August 8, 2007
By Mark Seles (San Jose, CA)
I really love the 720. Entering addresses is really fast and you only see towns in the state you are looking in. This means no more having to scroll through 30 different Springfields to get to the one you are searching for. You can hide the keyboard to see a long list of close matches so instead of having to type out the full city or street name you can just hit the first few letters and then pick from a list.
Mapshare seems like it will be a huge advance in the world of automotive GPS devices. Is a street marked as open when it should be blocked? Just correct the error with a few quick taps on the screen and it's fixed. What's really the big advance though is the ability to share my corrections with all other TomTom owners. I connect the 720 to the TomTom HOME software and it downloads corrections that other users have submitted.
What you see on the screen can be fully customized so that if you want the status bar on the side then you can put it there or you can leave it on the bottom. You can also decide what information is shown in the status bar. You can show or hide the time of day, remaining time, remaining distance, current heading, and your current rate of speed. If you subtract items from the status bar the other items automatically get bigger to take up the remaining space. You can also select if you want to show the current street you are on and the name of the next street you will be turning on to.
Text to speech quality is very good and will say the directions so for example it might say "in 250 feet keep right, then take the exit right, 204B towards Westview." Or "in 200 meters, turn right South West Madison Avenue." You can choose from multiple voices although I think the Dave voice sounds the best of the bunch. If you don't want to hear the "keep to lane" instructions you can disable this feature although I personally like to have it on. You can also record your own spoken instructions so for example you could have your kid's voice tell you to turn left in 200 feet. I haven't tried this though.
The screen is very bright and easy to see even when I have my sunglasses on. The 720 can be set to automatically turn the brightness down as it gets dark thanks to a built in light sensor on the front of the unit.
The mount is pretty clever and super easy to use. Just push it up to the windshield and it sticks right on. The 720 then just slides right on and is held solidly in place. You can turn the 720 in any direction to get it exactly where it's easiest for you to see.
With all the great features of the 720, I think what will really set it apart even more from the other GPS units out there is the Mapshare feature. Being able to fix your own map and download updates automatically to keep the map up to date is one of those things that is so fantastically great that you wonder why on earth it took so long to make to a shipping product. Whether or not it can live up to the expectations remains to be seen. Even if you took Mapshare away it's still the best car GPS I've ever used. With it, there's just no contest.
My biggest complaint is that there's no case in the box. You need to buy one separately although I've been using the plastic holder it shipped in so far which is OK.
August 24, 2007
By L. Hamlin (Stearns, KY)
When I received the 720 from Amazon, I was impressed with the packaging. It was boxed and padded quite well and arrived in excellent condition. Before doing anything I decide to read the Quick Start Guide, a dark gray pamphlet included in the 720 box. It advised me to charge the unit at least 2 hours before proceeding. So without even turning the unit on I plugged the base unit into a USB port on my computer. This base unit is used, via the USB, to connect to the computer as well as recharging. My regret here was that I would not be able to recharge the unit in my house unless the computer is on.
While the unit was charging I went ahead and installed the software using the CD which was included in the package. The installation went smoothly on my computer which runs on Vista Home Premium. After the recommended charging interval of 2 hours I activated the 720 and it immediately connected to the software, TomTom Home, which I had just installed. Almost instantly I was informed that there was a software update for TomTom Home. I told it to continue and my computer downloaded an updated TomTom Home version 2 point something and proceeded to uninstall the version I had just installed using the CD and to install the new version. I was mildly annoyed, but I was grateful that the update downloaded and installed without incident.
My 720 then asked permission to download some updates into itself, which I allowed it do. Everything went smoothly and I continued by setting some preferences in the 720 by using TomTom Home. I then spent about an hour with the unit, unplugged from the computer, to get familiar with the menu structure. The last GPS that I had was a Garmin IQue 3600 and I found the 720 structured very differently. Nearly every choice in the menu structure of the 720 is graphically based using pages of icons with which to make your selections or set your preference. I found it very intuitive and comfortable.
Later, when I took the 720 on its "maiden voyage", I found that using the unit was very simple. Choosing a destination and creating a route was easy and the unit calculated the route very quickly. Generally the unit selects routes that are nearly identical to what I, as a local, would also pick. Only once has it routed in what I would consider a round-about sort of way but after I considered what it had done I realized that its chosen route would be nearly identical, in travel time, to what I would normally use, so I can't really criticize it.
Since then the 720 has performed consistently and dependably. The map data had some minor errors, most of which, incidentally, I have already corrected and shared with the TomTom database using Map Share while connected to the internet. It even uses the 2 road name corrections I have made for a couple of local streets, using them in route calculations and even pronouncing them correctly when making navigation announcements. I have had no technical glitches at all.
I have interfaced the 720 with my cell phone using Bluetooth. Making and receiving phone calls using the 720 works flawlessly. It downloaded my entire list of telephone numbers from my Starcom and can easily recall them and place calls. The 720 internal speaker sound quality is good considering its size.
The 720 locates and locks on to the GPS satellites and provides a position with a speed I would have thought impossible a couple of years ago. It is exquisitely sensitive to the satellite signals and I am routinely able to lock on to 6 or 7 satellites sitting in front of my computer, near the center of my house. Amazing! In my vehicle I have installed an external antenna and the 720's performance using this is phenomenal.
I have recently downloaded several songs and pictures into the unit and it plays and displays these without any hitch. I use the FM transmitter, built into the unit, to play music over my vehicle's radio. I have discovered that I need to turn up the 720's volume slide to 100% in order not to turn up the radio's volume too much; this helps avoid an annoying hiss that you hear when an FM radio is turned up too loudly. Incidentally, the 720 politely mutes the music when a navigation announcement is made and then resumes. The quality of this sound is reasonable for casual listening in my pickup. The color of the screen when viewing pictures is good (not great) and the display resolution is acceptable for this purpose. Using the slideshow option to view the pictures gets rid of the aggravating gray bars which I otherwise have with pictures. I have added a 2 GB SD card to provide storage for these files. I am adamantly against using my internal storage for this. For me the 2 gigabytes are more than adequate. However, I can easily understand that 2 GB would seriously limit some people. The unit will interface with an IPod although I have not done this since I don't own an IPod.
My overall experience with the 720 has been great and I think the TomTom 720 is surely one of the acme products in the GPS market. I congratulate TomTom for coming up with a product like this and give the 720 an enthusiastic round of applause. Two thumbs up! Forgive my rather lengthy post.