TT GO 720 vs Garmin Nuvi 650

Hello,

Quick question to all you TT GO 720 owners:
I am in a market to buy a new GPS (haven't owned one before) and I have narrowed it down to two: 720 or Nuvi 650? I know this might be biased since I am on a TomTom website, but I wanted to get Your input why would you prefer 720 over 650.

I bought my girlfriend TT One 3rd Ed and we used it for the first time on our trip to Pittsburgh, PA. I do have to say that this "little" thing is just awesome! I haven't played around a lot with it, other than messing with various 2D/3D settings, day vs night, and alternative routes. And I was extremely impressed! I am so impressed that I am thinking about getting one for myself (but a bit bigger ). That said, I did a bit of review on TT GO 720 and I'm getting mixed reviews.

So here's what I was able to gather on both units (PROS and CONS):

TT 720
PROS:

• Information on the display (time, distance, etc)
• 2D maps (static and dynamic)
• Ability to customize maps (?)
• Avoid parts of the road
• Multiple trip planning
• Bluetooth
• Ability to add additional maps (like EU maps to US unit)

CONS:

• Various bugs (like shutdowns, etc)
• Software use (apparently)
• TT Customer Service (including internet)
• POI are not sorted (can't pick "Italian" under food)
• Cannot call the place directly from the Unit (apparently)

Nuvi 650
PROS:

• Name/brand (but this might be due to marketing)
• Display (clarity)
• Customer Service
• POI are sorted
• Better maps/data (apparently)
• No knows issues with software/hardware

CONS:

• Has to be plugged into the mount
• Antenna has to be flipped open
• No ability to customize maps
• Maps are costly
• Less info on display (Vs TT)
• No North direction arrow

Even with all the "glitches" I am leaning toward TT since I was really impressed with my girlfriend's TT ONE 3rd, but I just hope that those glitches won't come back and bite me in the rear...

Can some of you TT GO720 Users/Owners shed some light as to what made you pick 720 versus some other brand/model? What do you really like/dislike about your gadget? Is it accurate? Have you compared it to other units?

I know I am asking a lot but those are the questions that many were not able to answer... My friends say "Go with Garmin! It's wayyyy better," but they can't really provide adequate reasoning.

Again, sorry about this super long post, but I hope You will be able to provide some valid information.

Thanks,
-Sam

I drove around 12,000 miles with a Nuvi 650, had a TomTom720 for a week, and have now switched to a TomTom 920 which I've had for about a month. The 920 is very similar to the 720 hardware except it has European maps, more internal memory and a sensor for dead reckoning.

Here are a few random observations for you:

? Screen on the 650 is definitely easier to see in bright sunlight, but the TomTom screen doesn't particularly bother me. The resolution and size are the same for both products. In a Garmin forum people are complaining the the screens on more recently made Nuvi's are not as good as the older ones (of the same model).

? The 650 doesn't support custom routes. A route can only consist of a destination and one stop along the way (waypoint). This is a huge difference from the 720 which has "Itineraries" which you can custom build, save and edit. You cannot save or load routes at all with the 650. Garmin has addressed this on the Nuvi 750 however, which is usually less expensive than the 650 and might be a better unit to compare with TomTom.

? In my area I don't see much difference between the Garmin and TomTom maps. I like the way the TomTom maps show which direction one way streets go.

? The 650 (and all Garmin units) can use a variety of other map products, like topographic maps. TomTom only has one set of street maps.

? There's very little which you can customize on the Nuvi 650. The 720, and all TomToms have lots of options for different color schemes, which data to display on screen, etc. There are also 3rd party programs which run on the TomTom (although buggy under the new operating system) wheras Garmin units are "closed." There are lots of things which can be hacked on the TomToms due to the Linux base.

? You cannot turn off auto-zoom on any of the Garmin Nuvi's, so your view will zoom in and out as you travel. On the 720 you can disable autozoom.

? The Nuvi's allow you to set different levels of map detail (most/more/normal/less, etc) but there is no such setting on the TomTom. So if you zoom out you the smaller streets start to disappear from the display. In Browse Map mode on the TomTom you can still see the small streets however.

