GO 910: excellence with a question mark

We've only just received it at the MyTomTomGo.com offices: a box sent to us from Amsterdam. Sender: TomTom. Always a special moment: the opening of the wrapping and holding the box of TomTom's newest PND unit in our hands for the first time. A few moments later the box' content is already on my desk: an official review sample of TomTom's high-end model for 2006: the TomTom GO 910!

Ok, so I've already held a sample in my hands a while back. But that was a pre-production model and I only got to look at it for a very short while. Now I can take all the time I need. This sample is identical to the units which you'll find in the shops. And so it's time now for the more serious work. In other words: an extensive review...

Inside the box

Emptying the box of the 910 turns out to be a big job in itself! What an enormous amount of booklets, wires, plugs and parts! Even sorted it completely fills my desk space.

The first item that is new as a standard item inside the box is the external microphone. This is a very good move by TomTom! The sound quality of the hands free phone functionality was always a bit lacking on the former range of GO's, and this external microphone should be able to fix that.

Completely new with the 2006 series is of course the supplied docking station. This docking station is meant for charging the GO and also enables for an easy USB connection with the computer to be able to perform backups or upgrades. At first this seems like a good addition by TomTom, but it does have one major downside: because of this docking station, the new GO's no longer have their own a power connector. So if you want to charge your GO outside of your car, you will require one of those docking stations. A simple wire won't suffice anymore. Of course, charging the unit inside the car is still done with a wire connected from the mount to the 12/24 volts cigarette-lighter.

And since I have that docking station in my hands now... hmm... let's see how long it takes before the 910 is completely charged. So I connect it to a power plug and the green light lits up to indicate that the unit is busy charging. This might be a good time to take a closer look on the new mount.

New mount

As already mentioned in our preview , TomTom has chosen for a completely new in-car mount design. The new mount consists out of two parts: the suction cup for attachment to the windshield and the socket on which the GO is clicked. Both parts are connected to each other by means of a ball hinge which can be moved in any direction.

For attachment to the windshield, the new mount also uses a new mechanism. No more small lever, the sucker now uses a rotating disc. This disc has two settings: hold the mount to the windshield, turn the disc into position one and the sucker attaches itself. Turn the disc into position two and the ball hinge locks itself. I'm curious to see if this new mount will do an equally good job as the former one. I'll known soon enough once I start the real testing...

The new mount also holds a lot of connectors. On one side (top picture), from left to right I notice the external aerial connector, the 12 Volts connector and a special TomTom connector for a TMC antenna or an iPod. On the other side (bottom picture), there's an audio-out and a microphone-in connector for the supplied external microphone.

First time

Two hours later the 910 is completely charged. I push the on/off button at the top of the unit and I'm immediately greeted by a startup screen. After that it is only a matter of selecting the language I want and... to 910 jumps to life! To make sure the first fix is received in optimal conditions, I take the unit outside. And 40 seconds later the first blue bars are filling the screen. Very nice!

When I return indoors, I notice that the signal strength drops somewhat, but the unit keeps its GPS fix. I've never been able to do this with the 700! And even though this isn't an ultimate test of course, it's already an indication of how good that new SiRF Star III-chipset actually is.

So, let's provide some raw data now. The TomTom Go 910 is currently shipped with application number 6.020 (6690/060420), OS number 1144 en GPS-version 1.21. Shipped on the harddisk are maps of Western and Central Europe (v650.1052), North America (v650.1052), Guam (v650.1050) and the Canary Islands (v650.1045). Small, but striking detail: on my 910 the North American map is selected instead of the Western European map. Switching the maps is thus in order before I can do any navigating.

The maps take up a big share of the built-in harddisk. Of the total disk space of 20 GB, about 12,5 GB is still free. But the maps are not solely responsible for the disk usage. The lion's share is taken up by the TTS-voices. (more on those later on)

With the standard settings, the GO doesn't shown many menu-items. This was probably intended like so to keep a good oversight on things. I would like to see all the options anyway, and the 'show ALL menu options' button does exactly that. I also change the keyboard layout. It's shipped with the ABCD layout, and I like it to be QWERTY. I also add a home location and the speed option to the status bar. Now for some speed tests.

When we reviewed the GO 700 last year, I made the unit calculate some large routes. I'll do the same again with the 910. So it's back to Italy again, San Marco Square, Rome. Inputting destination and... calculate!

It takes the GO 1 minute and 28 seconds before it's able to tell us that the trip is 1.672 kilometres long and will take 15:29 hours. That minute and a half is striking, since the GO 700 was able to calculate that same route in a mere 22 seconds! Well, one more try then. Athens, Greece. Last year it took the 700 about 17 seconds and now it takes the 910... 47 seconds. Hardly impressive!

