If you're new to an area, the TomTom GO920 is the near-perfect companion. Expect issues in urban areas amidst high buildings (probably the case for all navigators, though), and in very remote areas: had a very dangerous experience in Yosemite Park, when it directed me to a road that doesn't exist on the local maps: it didn't warn me that the road was unpaved, very steep and only suitable for 4x4 vehicles. But then again, it was my decision not to make a U turn - so not sure how much of it I can blame on the navigator.

On several occasions, the route suggested from A to B changed: one day it suggested one highway, another day another one; sometimes the return leg was completely different from the outbound leg.

The commands are easy to use, with sufficient features and settings.The hands-free feature doesn't work with my business cellphone, looks like the phone overrides the navigator's bluetooth commands. No problems however with my private cell: once it works, it's great!

I travel a fair bit for work, both in the US and in Europe; this machine came with maps for North America and Europe.I worked out the daily rate Hertz charge us for their Neverlost system: the GO920 pays for itself after 32 working days.

Some aspect need improving but all in all very happy with the product.

I'got previously a Viamichelin (many mistakes and long time to acquire gps) and now Viamichelin has left the gps market (no more support, no new maps). I tried Mio (no comment, forget it, you will never be able to read the screen on sunny days). I finally go to Tomtom in order to get North American and Europe maps. Good product, very short waiting time for gps acquisition, accurate and precise. I've bought the 920. Important things to mention :

- after updating a 920 with v8 maps, you have got a 930 !

- if you buy the T version (with TMC) in US, your antenna won't work in Europe and vice versa. If you want to use TMC on both sides, you need 2 antennas (which are physically identical, so don't mix them or it will be a mess !).

- I travel a lot. I can use it in Singapore, Hong-Kong, Australia etc. but you don't have maps of Mexico and Malaysia (that Garmin has). It's a pity.

- remote control is a gadget except if you have a very big car...

- no home charger, no case provided. It's a pity.

- software is very simple to use. You will never be lost !

- some map mistakes, but very good improvements with map share. These improvements are depending on the size of the community : in Europe, maps are perfect due to the large number of users (TT is #1). In US, maps are perfectible and it will take some time which could be short if their products are well sold. No need to buy an updated map, sounds good !

- bluetooth hands free works very well.

- voice recognition exists but forget it (gadget which doesn't work while driving).

Conclusion : quite perfect, reliable, always working (no bugs)... Only one improvement for future : Mr Tomtom, provide more maps, please !

We spent 6 weeks in the Chicago Illinois area, house sitting my sons home and his two children. To take the kids to soccer, karate, their frioends were to be picked up and taken to church. This would have been an enormpusly difficult task for someone from Florida, but the TomTom came to the rescue. We entered the various locations into the GO920, hit the ON button and off we went. The GPS got us to all locations without any difficulties. I had made one mistake entering my Home address in Florida as "HOME" and the GPS wanted to return us to Florida instead of the Chicago address. This error was quickly corrected and all went well. We used it to drive from Chicago back to Leesburg Florida. It safely routed us thru Nahville, Chattanooga, and Atlanta by giving us advance instructions as to which lane we were supposed to be in to safely get through these difficult cities. We have NEVER had such easy drive through the traffic nightmares of these three cities. Never do without my TomTom again. *******

Great GPS unit it has a long list of features and maps for more then just the USA. Everything is pretty easy to understand and use. Screen display is bright.

Voice entry is hit or miss, short list of cell phones that will use all features (can not get it to read my text msgs) Does not include a carry case for the price it should.

Overall I would tell anyone looking for a GPS unit this is a good one even as good as the newer model that just came out (the 930)

Used this device in Spain. Very disappointed, Did not have any of our hotels in its POI. Does not have a grocery dtore in its category list. Not very easy to use. Am going to return it.TomTom GO 920 Portable GPS Vehicle Navigator

My review is based in comparison to the Garmin 370 and Magellan 3140 GPS units.

Whil each unit that I've owned has different bells and whistles, the most important feauture is its routing and user friendliness. The 920, btw, had the latest software/internet updates installed (purchased June 2008).

1.) Based on this, the routing of the TomTom 920 is HORRENDOUS. As other users have mentioned on other sites, the TomTom 920 **loves** LEFT TURNS for some reason. Many times, when I know I need to turn right, the computer voice says to bear left to turn left. The lower left hand corner arrow points left while the larger main map is correctly drawing a right turn up ahead. It's like the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing (no pun intended, LOL). By the time you reach the intersection it corrects itself (late at that). If you're in an unfamiliar area, you'd be in the left turn lane and would need to do a u-turn somewhere based on the voice guiding you wrongly.

