SAT Nav Tom tom 710

[Keith T]

I'm sure there are various threads about Sat Nav, but I notice that teh Tom Tom Go710 is cur5rently on offer at most retails outlest at £279.99 (possibly £249.99 inc P&P on Dixons website).

Does anyone have experience of using this particular unit, are there any downsides, and what about setting up - is it easy to do oneself, or is there a dgood value in paying a 'shop' price (ie Halfords) to have the set up done for you? Any alternatiives at a similar price/ features?

Thanks.

[foxy]

Hi Keith I recently purchased the 710 and it has been brill, easy to use and includes europe street mapping. I paid £249 from currys but try this website www.globalpositioningsystems.co.uk as is typical I came accross it after I bought mine!

Foxy

[Keith T]

Hi Foxy

Thanks fo r this - the website looks extremely well priced - did you find the initial set-up easy, or did Currys do it at the store?

[Guest Frank Wilkinson]

Keith T - 2006-12-26 6:10 PM Hi Foxy Thanks fo r this - the website looks extremely well priced - did you find the initial set-up easy, or did Currys do it at the store?

I've a 910 and I found it very easy and intuitive to set up, although I do have satnav on my own and my wife's car, so I'm used to it to some degree. The nicest thing about mine, and I think that the 710 is the same, is that it's rechargeable so you can play with it and try all the different settings whilst sitting in your favourite armchair. No messing about in a cold garage whilst getting to know it!

Mine is excellent - it's simple to use and even tells me me of all fixed speed-cameras and even the sites where mobile cameras are regularly used. It also has a Bluetooth facility for hands-free mobile phone use.

One tip - apparently there's been a problem with the window mounting in that some of them droop. If you buy one the shop probably won't even know about it, but don't let that put you off. After you get it, visit the Tomtom main website http://www.tomtom.com/ and if you search a little you'll find reference to this. You enter the serial number of your model and if it's one with a dodgy mount they send a new one via UPS and it arrives in about three days - superb service I thought.

Thoroughly recommended!

[foxy]

Hello again Keith, I think Frank has answered all your questions. I can only reiterate that it was very simple to set up, but well worth the while, especially when trying to find French aires.

Foxy

[Way2Go]

Hi Keith,

I have the Tom Tom GO 510 which is identical to the 710 apart from having a different map.

The 710 comes with an SD card containing a single seemless map of the whole of Western Europe (including Great Britain of course).  The unit is easy to use and setting it up is a doddle.  In fact there is little to set up.

As Frank says, because you can remove it from your vehicle you can set up your routes and trips in a comfy chair then when you want to go on your trip, just connect it in the car, switch on and go.

As far as trip planning is concerned, you can set various destinations as Favourites.  These destinations can be Points of Interest (POI) or by using the map, an actual location.  Once found, make it a Favourite.

To set the route to the Favourite, click on the screen then select Navigate, select Favourite then select one from your list.  Once you get home again you can delete the Favourites and create some more for your next trip.

One of the things I use a lot is the Itinerary Planning facility.  This allows you to plan a trip to a particular destination.  You can then add a series of 'waypoints' along the way.  Maybe you want to go to a particular coastal town car park but have decided to go via a) a museum, b) that nice coastal road, c) that spectacular view, and d) that hypermarket to top up the drinks cabinet.

With Itinerary Planning you can design any trip you like and make each part along the way a 'waypoint' (so you are routed via this point - without stopping) or a 'destination' (so it will stop at this point.)  You can then elect to continue the trip whenever you are ready.

I won't ramble on with any more but I have to say the GO 710 is a great unit.

[Guest JudgeMental]

the problem with 710/910 is that they are a bit bulky - have a look at Garmin Nuvi range. also Garmin mapping is supposed to be better as well.

[Keith T]

Thanks for all these replies. Most helpful, and having looked at the models 'first hand' now, have gone for the T-T 910, as it seemd to offer all of the 720 features plus some extras, and only cost in the end another £20 (on the internet from Amazon), include the remote control. Bearing in mind the distance potentially from the unit mounting to the passnger/driver seats, this could well be useful to save streching too much when on the move. Thanks again to all.

