Digital Trends

TomTom GO 920 T May 20th, 2008 | by Josh Norem

While navigating to a destination, the GO 920 T tells you where to turn along with details on the next turn so you can be planning ahead. The device also offers text-to-speech capabilities, but getting them to work right took some Googling as well as general exploration.

As it turns out, if you select a human voice, it tells you a human voice can’t read warnings and messages (such as street names), but it then provides the option to select a computer voice to handle these tasks. The problem is that when we did that though, the screen with the checkbox labeled “read aloud street names” was grayed out. Only when we selected just a computer voice could we get the feature to work, which was frustrating.

What proves really awesome, however, is the fact that you can actually record your own voice for navigation, and the process is super easy too. It tells you what to say, as in “turn right,” and you simply press record and say “Turn right dude!” to save the phrase and have the unit repeat it when necessary. It’s a neat feature, and one we got a lot of laughs from, especially since “and then” is one of the commands you can record.

In any case, the 4.3-inch widescreen display is effortless to read, includes adjustable brightness and also has a “night” mode where the display is darker and easier on the eyes. What’s more, you can adjust pretty much everything on the GO 902 T, including volume level, type of voice, color of maps and a ton of other settings. As such, we can easily say the GO 920 T is the most configurable and customizable GPS unit we’ve ever reviewed.

The unit includes a USB car charger as well as a USB docking station for connecting to your PC. We docked it and quickly installed the TomTom Home software on our PC (Macs can use the application too), and were surprised by how simple it was to use and the sheer number of features it offered. The program first asked us if we wanted to join MapShare, which allows you to edit maps on the unit then upload the changes to other members of the network. Conversely, you can also download updated maps as well, which is a great feature. 

Once we had registered an account, which took just a few minutes, we were able to browse all the various downloads available to us, and it was a very long list. Most of the items were detailed info on speed cameras in Europe, but hey – there were also a lot of “aftermarket” navigation voices to pick from including sound bytes spoofing Austin Powers and John Cleese of Monty Python fame as well. Some cost money, but others were free, i.e. the dulcet tones of a 6-year old boy. Classy sorts we are, we chose Austin Powers, who instead of saying “depart” says, “Oh, go drive, baby!”

The GO lets you connect to a PC or Mac and download user-created navigation voices, or record your own.

The GO 920 T supports Bluetooth phones for hands-free calling, but since we have an iPhone we were not able to test this feature, since this particular handset is not supported. We tried to get the 920 to sync with it, and it saw our phone, but could not complete the operation. Thankfully, the list of supported phones can be quickly referenced here before purchase so you needn’t suffer the same indignity. Note that the device also includes a Bluetooth remote control, but TomTom didn’t include it in the box with our review unit unfortunately.

It’s further worth mentioning that the GO 920 T includes an extra antenna for traffic information. Once connected, it looks for radio stations broadcasting traffic information, and can warn you of upcoming roadblocks or road closures. We plugged it in and were able to sync immediately and start gathering traffic info, but sadly never heard any warnings while we drove to spots we thought might be particularly congested.

Finally, the GO 920 T includes a built-in FM transmitter, which can be used to play music stored on the unit through your car’s stereo. We tested the feature and it worked fine, but it’s difficult to find an empty radio channel, so we did experience some interference and static occasionally. However, overall it worked great. The only real problem we ran into was that we couldn’t archive much music on our unit since there was only 171MB of free space on the included 4GB SD card. Luckily, you can augment the internal storage with your own SD card.

Conclusion

It’s safe to say the GO 920 T is easily the most full-featured GPS unit we’ve ever tested, which is good considering it’s quite pricey at $500. But if you consider the device an investment, not simple conversation piece, and something you’ll be using for many years to come, the SRP doesn’t seem too outrageous given all the unit’s features and the fact that you could constantly update and enhance it with new add-ons.

We loved being able to record our own voice for directions, and also liked the download and MapShare services too. It’s just a shame that speech recognition features don’t work properly and that text-to-speech options are difficult to configure to boot. Nonetheless, we were still able to get where we wanted to go most of the time with a minimum of hassles, and that’s all you can really ask from the average in-car navigation system, right?


Pros:

• Display is easy to read
• Great extras
• Lots of features
• Remote control

Cons:

• Spoken address feature is wonky
• No support for iPhone
• Text-to-speech configuration issues
• Expensive price point
• Can’t totally customize POI lists