TomTom GO 730 4.3-Inch Widescreen Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator

Wed, May 5, 2010

Get the ultimate driving experience–enter the address on the touchscreen or use voice address entry
IQ Routes Technology gives you the fastest route every time by using actual average speeds of travel on your route to calculate your trip
Advanced Lane Guidance uses photorealistic images to bring even more clarity to complex multi-lane exits so you can be more confident on the road
With TomTom Map Share technology, you can instantly modify street names, street direction, POIs, road speeds
Makes driving even safer with Bluetooth hands-free calling and added safety features for easily accessing local emergency providers

Amazon.com Product Description
TomTom GO 730’s award-winning software means ground-breaking new technology for the ultimate driving experience. Switch on and go right out of the box. Just enter the address on the touchscreen or use voice address entry and start driving anywhere in the United States and Canada. TomTom guides you door-to-door with turn-by-turn spoken instructions, including street names. Ground-breaking new technology for the ultimate driving experience. Click to enlarge. Includes windshield mount. IQ Routes Technology gives you the fastest route every time by using actual average speeds of travel to calculate your trip rather than posted speed limits. Advanced Lane Guidance uses photorealistic images to bring even more clarity to complex multi-lane exits so you can be more confident on the road. TomTom has the most accurate maps, and with TomTom Map Share technology, you instantly can modify… More >>

TomTom GO 730 4.3-Inch Widescreen Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator

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5 Comments For This Post

David C. Jensen Says:
May 5th, 2010 at 5:41 pm

The TomTom Go 730 was given as a Xmas gift to my father. He loves it.

I ordered the TomTom as NEW through Amazon, however the item actually came from Electronics Expo. Upon receipt I opened the undamaged UPS shipping box only to discover that the TomTom Go 730 had been previously opened: the factory seal was broken, the manufacture’s box was ripped and torn, the TomTom had had its protective film removed from the screen, the device was in its protective container upside down, and the multiple accessories had been removed from the factory sealed bags.

After many emails to Electronics Expo explaining the situation and condition of the item, I was finally issued a Return Authorization. I requested an exchange in the hope that I would receive the item before Xmas. This did not happen as apparently Electronics Expo no longer had the TomTom Go 730 in stock. After being ignored by Electronics Expo’s customer service, I placed a complaint with Amazon. This apparently worked because I was quickly responded to, and the price of the device was finally credited back on my credit card (although not fully). Since I was ignored for so long and with Xmas fast approaching, I had to purchase the TomTom Go 730 from a local big box store (at a higher price) on Xmas eve.

This was not a good experience and I would recommend never purchasing anything from Electronics Expo (I have read numerous complaints of people having experienced similar problems with them). Also they were pretty shady in that even after clearly explaining the situation to them multiple times, they insisted that it was UPS that had opened the item, which clearly was not the case (the outer shipping box had never been opened and was in very good condition).

Amazon, however, did their job perfectly.
Rating: 1 / 5

Jason Says:
May 5th, 2010 at 5:42 pm

TomTom continues to show weak support for the US market with its software that touts fantastic features that are not available in this country, which is a constant reminder of the wasted potential of this device. The interface is mostly usable, with big buttons to click on using the touch screen. The TomTom Home software is miserable, coming up with weird errors and an inability to perform anything but the most basic tasks. Additionally, the battery is weak and loses its ability to hold its charge quickly. Finally, the extra features – MP3 playback, bluetooth phone connections, etc., barely work even when you get them configured correctly. Not worth the price.
Rating: 2 / 5

David Guntner Says:
May 5th, 2010 at 5:52 pm

The unit is reasonably nice, but I’m disappointed that for “full functionality” with bluetooth features you’re limited to a few phone types. There are phones that are compatible with their data services (like live traffic, etc.), but alas, the Palm Pre isn’t one of them.

An annoyance is that it doesn’t seem display upcoming streets when you’re just driving along. If you’re in navigation mode (where it’s directing you to a destination turn-by-turn), it will show you your next street name for the upcoming turn at the top right side of the screen. My old Garmin unit (which I’m replacing with this one) would show you the next street upcoming when it wasn’t navigating you (you’re just driving along with the unit telling you where you are). If there actually *is* a way to do this, I’d love to hear how to turn the feature on.