? Don't understand you comment about the 650 having to be in the cradle. It also has an internal battery and works fine without the cradle. But the Nuvi cradles is a big improvement over all the separate plugs which you have to connect to the TomTom.

? The 650 will turn on when you start your car if desired, the 720 will not.

? The 720 is much faster at zooming, rotating and scrolling the map and the screen updates more rapidly in 3d mode as you drive. The 650 screen tends to move in 'jerks'. The Browse Map function on the TomTom is also much more responsive than the Nuvi. When you drag the map around on the 650 there is a delay while it redraws the screen.

? There is no way to make the 650 avoid specific roads. On the TomTom you can block roads selectively using the Correct Map feature. And you can also create custom routes (itineraries) to use the streets you want.

? The 'quick fix' feature on the TomTom has worked really well for me. I can get a GPS fix immediately in downtown Philadelphia whereas my Nuvi 650 would often take several minutes.

There are other things, but these should provide you with a little food for thought. If you're considering Garmin, look at the Nuvi 750 since it has custom routing and will also save/display your track with the TomTom's don't.

Here's what it comes down to for me. Price. Right now at Sam's Club you can get the TT Go 720 for 349. Nuvi 650 is a little over 100 dollar more. On top of that, it's got a 100% Satisfaction garentee through Sam's. I've got the 720, and for all it's cons, and as much as I try I can't seem to move to Garmin. I've spent a couple of hours in front of the Garmin 750, (not not the 650 but the upgrade to the 650), playing with it's features, looking at route demos, ect.

It cames down to several things for me. First, as much as I try to I can't get over the display on the Garmins. The maps look like a 5 year old took some magic markers and drew the maps. On top of that if you look at the nuvi forums, a lot of people complain about the redraw rates on the 600 series. I've heard that's been fixed in the 700 series nuvis but from what I saw at Sam's Club, it's still pretty slow. Also many have said that the internal antenna in the 700 series had problems keeping a GPS fix. There's a huge thread on the 700 series at pocketgpsworld.

Second, lack of features. Dollar for dollar, the 720 has more features than the 650. Plain and simple.

Believe me, I tried really hard to find a reason to take back my Go 720 and use a Garmin. They have many more POIs. Some of that can be fixed with custom POIs, and it might just be the fact that I live in Alabama, and well....how many "real" POIs are there in Alabama , but I always walked out with my 720 in hand.

As for your cons:

-Various bugs (like shutdowns, etc)
I haven't seen any since the last software upgrade

-TT Customer Service (including internet)
I've had really good luck with them...just be patient and knowledgeable.

-POI are not sorted (can't pick "Italian" under food)
Nothing you can do about that.

-Cannot call the place directly from the Unit (apparently)
That's not true. I've used it. Matter of fact I've created my own POI files and formatted them to do this very thing.


Hope this helps.

Thank you both for your insights! They were really helpful.

Boyd, although you mentioned Nuvi 750 vs TT 720 due to similar features (as it might be a bit more fair comparison), the cheapest 750 I found sells for about $460 where TT 720 is $100 less (Nuvi 650 is about $320).

I read online that Nuvi 650 has to be plugged into the cradle in order to work (i.e., you are not able to put it on your windshield since the cradle is cannot be mounted on the glass and in order to use the power from the cig plug, you have to connect the cable to the cradle then you have to set your Nuvi in the cradle in order to get power).

Given that there's a large TT community out there, I would assume I would be "able to find some maps online" if I desire to put some EU maps on TT.

It sounds like TT might be the way to go. Obviously it has some "flaws," but it seems like it might be a better bang-for-the-buck...


ajsasr,
I spent roughly 6 months in AL so I definitely know what you mean by "lack fo POIs" However, what is your take/experience with BT feature? I read online (http://www.gpsreview.net/tomtom-720/) that BT does not work that well... someone had to exchange his 720 6 (yes, SIX) times in order to get the that works well (I hope Sam's Club has a good return policy if this the case). Also, are you able to use your car's speakers (since it has built-in FM transmitter) or do you have to rely on TT? If so, does it sound "good" (enough to carry a conversation)? I honestly hate being on the phone (ESP when I AM DRIVING), but sometimes when you're on the road for 3-4h, you do have to call-in for a meeting/work...

