My first satnav so i don't have anything to compare it against. One of the key things for me was ease of use and the 530 is very easy to use. I like the bluetooth facility. I haven't really used the voice recognition as the touch methid is so easy.
The reason for 4 stars is the battery life; if it is fully charged and then you don't use it for a week the battery drains to practically empty.
Having fully road tested the tomtom go530 all over the country whilst delivering wine i'm suitably impressed. Being a big fan of the old tomtom navigation and view, it had to be a tom tom again this time round and i wasn't disappointed. The satellite reception is very good and even after a long run in a tunnel it soon picks up where it left off, it is also good when it's switched on at finding it's position quickly which was a flaw in the older models. The bluetooth calling is excellent and has stopped me using my phone whilst driving completely.
Something ear pieces always failed to do. The motorway lane view is excellent and gets you in the right lane better than before although sometimes is doesn't give you enough warning which way you are headed after you exit a slip of a motorway making you do the 'sat nav waddle' while you try and work out where your headed, but over all a vast improvement with room for more??. An excellent product made better by the 'share' option where you can report errors and new cameras etc and download other people corrections all for free. Thoroughly pleased and satisfied, well done tomtom.
Pros
- Good but flawed Go 530
- A Tom Tom 520 in disguise
- TomTom going well!!
- If you hate driving get a Tom Tom!
- Spoilt by cheap and nasty mount
- Tom Tom 530 - Flaky software
Cons
- Refurbished from Total PDA - Not really "as new" as advertised
- Good product let down by faults and appalling customer service
- Very POOR Quality
Negative Review of TomTom GO 530 Sat Nav
Features of TomTom GO 530 Sat Nav
- GPS GO 530 1GB
TomTom GO 530 satellite navigation system Windscreen mount Desk dock Car charger CD-ROM Documentation
Go 530. As this is my first sat nav unit i have found it be very good. I am in and out the car a lot everyday for work as yet i've had no problems with the mounting system coming detached from the window unlike a previous post. It is easy to use and has a very clear display. What is good with this unit is the blue tooth function allowing you to pair a mobile phone for hands free use, doing away with the need for either a car kit or an ear piece and the quality is good. The reason for 4 stars and not 5 is the fact you need to keeping plugging / unplugging the power lead and antenna lead if required , however the batteries are good enough to last the full day. .
Tomtom Going Well!!. Having fully road tested the tomtom go530 all over the country whilst delivering wine i'm suitably impressed. Being a big fan of the old tomtom navigation and view, it had to be a tom tom again this time round and i wasn't disappointed. The satellite reception is very good and even after a long run in a tunnel it soon picks up where it left off, it is also good when it's switched on at finding it's position quickly which was a flaw in the older models. The bluetooth calling is excellent and has stopped me using my phone whilst driving completely. Something ear pieces always failed to do. The motorway lane view is excellent and gets you in the right lane better than before although sometimes is doesn't give you enough warning which way you are headed after you exit a slip of a motorway making you do the 'sat nav waddle' while you try and work out where your headed, but over all a vast improvement with room for more?? an excellent product made better by the 'share' option where you can report errors and new cameras etc and download other people corrections all for free!! thoroughly pleased and satisfied, well done tomtom!.
If You Hate Driving Get a Tom Tom!. I hate driving!i can't tell you how stressed out and panicky i get about being lost/wrong lane/ missing a junction or turn etc etc. Hate hate hate it. So when my boss told me i'd got a training course 65 miles away i sighed with despair as the train service was non existent!so i bit the bullet and bought a tom tom and it has changed my attitude to driving completely. Yes, i still get butterflies before a long drive but the it's like having another person in the car who isn't judgemental when you take a wrong turn and the advance lane notification is worth its weight in gold. I feel it has made me a better driver with less hesitation and if i get lost. . So wot!. . It puts me back on track right away without asking me to turn around. I wish i'd bought one years ago. The only downside so far has been the low quality windscreen suction pad. I've tried dry attachment, wetting it, using alcohol wipes and even harsh language but it still drops off the windscreen (i'll be writing to tom tom)so to all you nervous drivers out there. Try it as it has helped me alot. .
Product Info
- Product Dimensions: 11.8 x 2.4 x 8.3 cm ; 222 g
- Boxed-product Weight: 998 g
- Batteries 1 Lithium ion batteries required.
- Item model number: 1CH5.013.00
- ASIN: B0018RXYU2
Conclusion of TomTom GO 530 Sat Nav
Each year around may there's a new tom tom launched and it seems they improve on them all the time. We went from the x00 (replace x with 3,5 or 7) series back in 2005 which worked well but was boxy and square to the lovely 2006 widescreen version, the tom tom x10. Next came a major improvement in 2007, the x20 series which had the thing we'd always wanted, the ability to update maps. It's a great feature and one that sold more tom tom's than ever before. Firstly there's the iq routes which work out the best route based on time of day, number of busy junctions on route etc.
