TomTom ONE 130-S 3.5" GPS Navigation With Text To Speech

Comment:
1) Volume - the volume is not audible. I listened to this in a quiet room, indoors...the only thing I heard was my family saying how quiet the system was. I tried this on the highway with the radio off and windows rolled up and it was useless. This is a huge minus as I wanted to hear instructions to help me focus on the road! NOTE: You can select  a variety of voices, but only the COMPUTER VOICES can pronounce street names. The downside is the computer voices are much quieter than the "real" voices. Even TomTom has acknowledged the defect with the 130s, so I don't get WHY they're still selling it! It's turned me off buying from TomTom for a really long time. Even if you can hear the sounds, the people do NOT speak clearly, it's jumbled; throw in the broken speakers and you might as well eliminate TTS as a feature of this GPS. ***see note at end 2) Navigation - compared to other similar devices, such as Garmin Nuvi's lower end models, the GUI for this TomTom was not very friendly or intuitive. You often have to go through several menus to get what you want. I strongly recommend a potential buyer to try this out in stores first and compare it against other models such as Garmin. If it becomes frustrating to find points of interests, input locations, and even find out where you are currently, then you will not be happy with the system down the road. 3) Map display - a fun thing you can do is choose the colour scheme for this, but the thing I did not like is how the maps are not drawn very smoothly, and very few street names are displayed. To zoom in, there is NO zoom in/out on the map screen, rather you have to go to a separate menu and then there is an option there to zoom. There's a turn indicator, which is a plus (to remind you whether your upcoming turn is left/right), and remaining time/distance, most of which you can customize. Hit the bottom left and the voice instructions will repeat again, perfect if you missed it the first time. Another issue: high way ramps and exits are called "unknown road" - since you can't hear the instructions well, it makes getting off highways even more difficult. 4) Speed - I've noticed a few instances where the GPS took its sweet time. (1) The GPS calculates a route, and then asks you whether you want to avoid tolls. Then it calculates the route AGAIN. I'm not sure why they don't ask you ahead of time. (2) Processor speed in general - when you type in words, it has auto complete. This is great, except for a lag. You hit "Toronto" but by then the screen has changed, causing me to have to hit back more than once. (It's kind of hard to describe  this, but it's like dealing with laggy webpages.) In the end, this device is quite feature packed and would seem like it's worth the price IF everything worked, but TomTom should have focused more on making the basics work properly (user friendly interface, audible and CLEAR instructions). This GPS will work if you just need a really basic MAP, it's small, and the windshield amount can stay attached to the GPS because it folds up, which makes it great for taking with you. (And ALWAYS take your GPS out of your car and remove the mount from your windshield; windows are easy to smash and GPS systems easy to steal!)