Again, thank you both for your insights. They are very helpful.

Cheers,
-Sam

BT works just fine on my 720. It works great with my iphone as far as hands free calling pairs every time I power the unit on no problems whatsoever. I have a nuvi 350 which is basically the exact same thing as a 650 just a smaller screen. The only thing I like more with my nuvi is its POI category layout, and the TTS. Even though the 720's TTS is good as well, I like how the nuvi presents it better it seems more refined.

I prefer the 720's map layout and how super fast the processor is. With my nuvi I have to wait several minutes sometimes as it searches for certain POI's (i've read everywhere the nuvi 750/760 is even slower yikes!) whereas my GO 720 finds POI's instantaneously.

Also, my 720 is FAR quicker in acquiring a GPS signal than my nuvi. Sometimes with my nuvi I have to wait several minutes (one time 10 minutes!) for it to acquire a signal whereas my 720 I literally wait 10 seconds if even.

The map refresh rate on Tomtom's is far superior to Garmin's. My nuvi's car icon will skip along (sometimes causing me to miss a turn on close streets because its behind) whereas the GO 720 glides along gracefully and is more accurate on my immediate position traveling 30+ mph.

The customization comparisons between the two are like night and day. With Garmin you're stuck with the purple route and their map colors. With TomTom you can easily customize the map color scheme and even the orientation of the status bars and what is displayed.

I know I sound like a TomTom salesman, but its just that I'm sold on TT now and its my new standard. Garmin needs to make some changes in my opinion, most importantly for me the ability to exclude roads after route calculation and an easier way to travel or avoid toll roads if desired each route instead of going through 5 options each time.

I had a Nuvi 750 and a TT720 over the past week and a half - both have pretty serious (in my mind for the money) flaws and I ended up returning both and I'm gonna wait and see what the companies come up with for the next-gen...

Here's my thoughts on both:

Nuvi 750:

Liked:

- The look of the display with the vivid colors and the edge antialiasing on the roads and text. Much easier to look at and read than the TT.

- Optimization function on their multi-destination routing. You can enter a bunch of places and then have it calculate the most efficient way to drive between them. This would be an absolutely awesome feature for someone like a delivery driver or even if you were on vacation in a city and looking to see the most things in a given period of time etc...

- TTS sounded much better to me on this vs. the 720 - it has a ton of TTS capable voices to choose from too - both male and female in American, Australian and British English accents. The TT is much more limited for TTS voices. It was even getting the Spanish street names here (Phoenix) right, which the TT really didn't.

- The fastest time routing engine. The 750 did a much better job of making routes that made sense based on my knowledge of what's actually the fastest way to get around in Phoenix. On one particular route the TT made went via surface streets when there was a major freeway artery right there in the same area - made absolutely no sense to do that.

Disliked:

- Lack of customization. There's almost nothing as far as preferences or additional parameters to display on the screen etc. What you see in the store is what you get. I really wish they'd allow an advanced mode that would let you put more things on screen like speed, heading, altitude etc...

- Essential functions buried in layers of menus. Brightness is the major one - on the 750 you have to hit Menu, then Settings, then Display, then Brightness to get to the adjustment screen. That's unacceptable to me, it should be a hidden tap spot right on the map screen imo. TT had this issue to a lesser degree too (isn't as many taps to reach it). TT got it right with volume though, one tap on the turn direction field brings up a volume slider. I'd actually prefer hardware dials on the side of the unit for both volume and brightness I think. I also think the function to switch between 2D and 3D maps should be right there on the first menu screen too. You can do this on the TT with the Quick Menu.

- The Detour function. The algorithm simply detours around the current leg of your route, which causes a very obvious problem if that leg happens to be a long one on a freeway. I tried it on I-10 going to Tucson in an attempt to get around a traffic jam south of Phoenix and it tried to route me extremely far out of the way on rural roads because it has no options for how long of a detour you want etc. To be fair TT doesn't have that either, but its function seemed to at least try to get you back to the freeway after a while.

