbock and then on to Amarillo on I-27. Not a terrible route, just a bit longer. Maybe TomTom likes the scenery of the Caprock and the Llano Estacado.

You can modify offered routes via points of interest, points on the map, and pretty much any other way you want. You can also plan a route step-by-step. For most GPS users, however, it would be best if TomTom just gave you a decent route to begin with.

Okay, let’s drive my way and see how it recalculates after you start driving.

Once you pass the route/exit TomTom wants you to take, it is DEAD SET for about 5-10 minutes on turning you around via whatever road is available. This is good in that it accurately knows your position and wants to help you get back on track, not so good if you don’t want to drive through the ghetto or on some back road.

Even after TomTom begrudgingly accepts that you are staying on the road you are on (at least for a while) it will STILL try to navigate you back to another, convoluted route – usually towards its original.

You can force it to plan a new route for you from your current position, of course. This new route may or may not be better than the original TomTom suggested. It also may or may not have anything to do with your route, or reality for that matter.

Okay, lets change the settings and force the shortest route, recalculating on the fly. Ooooooooh. TomTom already knows you’re not going to like this. Quoth TomTom: “Research has shown that the ‘Shortest’ route is not usually as safe as the “Quickest” route, as well as taking longer and being less fuel efficient.”

Heh-heh.

TomTom will try to squeeze every 1/10th of a mile off your route. It’ll suggest taking exit ramps through lights and through neighborhoods to cut between long, curving sections of highway. It’ll have you taking ranch roads between cotton fields instead of the junction of two highways 1.5 miles ahead. It’ll try to route you through downtown. I’m suprised TomTom didn’t suggest cutting through the supermarket parking lot at the corner.

Whether you use your route or its route, TomTom has no concept of driving time. A good rule of thumb is a 60mph average speed. Going near the speed limit and not stopping unless absolutely necessary, you can average 60-65 miles per hour over a long trip. 60mph makes for easy math. 600 mile trip? 10 hours driving time. TomTom estimated 12.5 driving hours. 240 mile trip? 4 hours. TomTom will tell you 5.5 driving hours. TomTom is a slow driver, apparently.

In summary, if you want to know where you are, the TomTom is wonderfully accurate and the maps have plenty of detail when you zoom in. If you want to plan a route yourself and enter it into TomTom, by all means do it and TomTom will let you know exactly where you are and where to go next.

If you want to trust TomTom to navigate for you on that next road trip, either bring your sense of adventure and more money for fuel or double-check the offered route.

Get one of the other TomTom products
Rating:3 out of 5 stars
This was the 4th TomTom product that I’ve purchased. I’ve had a TomTom One (orig) with maps of N. America and have been extremely pleased with it’s performance in the US (Gulf Coast, Central, Rockies, Western) and in western Canada. A fantastic tool for the money. When my godchild graduated from college and was off to med school in a distant city, the TomTom One was my choice for her gift, and she seems thrilled with it (even though she later bought a car equipped with OnStar, she uses TomTom regularly). When I was temporarily assigned to our offices in Scotland for a couple of months, I found that I could have a TomTom ONE, with UK/W.Europe maps, delivered to our offices there for roughly the same price as merely purchasing another e-map for my existing TomTom, so I ordered my own personal 2nd TomTom ONE.

So… when my youngest daughter graduated from college this May, also moving to med school roughly a 1000 miles away, TomTom seemed the natural gift. I found that I could buy this 130S model with spoken street names, case, adapters, etc. for roughly what I’d paid for the original TomTom ONEs. That and the integral bracket seemed ideal for a person in a small vehicle, not particularly experienced in driving in other states.

Overall, the TomTom 130S is acceptable, but the speaker (though it has a larger grille than on my orig ONEs) is dramatically sub-par, particularly with the two computer generated voices (which are the only ones that announce street names). You can get somewhat better clarity with the other, “human voices”, but have to give up the street name announcement.

I’m hoping that I can come up with a means, either thru a phone jack or the USB if there is no phone jack (I don’t remember) to provide output via her car speakers, in hopes that it will be better.

However, the general function and accuracy is still quite satisfactory (one should NEVER rely solely on ANY GPS receiver -a map or basic familiarity is a necessity, particularly if there is a problem with signal quality in the area -or if the unit simply quits working. In the UHaul truck I was driving to move her, the cig lighter jack didn’t work, so once the built-in battery of my ONE discharged, I had nothing.)

I would recommend the original TomTom ONE, or similar units from TomTom.

Ok for the price, but not great
Rating:3 out of 5 stars
I just moved to a new city with a new job that has me traveling, so a GPS was almost a necessity. I went with the TomTom ONE 130-S because of the price, and because reviews said it was a great value (once they fixed the volume issue).

The pros:

Screen is easy to read, computer voice is easy to hear and understand, portability is great (attachment folds up against the unit, there’s no base unit in the car).

The cons:

Two major problems. Screens are easy to navigate, BUT, it won’t accept certain address formats. Some suburbs around Chicago have addresses in the form of “111W22 33rd St”, and it absolutely will not allow you to enter a direction (letter) in the middle of the number.

The other major problem is the program that creates the route. It does great getting you close to the destination, but when you get there, it will surprisingly often tell you to pass your destination, go a mile, then take you on a big loop through some other streets, ending up going back the way you came, finally stopping at your destination on the second or even third pass. It literally had me do a big, 3 mile figure 8 yesterday, passing my destination twice before it actually said to turn in.

In the end, I would recommend this model for someone who only wants to have it as a backup, who won’t be using it all the time. It’s inexpensive and usually works fine. But if you’re using a GPS daily like me, you’ll probably wish you’d gone with a higher quality model.