Another annoyance is that the bluetooth profile for part that connects to your phone to allow you to do speaker phone through the GPS doesn’t have a profile on it which supports stereo music transmission. That’s a shame, given that it has a stereo FM transmitter in it to play music that you load onto the unit on your car stereo. I often listen to streaming audio on my phone (off the Internet) as I drive, and if the GPS had a bluetooth profile which supported that, I’d be able to use the GPS as a FM transmitter to listen to my music on the car stereo from the phone. Yes, that’s not the intended purpose of the GPS, but since the unit is capable of playing music, it would have been nice if it supported receiving bluetooth stereo (especially since one of the options for music output is via stereo bluetooth to let it send via that route).

The biggest annoyance for me, however, is how it handles favorites and points of interest. You can’t save any useful information about the favorite/POI that you create if you want to give it a meaningful name! Search for an address, create it as a favorite or POI, and the *name* for it is set to the address information that you just hunted down. If you want to name it “Bob’s house” or whatever, you end up losing the address that was there. And yea, I’m the kind of person who wants to see the address when I look up a favorite or POI. So I might not remember that what I just looked up was the address for “Bob’s house;” thus, I’ll change the name of it to say that. But now, oops! The address information is gone! You *can* tap inside the name area to clear the highlighting of the information so that you can type something to the end, but that’s no help since an address is going to be long enough that when you’re scrolling down the list of favorites/POIs, you won’t see the name that you added. And there’s no way to tap inside that text box to move the cursor to the beginning – unless you want to just backspace (erasing all the information that’s already there) and then retyping all the information after the name you want to give it (rather painful on the on-screen keyboard that you hunt-and-peck on), you’re pretty much out of luck. It would be really nice if they gave a favorite/POI a name field separate from the description field, so that you don’t have to pick one or the other. If you’re someone who likes having the location information text available on a saved location as well as a more “friendly” name, you’re going to find this a rather frustrating unit.

I do like that it has the ability to correct maps via your input and to allow the group sharing of said corrections. Hopefully, some of those corrections make their way into future official map updates from TomTom. Same goes for the ability to create new POIs and so on. And as others here have noted, it’s *very* quick to start up and begin tracking satellite data.

Rating: 3 / 5

Jake SP Says:
May 5th, 2010 at 7:51 pm

I purchased TomTom GO 730 which was recommanded as a good navigator by Tomtom retailer.

It looked works fine few days and it didn’t turn on. I called to tomtom support and support center gave me instruction for delete some files and install the some softwares from computer. It was really waste a time to do it.

Anyway, it still not work since I used it 2 times. I shipped it to TomTom Service center and they finall sent other one back to me.

It is more terrible. It looks work but no sound from time to time and not much information such as POI, there is no any information of POI. It supposed have music sound when turn it on but that file is empty. It is totally different with original one. Company said replace to new one but it might be replaced to refurbished one. I really don’t trust this product.

This is worst experience to use electronic devise ever. I better think I lost $ 400.00 for this.
Rating: 1 / 5

John John Says:
May 5th, 2010 at 10:21 pm

sometimes it has a slow start up, and the bluetooth could be better but i love my tom tom!!
Rating: 4 / 5

David C. Jensen Says:
May 5th, 2010 at 5:41 pm
The TomTom Go 730 was given as a Xmas gift to my father. He loves it.

I ordered the TomTom as NEW through Amazon, however the item actually came from Electronics Expo. Upon receipt I opened the undamaged UPS shipping box only to discover that the TomTom Go 730 had been previously opened: the factory seal was broken, the manufacture’s box was ripped and torn, the TomTom had had its protective film removed from the screen, the device was in its protective container upside down, and the multiple accessories had been removed from the factory sealed bags.

After many emails to Electronics Expo explaining the situation and condition of the item, I was finally issued a Return Authorization. I requested an exchange in the hope that I would receive the item before Xmas. This did not happen as apparently Electronics Expo no longer had the TomTom Go 730 in stock. After being ignored by Electronics Expo’s customer service, I placed a complaint with Amazon. This apparently worked because I was quickly responded to, and the price of the device was finally credited back on my credit card (although not fully). Since I was ignored for so long and with Xmas fast approaching, I had to purchase the TomTom Go 730 from a local big box store (at a higher price) on Xmas eve.

This was not a good experience and I would recommend never purchasing anything from Electronics Expo (I have read numerous complaints of people having experienced similar problems with them). Also they were pretty shady in that even after clearly explaining the situation to them multiple times, they insisted that it was UPS that had opened the item, which clearly was not the case (the outer shipping box had never been opened and was in very good condition).