Other examples include going from work to home. I took a long irrational route. The 920 corrected itself accordingly as I purposely missed its instructions. And after so many corrections, the machine lost sight of guiding me home and guided me elsewhere...I don't know where, but nowhere near my home. The machine has proven easy to trick.

As I said it loves LEFT TURNS. On the highway, between exits, it says "Keep left". 5 Seconds later, "Keep left". And again "Keep Left". Mind you, it gets annoying when you're on a straight piece of highway. And it does this too many times. Much chattier than the Garmin 370 I have sitting next to it while driving comparing.

Also, sometimes the voice direction CUTS OUT in mid-sentence....i.e. "Turn right on Kirt#@&".... It does this enough times to notice it.

2.) The computer voice is HORRENDOUS. Spanish & English California city and street names are garbled to the point of not being understood at all! My wife couldn't believe the difference compared to the Garmin and Magellan units we had. Knowing that GPS units have been out for some time, it was truly surprising to me how a signature product from TomTom could be lacking so intensely in a refined voice instruction system. It was if it was a 1st generation model (which would be more forgiveable).

3.) The voice input system is HIT and MISS. With a 70%+ MISS rate, especially in the car where there's more noise. It not only gave me the wrong city to start but also garbled the name given to me. LOL. Talk about bad. My wife couldn't stop laughing at how I slowly and clearly pronounced a CA city/street name only to be given a totally wrong choice....it was like a sitcom episode. In the end, due to my frustration, I went back to typing in the names to save time. It's a waste of money to pay extra for this rather useless input feature.

4.) The amount of POIs is **sorely lacking** compared to my Garmin and Magellan units. While it's fun to download user's Starbucks or Borders POIs from their website, it doesn't make up for the fact that there's over 6 million POIs on my Garmin that can almost always guide me to a favorite store. It's truly day and night between these two units.

5.) When entering addresses, the Garmin accepts my addresses immediately and intuitively works with nearby numbers if I input correctly. But when I correctly input "1 Ferry Building" for example, the 920 can't find it/route it or offer alternatives, despite that the Garmin, Magellan, Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, Mapquest find it immediately.

6, etc)

* Other lesser things that irked me with this purchase is that it didn't come with a pleather case to protect the unit or have a wall charger (like my Garmin 370 did on both these counts).

* 10 year old streets missing (in the heart of Silicon Valley). They show up on my Garmin. Unnacceptable, since I'm NOT in the boonies, but in the tech center of the world.

* I also missed the ability to scroll around the map to get a lay of the land like Google Maps or Garmin allows you to do from the get-go (especially helpful if you want to get off the clogged freeway to find alternatives that the routing engine may not have intelligently thought of).

* The FM signal is weak! Virtually useless. Not a fault of TomTom if one knows that all devices are limited by the FCC to limit signal strength for interference purposes.

* Bluetooth only works with GSM phone units (i.e. Cingular, TMobile).

* In order to have the computer name the street names out loud, you're limited to only a "Computer Voice" which is limited to a American and UK woman. The rest of the voices won't prounounce streets. So purchasing Dennis Hopper or Mr. T to give you directions is usless as they can't pronounce street names............Now compare this to the amount of voices Garmin gives you that CAN pronounce street names--DAY & NIGHT difference!

* Traffic info. is outdated by hours and thus, largely usless.

* I disliked the offered color options of its maps (especially night, blah!). For a more knowledgeable person, this can be tweakable by going to their website and dowloading an option.....non which appealed to me aside of the Garmin color option.

* BTW, the map colors you download are apt for buggability. When changing colors on the unit, the unit sometimes would grey out (black and white) with no colors. Rebooting sometimes helped, sometimes it didn't......Sometimes, changing the screens would fix it, sometimes not. And then other times, as you're driving with a grey colorless map, the colors would eventually return to one of the stock maps that came with the unit.

* The unit has a light sensitive and sound sensitive option system. Unfortunately, it gets darker when you don't think it should or stays brighter when you'd think it should get darker. The voice is the same....it gets louder when it shouldn't and quieter when it shouldn't. So I turned both options off as they became frustratingly useless. The night option doesn't automatically come into play when the light sensitive option is taken out, so you have to do it MANUALLY! Blah! I never had this issues with my other units! Thus, you have to put up and leave the finicky light sensitivity option on to get it to go into night mode. The Garmin goes by official sunset times, and it always seemed to do it right. Why o' why doesn't Tomtom do the same thing?

* The lines drawn are JAGGED from closest to furthest zoom settings. It looks like an old Atari game for crissakes! Annoying considering how much you're paying for this unit.