- Slow redraw. I know this comes as a result of the prettier graphics though.

- No POI's displayed in 3D view, very small and hard to see in 2D view. TT definitely wins here.

TomTom 720:

Liked:

- The massive customization ability. Garmin really needs to offer options like the TT has for how the status bar is oriented, what's on it, what the TTS says and doesn't say etc.

- Mapshare. I'm betting all the other major GPS companies copy this feature shortly. It's really great. I was in Tucson last week where 12 major exits on I-10 are all closed for 3 years for construction - the Garmin kept trying to put me on those because it didn't know about the closures, but the TT did because people had marked them on Mapshare. Allowing users to make changes like this is a really great idea since it takes the year+ wait for Navteq or TeleAtlas to update the map out of the equation. I'm not even sure they would update the map for stuff like long term construction anyways.

- Satellite reception. The TT was very noticeably stronger inside my house and acquired reception faster. I'm betting this has something to do with the QuickGPS thing that downloads the Ephemeris data online that tells it where to look for the satellites instead of having to receive it from the satellites themselves.

- POI's show on the 3D map, sometimes with actual company logos.

Disliked:

- Lack of UI polish. It just doesn't look as nice on screen as the Garmin does. The map drawing is aliased (jagged lines on the edges of roads) and has rather drab color schemes to my eyes. The text is also much harder to read I think.

- Address entry. The TT forces you to chose a city/town before you can enter an address. This would be OK if it had some way of also searching surrounding towns, but it seems to be very rigid. For example there's a part of northwest Tucson called Casas Adobes - it's technically a different city but everyone there considers it to really still be part of Tucson, there's no dividing line or anything and there are addresses there that would still be written as Tucson. The TT will not find anything there if you choose Tucson as the city, you have to enter Casas Adobes, which I think a lot of people wouldn't even know. The Garmin found those places with Tucson selected because it appears to take the surrounding suburbs etc into account.

- POI database. A ton of stuff right around my house was in the Garmin, but not in the TT. The formatting is really bad too - restaurants and the like aren't categorized by type of cuisine, and the naming and capitalization etc is really inconsistent.

I noticed one really bad safety related thing involving this too - the "Hospital" category under "Help Me!" included a ton of regular doctor's offices and auxillary places that aren't locations you'd actually go to if you needed emergency medical care. The hospitals themselves aren't actually named right either - for instance the closest hospital just north of me here is called "Osborn Hospital, Scottsdale Campus" and in the TT it shows up like 3 pages down called just "Scottsdale campus" with about 5 attached auxiliary places that aren't the actual hospital surrounding it. This is a really big issue to me as I have a couple medical conditions that could conceivably require me to use this function while on the road. The Garmin had the example above right and it was the first entry when I hit their version of the Help Me function.

As an aside on both units - I really do not understand why they're wasting time with picture viewers, mp3 players, language guides, cellphone functions etc... I have my phone, my laptop, my iPod etc for these things and they all do those functions far better than a GPS unit ever will. I really think they should stick to making their navigation functions as good as they can be instead of adding all this extraneous stuff that I'm not buying the device for.

Overall, I think it's just a mixed bag with these units right now. From what I read, these are two of the best units on the market, and I still found a ton of things that I didn't like about both. For the kind of price you pay for these, I think they should offer more with less flaws. I realize it's a young technology though and that's why I decided to wait until something better hits the market. I'd probably actually be more inclined to buy a really basic unit like the TT One or Garmin 200 series right now and just assume that I wasn't going to even use POIs or any of the advanced routing stuff you get in the higher end models - those are cheap enough to put up with the routing flaws occasionally and so on.

Ryan

First off the 600 series is no longer being produced. Keep that in mind. Also no qwerty keyboard. That really bothered me and I like most people 35 and under are proficient typers now.