This is a decent idea but you can plug in a tom tom 520 to your pc and update this feature for free anyway, i updated my 520 to firmware version 8. 0 last night and while it makes no mention of iq routes, it does plan differently and much more quickly. The second new feature is the lane guidance system meaning that if you're on a motorway, it will show a picture of the lanes around you with a big arrow to help you navigate tricky multi lane bits. A nice idea but again, you get this update for free on a 520 anyway (can you hear owners of the 530 seething with rage yet?) so long as you buy the new maps. You can now get a tom tom 520 for around £120 even in high street shops so given the fact that you can plug it in to the net and upgrade it all to have the same stuff as you get on a tom tom 530, it really does leave you wondering why anyone would bother with a 530.
The tom tom 530 is a great sat nav and it has tons of brilliant features, it's just that it's virtually the same as the last model so unless you're the kind of person who just has to have the latest model or you lose sleep over what the neighbours think then i'd stick with the 520. As this is my first sat nav unit i have found it be very good. I am in and out the car a lot everyday for work as yet i've had no problems with the mounting system coming detached from the window unlike a previous post. Having fully road tested the tomtom go530 all over the country whilst delivering wine i'm suitably impressed. Being a big fan of the old tomtom navigation and view, it had to be a tom tom again this time round and i wasn't disappointed.
The motorway lane view is excellent and gets you in the right lane better than before although sometimes is doesn't give you enough warning which way you are headed after you exit a slip of a motorway making you do the 'sat nav waddle' while you try and work out where your headed, but over all a vast improvement with room for more??. So when my boss told me i'd got a training course 65 miles away i sighed with despair as the train service was non existentso i bit the bullet and bought a tom tom and it has changed my attitude to driving completely. The new mount is very flimsy by comparrison, its now difficult to attach the unit, and as it has no power lead attachment, every time the unit is attached or removed, the power lead has also to be plugged in or unplugged. The new mount has also fallen off the windscreen 5 times in two days, this never happened with the 710 style mount. This may seem like a minor point, however i use this unit for my work as a mobile locksmith so for security reasons i need to remove the unit every time i park, this can be many times per day, so what was very easy to do has now become time consuming and fiddly.
I can appreciate why they have done this, the new design will be much cheaper to produce, however this has degraded what was a very good design and i will not be purchasing tomtom products in the future if they persist with this style of mount. I've had this device (my second tom tom) for a couple of weeks now. Apart from some odd issues with the map, it works fine. It's marked on the map, but shown as closed roads, which it is possible to 'unblock' on the tom tom so that they are then recognised as open. However, there is a new section of dual carriageway on the inner ring road in leeds which has been open for months, and that's not shown on the map at all, so that cuts out a useful route into leeds for anyone who isn't local.
First off this review is for the tomtom 530. I have taken the tomtom out almost every day testing it, and the days i can't i have gave it to my partner. My previous tomtom 910 fell off a couple of times when i was experimenting where to put it. I didn't want to buy another tomtom after the 910 was so unreliable. Tomtom customer services had me reformatting the device 4 times until they repaired it.
I found i never used my old unit abroad so i saved some money and got this basic unit, which is the same as the 730 minus the maps. If i ever go to europe i can buy additional maps from tomtom. I like the addition of iq routes, this is a much better way to navigate because it chooses the quickest route by taking data from millions of users who take the routes. You can also customize the device to go via a certain road if you know that to be quicker or you can press a button which will choose a different route at anytime of the journey, it will even keep the original eta time in view so you can compare easily. Its worth pointing out that tomtom don't control what information these devices send, it just acts upon them.
Tomtom are the market leaders in portable sat-nav and has to bring new models out all the time to keep in front. I like the new features this has over the 520 and i had no hesitation choosing this one, in fact these new features was the motivation for getting rid of my old 910 model. There are other sat-navs but i just like the overall set up of the tomtoms's. They keep the things you love and add new features all the time which keep people coming back, despite an awful experience with their last model. The main criteria i wanted was a sat nav that you could keep up to date without shelling out any money - that's where the tom tom map share is so good.