* The screen washes out a little more in strong, direct sunlight than my 370 (tested at same time, same positioning side-by-side). I can still make out detail on the 370, while the 920 washes out to nearly being useless.....amazing considering the 370 has older screen technology.

* Battery is weak due to large screen.

* As others have said, menus are very deep (one screen has 8 pages) and non-intuitive. A menu redesign is in serious order.

* Size is bulky and bulges out in the middle back. Not as easy to pocket vs. the competition w/ 4.3" screens.

* Unit is rubberized. Bank on that the rubber will change colors and peel after some use. Chemistry...."It is what it is."

.

.

.

Now the plusses:

+ I liked the loud voice of the unit (though it distorts at high volume). Louder than the Garmin.

+/- I like its ability to download the evolving content from the website (this is the future!!). The actual content, however, is more bells and whistles than truly functional. The POIs are good additions, but still pales to Garmin's 6M POIs. The POIs downloader is a **TIME WASTING PAIN** as it takes you to the first screen every time you download something from another screen....so if you downloaded a POI on page 10, you get sent back to page 1 and have to click thru several slow web screens to get back to the last POI download screen.

+ I like its fast calculation of routing a destination (a good speedy computer chip).

+ I like the FAST satellite lock (indoors or out). The best I have encountered!

+ I liked the sale price, especially vs the overly expensive less feature rich Garmins (though they're much more polished).

+ I liked that it had the Euro maps (the **main reason** I bought it), but will never get a chance to test it out since the unit performed so poorly in the States and thus returned.

All in all, this product has a HUUUGE feel that it was rushed to market a year early by an ambitious gun slinging product management director. The 920 has many bells and whistles, but the functionality and "common sense" of many things is lacking. This product could be refined and made better by simple tweaks....non which will probably be addressed until years later on more expensive models.

TomTom uses maps from a different maker than Garmin/Magellan. I always heard that the Garmin maps were better but I didn't want to believe it. Silly me! The difference in the States was staggering (although I hear TomTom's forte is in European maps). The longer/less rational routing algorithm that TomTom (vs. Garmin) uses is pretty bad--is this the mapmakers fault?...I don't know or care...as the unit is going back.

The ambitious bells and whistles give this product a 2* rating. Without the features, a 1* rating is validated as the performance was, YES, that atrocious. This review is objective and not emotional. I really wanted to like it/keep it. Truly!

This is my first TomTom unit. What an introduction. I'm soured on the company.

My advice is buy something else....anything but the 920.

Wake up TomTom! You can do MUCH BETTER!

We purchased a TomTom a few years ago. When our daughter went to New Haven to work, we let her borrow it. Of course, we have never seen it since. Finally, we purchased another one. It has been a savior for my daughter. A new town can be very scary; however, with "Thomas" (as she likes to call him) she goes everywhere.

We look at other brand names, but none could compare with TomTom. We are truly satisfied.

The TomTom is very easy to use and worked flawlessly on my vacation in The Netherlands and Belgium. I'm very happy with it.

Pro's: Excellent GPS I've logged over 20k miles with it so far, and it has never failed me on a destination. Very accurate maps and positioning, knows which lane of the freeway I'm in for certain areas. MapShare is a godsend, and TomTom is the only company that has it. My office never shows up on the right place for any mapping system (Garmin, Mapquest, Google maps) except TomTom, and it's because of the MapSharing. My Favorite thing is that you can customize nearly every aspect of the GPS.

Cons: Occasionally has problems telling the difference between express lanes and regular freeway, but it will still tell you the right way to go, just label them wrong once or twice. FM tuner is nearly useless on a road trip, all FM tuners have to be weak to meet FCC guidelines, and if you are traveling, the dead band FM frequencies change, and you need to constantly adjust the tuner, however, most newer vehicles have a line in port, and that works perfectly!

P.S.: The biggest complaint I have seen about TomTom over Garmin (The two leaders in the field) is that TomTom menus are hard to navigate. Yes, if you are using the menus for the first time while you are driving, or if you never progressed past a 6th grade education, you might have trouble with them. TomTom offers a lot of options, and their menus have a lot of options. When you get it, take a look at the menu structure once while You're sitting at home, and you will never struggle on the road. My mother, the most technologically inept person I know, picked it up and figured it out in 10 minutes. The accuracy of the maps and positioning, along with the other features make TomTom better by far in my book.

For the price this unit is fantastic. Includes North America and most of Europe. Updating is simple. And a couple of routes I've taken with it are same as routes those in the know would take, rather than the route most would follow if using Thomas Bros. maps.

Good product, good price.