[maggyd]

changed our 510 for 710 as first one had a fault BUT 710 was missing new stretch of A1 showing us driving over fields till back on new stretch. The new stretch was on the 510.

[Guest JudgeMental]

not only is the 910 bulky it has a 20 gig hard drive where most sat navs have solid state memory for reliability - this could be problematic in the future :-S

[Guest Frank Wilkinson]

JudgeMental - 2006-12-27 5:02 PM not only is the 910 bulky it has a 20 gig hard drive where most sat navs have solid state memory for reliability - this could be problematic in the future :-S

As a retailer who sells thousands of memory cards every year I can assure you that they are not without problems. Our advice to people wanting one gig of memory for instance, is to buy two 512MB cards so that if one fails there's always a backup.

Hard drives are becoming more and more reliable and I have personally never had one fail nor do I know of anyone else who has had one fail.

[Guest JudgeMental]

Frank Wilkinson - 2006-12-27 5:56 PM

 

Hard drives are becoming more and more reliable and I have personally never had one fail nor do I know of anyone else who has had one fail.

 

Is that not because they normally spend there life sitting on a desk?

 

Heres a link to a good GPS forum:

 

http://www.pocketgpsworld.com/menu.php

[Dave Newell]

Surely if people need 1 Gig of memory and SD cards are not 100 % reliable then the advice ought to be to buy 4X512MB or 2X1GB for backup purposes. Hardd drives and memory are becoming more reliable by the day almost but I know personally of several people who have had hard drive failures over the last five years, one was a business man who TWICE lost important data because of a lack of backup. Whichever type of memory is used you would be wise to backup the data stored on it in some other medium.

 

D.

[kelly58]

Thanks for info just ordered 710 off dixons website £ 249.95 post paid a good deal .i have just retired and had to leave my tom tom 510 in the lorry for the new driver it so easy to use just been waiting for a good price to appear and as we have just bought a new motorhome and intend to tour europe in the spring it will be a great aid

best regards kelly :->

[Guest Frank Wilkinson]

Dave Newell - 2006-12-27 6:28 PM Surely if people need 1 Gig of memory and SD cards are not 100 % reliable then the advice ought to be to buy 4X512MB or 2X1GB for backup purposes. Hardd drives and memory are becoming more reliable by the day almost but I know personally of several people who have had hard drive failures over the last five years, one was a business man who TWICE lost important data because of a lack of backup. Whichever type of memory is used you would be wise to backup the data stored on it in some other medium. D.

It's not a question of people 'needing' 1 gig of memory but of those who are wanting to buy one gig. If someone goes on holiday with just one card and it fails whilst they are miles from anywhere then they are snookered. But if they have a spare they can at least carry on until they can replace it. If you have say, two 512mb cards we would advise using one until it's half full and then switching. If the second card fails they can always go back to the first.

This policy started when memory was six times the price that it is now and people couldn't necessarily afford lots of spare cards but to some extent it still holds good. There are still people who buy one large card and take just that and we try to point out that this is not sensible.

Apart from which I was simply pointing out that memory cards can fail and often do and whilst hard drives can also fail they are far more robust and reliable than they were some years ago. And of course not all computers sit on desks, laptops are bounced around all the time and I've had three without any problem.

As for the chap who lost all his data twice I would have thought that he'd have had the sense to institute some kind of backup procedure after the first occurence! My business is totally computer-dependent and all data is backed up twice a day to a remote site. Even if you back up to a separate hard drive in your office, that's pretty useless if your building burns down!

[Guest JudgeMental]

I appreciate that hard drive reliability is improving but use in small GPS devices is relatively unheard off. I carry 3 memory cards with my Garmin although in 2 units over 6 years have had no problems. what do you do if the hard drive crashes in a GPS?. I have same unit as Ewan Mc Gregor and Charly Boorman used on their "around the world the long way" motorbike trip. would be interested to see how a 910 would cope with that kind of punishment.

