TomTom GO 930 GPS Receiver Review

This feature-heavy GPS receiver gets you where you need to go. By Michael Patrick Brady

The TomTom GO 930 is a high-end portable GPS receiver that offers plenty of options for consumers looking to improve their navigation. Though many believe that all GPS receivers are created equal, TomTom hopes to prove that assumption wrong by providing a number of interesting auxiliary features intended to make getting from point A to point B as easy and accurate as possible.

TomTom GO 930

from $299.00

TomTom GO 930T

The GO 930 is loaded with lots of options. While it makes navigating streets and highways easy, navigating the receiver's menu system can be a challenge what with so many different sub-menus and features. We've taken a long, hard look at the GO 930 to give readers a good idea of what to expect from this device.

The TomTom GO 930 currently retails for just around $300, and comes in two variations, the standard model (which we are dealing with here) and the GO 930T, which includes support for (and a one-year complimentary subscription to) the TMC real-time traffic information service. It has 4GB of on-board flash memory, as well as a Secure Digital card slot for expansion. It also has voice recognition technology for hands-free routing and interacting with the device, and TomTom's "IQ Routes" knowledge base, which is meant to make navigation more accurate by using information gathered from your previous trips to make better estimates.

Design

The TomTom GO 930 is a small, attractive receiver, and though it is solidly built and carries a little heft, it is very portable. It fits nicely in a bag, purse, or coat pocket. It's definitely too big to carry in your shirt pocket, though TomTom's marketing team may say otherwise. It's a relatively simple device. Because the 4.3-inch LCD is a touchscreen, there is very little need for physical buttons on the body of the receiver. Only a physical power button will be found on the top right side of the GO 930. The SD card slot, USB input for recharging and connecting to a computer, and headphone output are located on the underside of the device, as is a connector for the included suction cup mount.

The box includes the receiver, mount, USB charging dock, in-car lighter charger, and remote control with two AAA batteries. User documentation is unfortunately relegated to an included CD-ROM, and not presented as a physical book.

The Display: Vivid and Busy

The 4.3-inch touchscreen display is very bright and easy to see. The maps are very visible, though the "3-D" mode was a little more difficult to grasp than the top-down "2-D" mode. The former mode felt more like a video game, and showed only your immediate vicinity, while the latter gave a much more complete view of your general area and made it easier to anticipate turns and other route elements.

One criticism that leaps out immediately involves the zoom-in and zoom-out map controls. These virtual buttons are located in the upper left and upper right hand corners of the touchscreen respectively, and they are quite small. The user's finger must hug the bezel of the LCD to ensure it firmly hits the zoom controls and not the map itself. Tapping the larger map will bring up the receiver's main menu, and hide the map. Unfortunately, it is very easy to do this when trying to zoom, and can be very frustrating.

Along The Way

The TomTom Go 930 performed very well at its primary task: assisting navigation. Acquiring a GPS signal can take up to a minute, depending on location, which is a little annoying. Otherwise, no significant issues were encountered when driving with the Go 930; its directions made sense, were accurate, and were conveyed by the audible guide clearly and effectively. The GO 930 includes several additional navigation features meant to spice up the rather banal routing, some of which are helpful and some of which are probably not very necessary.

The "Lane Images" feature provides static images of difficult intersections or exits before they are reached, to give the driver an indication of which lane they should shift into to prepare for a turn. While this is a nice idea, there were several occasions where I approached an intersection, split, or rotary that I felt would have been served well by a lane image, yet I did not receive any such prompting from the receiver. The 930's Active Lane Guidance, which gives simple directional information on the bottom of the map screen, tended to be more helpful, especially since "Lane Images" dominates the display.

"IQ Routes" is an intriguing addition to the device. The GPS receiver already makes rough estimates of how long a trip will take based on speed limits, distances, and the like. IQ Routes allows the GPS receiver to actually remember how long it took to drive a certain route, and will adjust its original calculated time to fit reality. This is a neat feature, but for some reason, it's tucked away in the TomTom HOME software. To enable it for the GO 930, the receiver must be connected to the computer and then a deeply nested checkbox must be enabled on a sub-screen. It's not easy to figure out; it doesn't even say "IQ Routes" anywhere.

Voice Recognition

The GO 930's voice recognition should be a helpful addition, allowing drivers to keep their eyes on the road, but it's not as seamless as it should be. When planning a route, the GO 930 will ask you a simple series of questions: what city, what street, and what number. The receiver was able to recognize all verbal commands very well, without trouble. The problem is that in between each step, the 930 prompted the driver with a list of possible matches. The correct match was usually there, in the first position, but this step required the driver to take their eyes off the road and determine which number was correct, and then verbally announce the number. Too often during voice commands, the driver was required to physically interact with the device, which was very distracting.

Conclusion

The TomTom GO 930 is a fine GPS receiver, though the bevy of additional features and functions could be confusing for users who are not familiar with the ins and outs of GPS just yet. For someone looking to upgrade to a more robust and versatile receiver, the GO 930 would serve them well.