TomTom 130S Review

TomTom 130S, the perfect companion for a cross-country drive.

Last year I headed out for a four week cross-country business driving trip. I was planning to cover the US from coast to coast. It was a great trip and a perfect excuse to buy a GPS. I did a little reading online and ultimately decided that I wanted either a Garmin or a TomTom unit. I also wanted one that I could carry with me when walking around a city and that wouldn't take up too much windshield space. So I opted for a 3.5" inch screen instead of a 4.5" screen for portability. It was price that decided on the TomTom as I was in a Radio Shack that had the 130S on sale for $149.99 down from $199.99 so that was a good deal. (This was in the July 2008. The original price on the TomTom 130S was $249.95. As of this writing it is still a current unit at TomTom.com with a price for the 130S is now just $149.99, but your can find it refurbished at Amazon.com for only $69.99). Oh, and I had one last strong argument for the TomTom. I'm a Mac user and they support Macs with their desktop software (not without issues as you will see below).

Overall, the unit performed well, was easy to use, and comes highly recommended, but I'll go into more detail about the pros and cons.

You can get a great deal on a refurbish TomTom 130S, only $69.99, at Amazon.com

or buy a brand new one at a the best price I've seen for this new.

Review Details
Screen Size: The 3.5" is very readable. I tried units with the 4.5" screen and didn't feel that I got enough extra detail to make it worth the larger size.

Mounting: This is one of the aspects I like best about this unit. The suction cup windshield mount stays on well (sometimes it takes a couple of tries). But what I especially like about it is that it folds nearly flat so it is easy to take with you. It's also easy to pop the unit in and out of the mount and you can swivel the unit easily in the mount which allows it to be placed in many ways on the windshield and still angle the screen to face you. I tried some other units with large and cumbersome mounts that always seemed to be overkill.

Speaker: The unit speaker is large and clearly audible

Display: TomTom unit excel on the versatility of the display. The unit is crisp and readable in all lighting conditions.

Features: The TomTom 130S is a basic GPS navigation unit. It doesn't show you what lane you are in, but the voice navigation is well done, and the 3D map is clear to read. I tried a similar Garmin unit and this is where I found a big difference in the TomTom. On the main screen of the TomTom along with the map I had 5 additional piece of information: Distance to next navigation change, distance to destination, current time, estimated arrival time, and current speed (also speedlimit if on major highway). Other types of information can be swapped out and also a compass can be shown on the moving map screen. Other information on the moving map are current road name and next destination road.

My big complaint when I tried the Garmin Nuvi was that all I got for added information at the bottom of the screen was speed and estimated arrival. These items could be changed, but you only got tow items at a time instead of 5. You can get the extra info on the Garmin by switching screens, but who wants to do that to get such basic information. In fact, I used the TomTom on my motorcycle and found that my motorcycle speedometer was 5 MPH slow, so I like having the moving map and the speedometer function at the same time. It was this display of information on the TomTom that has made be recommend this over Garmin units.

Easy of Use: Take it out of the box, turn it on, set a destination and off you go. It's that easy, but like any good piece of equipment it can do so much more. You can save common locations, set "home" so you can always navigate home with one touch, customize the display, find local whatever (gas stations, museums, airports, on and on). There are just too many fun way to set up and use the unit that I still find new things on it. The coolest feature I discovered late one night was the "avoid roadblock" button. About midnight coming home for a music gig and still an hour and a half from home traffic came to a standstill for a major accident. I noticed a left turn that I could get to before the accident. Do I hit "avoid roadblock" set the distance for 300 yards, and waited few seconds for the screen to recalculate. Then I was off on a series of dirt roads for about 5 minutes that came back out on the original road I was on about 1/4 miles past the accident and I was on my way. I've used it since several times and it has been great.

Oddities: I found that major roads and highways were always accurate, but in the very rural area that I live in there are many mistakes. Mostly these are old dirt roads that have been closed for years and years, but the maps on the TomTom still think they are viable routes. They are if you have a Hummer, I suppose.

Computer connection: Updating the unit is easy via a USB cable to your computer. Unfortunately, I have found that the Mac software can be a bit buggy. I had a friend moving to Europe and we purchased the Europe maps and tried to download and install the maps on a Mac deleting (but saving aside) the USA and Canada maps (there isn't room for both on this unit, so if you want both get a unit with an SD card). The end result was that her GPS crashed and wouldn't reboot. After many tries and finally called TomTom tech support. Tech support was friendly and knowledgeable and he new enough to tell me that it was the fault of the Mac software. But I happened to have Windows running on my Mac under VMWare, and so booted that up and went back through the process on W98 and that fixed the unit quickly. Part of the reason I went with TomTom is that I wanted a unit supported on a Mac, but that support isn't 100%.

Summary: A great first GPS unit, and even a great only GPS unit. It does everything needed for any basic driving and has plenty of bells and whistles. The S on the unit number stands for speech which is very useful in traffic. Sometimes I turn it off, but I would not recommend getting the unit without speech. It doesn't due some of the things the more expensive units do (no bluetooth, no live traffic), but to get these features one would have to spend a lot more money.

Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars for the price range.

For another review of this product see this CNET review.
This review comments on some of the other great features I didn't cover. Oddly, the one complain that  reviewer had was problems with low speaker sound level. I found it plenty loud as did others who commented on that review. Maybe he had a bad unit, or this was perhaps something TomTom fixed in later versions.