 

 

I sell nothing, have no product to push and my only interest is as a consumer... wanted to upgrade last year as my unit has no POI capability. 910 interested me because it had USA maps. but what initially put me of is the TT windscreen mount (from a security perspective) I prefer the Garmin bean bag mount which leaves no trace of presence on screen and can be easily hidden or moved to another vehicle. also with mapsource you can plan journeys on your computer although I see that you can now do this with TT as well.

 

TT seem to have a monopoly at the moment based on price dropping, their maps are not as good as others use. There fixing system is flawed in concept from a security perspective and they are bulky.

 

I suggest people look at the new range of more up to date units from Magellan/ Navtec/garmin....

 

I personally favour the NUVI at the moment, as it is compact enough to carry in your pocket and can be used while walking around a city sightseeing etc...

 

But maybe TT will come out with something new themselves it cant be long now :-D

[david lloyd]

I would also like to change soon from my current arrangment of tomtom navigator 2 (running on an O2 xda) and have been attracted to the Garmin Nuvi 360 or 660 because it has a hrad drive, can be used outside the vehicle, is much smaller than the tomtom go series etc.

 

However, the tomtom one europe seems to offer many of these functions at a more competitive price - how do they compare?

 

Regards, David

[Guest JudgeMental]

david lloyd - 2006-12-28 2:36 PM

 

have been attracted to the Garmin Nuvi 360 or 660 because it has a hard drive,

 

Mmm.. I dont think so, 660 has 2 gb solid state memory and SD card slot

 

 

Best wishes Eddie

 

 

[david lloyd]

Thanks for the correction Eddie - I suppose I was trying to distinguish between some sort of built in memory and the removeable SD card type - the finer differences between hard drives and solid state memory are lsot on me. In my own simple way I just thought that having a built in memory would be one less thing to remember or do something with when using the satnav!!

 

I would still be interested in anyone's views on the comparison between the TomTom One Europe and the Garmin Nuvi 360/660 though.

 

Regards, David

 

 

[Guest JudgeMental]

For you TT nuts :-D

 

some great prices: 910 for under £300

 

http://www.dixons.co.uk/martprd/editorial/TomTom+GPS+Sat+Nav+Devices?camp_id=ppc_tomtom

[Guest JudgeMental]

David

 

I have been looking at TT One reviews and it looks interesting...

 

It has latest SiRFStarIII Chipset which is good, and unlike other TT kit if you get Europe model it uses Navtec maps even better!

 

and at these dixons prices....

 

USA maps can be had for 100 Euro so I may become a TT convert after all :-D

[Way2Go]

There are several differences between the TomTom GO510/710 and the TomTom ONE that you might also want to consider before making a purchase:-

TomTom GO510/710

4" widescreen; 480x272 pixels; 400Mhz CPU with 64Mb RAM

TomTom ONE

3.5" screen (square screen); 320x240 pixels; 266 Mhz CPU with 32 Mb RAM

[Guest JudgeMental]

I appreciate it is smaller, one of the things which is putting me of as my eyes aren't that great - will have to try one.

 

not sure but I don't think 510 has latest SiRFStar III Chipset, but 710 and One do...

 

"One Europe" model has full european mapping and SD slot takes bigger cards.

 

But one Europe model has "navteq" mapping which is much better and it fits in your pocket - which extends usability and security considerably.

[Way2Go]

JudgeMental - 2006-12-29 5:51 PM . . . . not sure but I don't think 510 has latest SiRFStar III Chipset, but 710 and One do... "

The GO510 and GO710 are identical in every way except the map which is supplied.

The ONLY difference between them is the 510 comes with Great Britain and the Major Roads of Europe (which means you get all GB roads but only the main roads across Europe).

Whereas the 710 comes with the whole of Western Europe (including GB of course) which means you get all the roads of Europe on one seemless map.

That is the ONLY difference between them.

[JENIAN]

Just purchased a Garmin 660 from Halfords £345.99. A brilliant piece of Kit. European mapping, Bloothtooth enabled for hands free phoning, traffic allerts and detour round problems on the road. Garmin website support very good too. Can also be used on a cycle or walking.