As for BT. The hand free phone has worked great. I have a Saturn which is a loud car, so sometimes I can't hear people. But no one has said they can't hear me. I've read a lot about the buzzing issue. I never had it. This is my one and only 720. The FM transmitter I think depends on the car. In my Saturn, it doesn't work that great. In my Toyota Sienna it works just fine. Note that as soon as you enable it you need to turn the volume on your 720 up all the way. That's something I hope TT addresses in a software fix. I would sum it up this way. Bluetooth handsfree is good for city driving and not so good for highway because of the car noise. I haven't had a chance to try it in my Sienna which has a more quiet ride.

Thanks for your inputs!

nj_tt_user, your dilemma is exactly what I'm trying to avoid (pretty much impossible given that both brands have some major/minor pros and cons). I did notice that "Help Me!" feature on my gf's TT One 3rd, but I haven't venture to use it (I guess I could play around with it as well as POI since I haven't done that yet).

I'll make a stop at the local BestBuy or something and do another compare of the two. Although I am not in a great hurry (I could wait 6 months to see if something else comes out or maybe get Pioneer 2-DIN car stereo w/ DVD+Navi, but I heard that navi on that is horrible compared to portable GPS), I think I might get TT 720 this weekend... we'll see...

As always, thanks for your inputs!

Here are some more randowm thoughts. On the Nuvi 650 you can adjust the screen brightness immediately by quickly tapping the power button. This takes you to a screen with sliders for brightness and volume without navigating any menus. In fact, that's one feature I wish TomTom had copied. I don't know - maybe they got rid of this on the 750? But as a general comment, I agree that the Nuvi's menu structure has far too many levels, and after performing most of them you have to "back out" through each previous screen just to return to the map. That really drove me crazy. If you hold your finger on the exit button in most menus it will take you back to the main menu, but that's surprisingly awkward while you're driving.

If Bluetooth or an FM transmitter are important then you will have to cross both the Nuvi 650 and 750 off your list because they don't have either.

According to Garmin, the 600 series has not been discontinued, and you will still see them listed on their website: https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?cID=134 OTOH, it would seem reasonable to expect that their days are numbered.

The 600 series doesn't have an option for a QWERTY keyboard layout but the 750 series does. I know that's a small thing for some people, but the QWERTY keyboard really makes text entry a lot easier for me.

Regarding screen redraw speed on Garmin... I was excited to finally get a chance to play with a Nuvi 750 after having the 650 for awhile. When I did I was shocked to find that the screen redraw was noticeably SLOWER than my 650 when dragging the map around (equivalent to "Browse Map" on the TomTom).

TomTom has an optional bluetooth remote (included with the 920T) and the Nuvi's don't support any remotes. After using a Garmin StreetPilot 2620 for a number of years, I really missed the remote on the Nuvi.

But I do miss having the Garmin topo maps on the Nuvi 650. I live in the country and like to explore new areas, so it was very handy to toggle between topo and city maps while driving around. Now I have to bring my Garmin handheld GPS for the topo maps.

But as an alternative, I've been making my own TomTom maps with Google Earth images, as discussed in this thread: Upload raster or vector property maps?

Try doing this on a Nuvi!

Well I am happy to report that I went to my local Sam's Club and pick up TomTom Go 720 for $350! I've played around with for a few... Used to drive back to home and there were two minor issues:

1. It told me to take a longer way even though it's set to "Fastest Route" (?)
2. When I parked in my driveawy, it said I have to keep going another 150ft to my destination (I live in a duplex/apt building and I share my driveway with another duplex next to me, so I don't know if that's the problem). Also, I just checked it appears that I do not have the most current map version (currently it's App 7.020, Map v705.1481), maybe that's the problem - I'll try TTHome shortly..

However, I did try BT feature and I do have to say that it worked perfectly! Granted, I was NOT in the car (set in my home), but played around with making/receiving calls and it worked fine. My gf called as I was messing around with BT and my TT picked up (lol), but she said she could hear me just fine so I'll have to try this out while I am driving...

Overall, I am pretty happy with it thus far. On my way home, when I missed the hwy that TT was telling me to get on, it did route me to the "fastest" road (also a hwy) which I was actually planning to take anyway... so it does work.

Thank you all for you inputs, comments and suggestions!