Amazon, however, did their job perfectly.
Rating: 1 / 5
Jason Says:
May 5th, 2010 at 5:42 pm
TomTom continues to show weak support for the US market with its software that touts fantastic features that are not available in this country, which is a constant reminder of the wasted potential of this device. The interface is mostly usable, with big buttons to click on using the touch screen. The TomTom Home software is miserable, coming up with weird errors and an inability to perform anything but the most basic tasks. Additionally, the battery is weak and loses its ability to hold its charge quickly. Finally, the extra features – MP3 playback, bluetooth phone connections, etc., barely work even when you get them configured correctly. Not worth the price.
Rating: 2 / 5
David Guntner Says:
May 5th, 2010 at 5:52 pm
The unit is reasonably nice, but I’m disappointed that for “full functionality” with bluetooth features you’re limited to a few phone types. There are phones that are compatible with their data services (like live traffic, etc.), but alas, the Palm Pre isn’t one of them.

An annoyance is that it doesn’t seem display upcoming streets when you’re just driving along. If you’re in navigation mode (where it’s directing you to a destination turn-by-turn), it will show you your next street name for the upcoming turn at the top right side of the screen. My old Garmin unit (which I’m replacing with this one) would show you the next street upcoming when it wasn’t navigating you (you’re just driving along with the unit telling you where you are). If there actually *is* a way to do this, I’d love to hear how to turn the feature on.

Another annoyance is that the bluetooth profile for part that connects to your phone to allow you to do speaker phone through the GPS doesn’t have a profile on it which supports stereo music transmission. That’s a shame, given that it has a stereo FM transmitter in it to play music that you load onto the unit on your car stereo. I often listen to streaming audio on my phone (off the Internet) as I drive, and if the GPS had a bluetooth profile which supported that, I’d be able to use the GPS as a FM transmitter to listen to my music on the car stereo from the phone. Yes, that’s not the intended purpose of the GPS, but since the unit is capable of playing music, it would have been nice if it supported receiving bluetooth stereo (especially since one of the options for music output is via stereo bluetooth to let it send via that route).

The biggest annoyance for me, however, is how it handles favorites and points of interest. You can’t save any useful information about the favorite/POI that you create if you want to give it a meaningful name! Search for an address, create it as a favorite or POI, and the *name* for it is set to the address information that you just hunted down. If you want to name it “Bob’s house” or whatever, you end up losing the address that was there. And yea, I’m the kind of person who wants to see the address when I look up a favorite or POI. So I might not remember that what I just looked up was the address for “Bob’s house;” thus, I’ll change the name of it to say that. But now, oops! The address information is gone! You *can* tap inside the name area to clear the highlighting of the information so that you can type something to the end, but that’s no help since an address is going to be long enough that when you’re scrolling down the list of favorites/POIs, you won’t see the name that you added. And there’s no way to tap inside that text box to move the cursor to the beginning – unless you want to just backspace (erasing all the information that’s already there) and then retyping all the information after the name you want to give it (rather painful on the on-screen keyboard that you hunt-and-peck on), you’re pretty much out of luck. It would be really nice if they gave a favorite/POI a name field separate from the description field, so that you don’t have to pick one or the other. If you’re someone who likes having the location information text available on a saved location as well as a more “friendly” name, you’re going to find this a rather frustrating unit.

I do like that it has the ability to correct maps via your input and to allow the group sharing of said corrections. Hopefully, some of those corrections make their way into future official map updates from TomTom. Same goes for the ability to create new POIs and so on. And as others here have noted, it’s *very* quick to start up and begin tracking satellite data.

Rating: 3 / 5
Jake SP Says:
May 5th, 2010 at 7:51 pm
I purchased TomTom GO 730 which was recommanded as a good navigator by Tomtom retailer.

It looked works fine few days and it didn’t turn on. I called to tomtom support and support center gave me instruction for delete some files and install the some softwares from computer. It was really waste a time to do it.

Anyway, it still not work since I used it 2 times. I shipped it to TomTom Service center and they finall sent other one back to me.

It is more terrible. It looks work but no sound from time to time and not much information such as POI, there is no any information of POI. It supposed have music sound when turn it on but that file is empty. It is totally different with original one. Company said replace to new one but it might be replaced to refurbished one. I really don’t trust this product.

This is worst experience to use electronic devise ever. I better think I lost $ 400.00 for this.
Rating: 1 / 5
John John Says:
May 5th, 2010 at 10:21 pm
sometimes it has a slow start up, and the bluetooth could be better but i love my tom tom!!
Rating: 4 / 5

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