It lived up to my high expectations. I recently purchased a new tom tom 530 for my work as a sales manager, we have always used tom tom go sat nav's and never had any problems at all, this 530 is much the same with a much bigger screen, very clear instructions, the only down side to these units is the blue tooth which works well but you are not able to have a conversation with anyone when driving on the motorway, its just not loud enough to hear the other person, but still a very good unit, i have since purchase another two for people within the company. I purchased the tomtom540live in dec 2008 and i didnt think much of it but my partner liked it alot so now he as the 540live and i purchased the go530. . I have owned the tomtom go 720 for some time now and decided to buy my partner a tomtom sat nav for her birthday. I am a first time satnav owner but am glad i went for the go version rather than entry level devices. --whats in the box --on opening the box, once you have delved deep enough to get past the various manuals, you will come to the main tomtom unit. The mounting cradle which will fix the tomtom to your windscreen, a sd card pre installed with software and maps, a mains adaptor with british and european plugs, an in car charger, a wallet to put the tomtom in when not in use, a usb cable to connect to your pc and some screen wipes.
--usage--the tomtom 530 is operated by touching its screen in various places which correspond to the options you require. Planning a route is simple, just touch the map anywhere to bring up the main menu and then click the navigate to. You can now select from a number of routes, personally, i like the tomtom to give me the quickest route. You can then view your route from the luxury of you own home by seeing a text summary, turn by turn map images or an actual start to finish demo run of your journey. One of the big plus points of the tomtom is the amount of point of interest types (poi's) what ship with the device.
Tom Tom Go 530. I did a lot of research before finally plumping for the 530 go. I wanted something a bit more than the basic but not exorbitantly expensive - this fitted the bill perfectly. I used to have a navman but this is superior in every way. The main criteria i wanted was a sat nav that you could keep up to date without shelling out any money - that's where the tom tom map share is so good. I've had it for 6 weeks and used it all over britain. Only last week it helped me effortlessly in and out of birmingham city centre which is somewhere i've always struggled with!it's got too many good features to mention - i love the way you can pre-plan a route and then look at each stage in detail. It lived up to my high expectations.
How Do You Make the Mount Fall Off?. First off this review is for the tomtom 530. Some people are leaving bad reviews for the wrong sat-nav! i have to admit i was a little weary of buying this sat-nav, as a lot of people here say the mount falls off. I have taken the tomtom out almost every day testing it, and the days i can't i have gave it to my partner. The mount has never fell off. At the moment we are experiencing the coldest winter for 20 years, so i think it is fair to say that the device has been tested in the worst conditions. The only thing i can think of to make it fall off is to put it at the very bottom of the windscreen, or at the side of the windscreen. This is where the windscreen curves, preventing the mount from getting a proper suction. My previous tomtom 910 fell off a couple of times when i was experimenting where to put it. I wanted to get the device as low down the center of the screen as i could, to get maximum visibility. The mount though was unable to make a good contact with the screen. I didn't want to buy another tomtom after the 910 was so unreliable. It crashed straight out of the box when i was setting it up! this would happen often which i just accepted until it began asking me if i wanted to connect to the computer, whilst driving! it also crashed when i was in wales resulting in me being lost for an hour. After that it wouldn't switch on for 3 days. Tomtom customer services had me reformatting the device 4 times until they repaired it. I sold it as soon as it came back. I looked at other sat-navs and came close to buying a garmin 765t but after a lot of research i found a lot of people where having reliability issues. So i thought "better the devil you know". My device hasn't crashed yet, so it is already a marked improvement of my old unit. I found i never used my old unit abroad so i saved some money and got this basic unit, which is the same as the 730 minus the maps. If i ever go to europe i can buy additional maps from tomtom. I love the size of this device, i keep it in a gee bee case which is excellent and allows me to put it in my jeans pocket. I like the addition of iq routes, this is a much better way to navigate because it chooses the quickest route by taking data from millions of users who take the routes. Some people don't like this feature, but it is worth bearing in mind that it is a computer, its not going to have a brain of a london cabbie. You can also customize the device to go via a certain road if you know that to be quicker or you can press a button which will choose a different route at anytime of the journey, it will even keep the original eta time in view so you can compare easily. The advanced lane guidance system is really good for when you haven't been paying much attention to the motorway sign's, it will give you a visual reference as to what lane you should be in. There is some evidence of cost cutting such as the speaker isn't as good as the older models. Some will say its because its thinner, but you could still put a decent speaker in it. It is good enough though. The screen could be brighter and this too doesn't seem to be as good as older models, but again its good enough and i am able to see it fine. I didn't go for the traffic version because they give you the old tmc receiver which has gotten bad reviews. For the extra cost you can buy the latest receiver separately for around the same money. Its worth pointing out that tomtom don't control what information these devices send, it just acts upon them. Many devices, not just sat-navs rely on the same information. Some people seem miffed that they bought the 520 and this is similar. Tomtom are the market leaders in portable sat-nav and has to bring new models out all the time to keep in front. I like the new features this has over the 520 and i had no hesitation choosing this one, in fact these new features was the motivation for getting rid of my old 910 model. There are other sat-navs but i just like the overall set up of the tomtoms's. They keep the things you love and add new features all the time which keep people coming back, despite an awful experience with their last model.
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