Since both GO's use the same 400 Mhz CPU, I assume that the 'slowness' of the 910 has everything to do with the available internal memory. When a text-to-speech voice is used, only 4,4 MB of the total of 64 MB is still available. A quick test shows me that I'm probably right in that assumption: I choose a regular voice (which leave me with 15 MB of free RAM) and the trip to Rome is now calculated in 1 minute and 18 seconds. Better, but still not very convincing.

Of course we have to see these results in the right proportions. A minute and a half for calculating a 1.700 kilometre trip in which more than 400.000 roads are analysed is really not that bad. And most common trips of up to a few hundred kilometres each are calculated in mere seconds. But still... the difference is striking.

Phone

Before taking the 910 on the road, there's one more important thing to test: the Bluetooth connection between the GO and a mobile phone for the hands-free phone option and GPRS data transfers. No problem with my current Nokia 8910i. Everything works flawless and within two minutes the 910 is ready to use for all phone functions. Of course this is not a guarantee that it'll work equally well with all mobile phone models out there, but if you want to check if the 910 is compatible with your current mobile phone, I would advise you to have a look at the compatibility page on the TomTom site.

Ok, time for the in-car tests. First, it's a matter or attaching the mount to the windshield. Even though the mount needs to be attached in a completely new way, everything goes very smoothly. As I've become used to with stuff from TomTom. The new mount seems very solid.

Then it's time to click the 910 itself onto the mount. And that, I must say, is a lot less straightforward than it was with the 700's mount. It takes some practice to be able to connect the GO in the right way, and to click it onto the mount with two solid clicks. Same for undocking the unit. Docking as well as undocking takes a fair amount of strength. A bit too much strength even in my opinion. It hope this won't add to the normal wear and tear of the unit. This surely is something to keep an eye on for the future...

Once all is solidly connected, it's time to hit the road. Once again, the SiRF Star III-chipset shows it's muscles. With the GO 700, the heat-reflective windshield of my Renault Scenic forced me to use an external antenna. No more with the GO 910! I've now got a constant satellite fix with five or more satellites, so no more need at all for an external antenna! Excellent!

Navigating itself hasn't really changed with the 910. The route is shown very clearly on the display, and the truly magnificent 4 inch screen and constant GPS fix make for a very easy navigational experience.

Voices

Completely new are the Text-To-Speech voices that the 910 holds. Apart from familiar sounding commands like "in one hundred metres, turn left", or "take the roundabout, second exit", the vocabulary has now been extended with street names and road numbers.

After a bit of testing I must say that I don't really have a preference when it comes to a male or female voice: both Kate and Simon do an excellent job at giving correct instructions. They both speak very eloquently and all the instructions are clear and understandable. No problems here!

Pronunciation of street names is also very good in most cases. Apart from some exceptions, most street names are pronounced correctly. But does this make the TTS extensions a real improvement? My answer to that is very short, but sweet: yes, for sure! It's very nice to receive some extra information with the familiar commands. Instructions like: 'In one hundred meters, turn left, direction London', or 'take the roundabout, second exit, Church road' really add to the navigational ease. One small downside is that sometimes, especially when driving through city centres, the instructions sometimes tend to become too long, or follow each other too fast. But overall I like this TTS feature very much!

Besides the navigational function, the TTS voices can do other things as well. Eg. you can have them read the weather forecast or your SMS text messages out loud to you.

Music

The GO 910 is also capable of playing music. There are two ways of doing this: either by connection an iPod to the unit, or by playing mp3 tracks that you've put onto the unit's harddisk. As a test, I quickly copy some mp3 tunes from my PC to the GO.

Through the menu option 'TomTom Jukebox', I'm able to play the files. Of course, the sound quality is not exactly on par with what I'm use to from my car stereo, but still, the sound which the 910 is able to produce is rather good. Better than I expected to be honest. At volume 100%, it is no doubt possible to annoy your neighbours with it, and the quality if the sound is acceptable. Volume at 50-60% is loud enough for me to be able to enjoy the music.

All other functions of the 910 are still available while the unit plays some tracks. While navigating, the unit briefly pauses the music each time a voice instruction is given. All in all, we think this new function is a very nice addiction to the new GO models' featureset.

Hands free

Ok, back to the car now for some more testing, and this time more in particular the hands free function. If you intend on using this function, I would very much advise you to make use of the supplied external microphone. Don't get me wrong: it does work without it, but this microphone really adds a lot to the quality of the sound. It also practically completely avoids so-called 'echo-cancellation'. Echo-cancellation happens when the sound from the speaker is mixed with the spoken word and the internal microphone doesn't quite Review TomTom GO 510, 710 and 910know which is which anymore. This results in the microphone getting muted. Very annoying in a phone conversation, as you can probably imagine, but also as said also completely fixed with the external microphone.

I attach the microphone to the sunshade above my head, so the microphone is located very close to my mouth. Then I decide to make a few phone calls, and every collocutor agrees: it sounds as if I'm calling from home. This is a big improvement, and I really like this! (who wouldn't?)

Final thoughts

After a few days of testing, I have to admit that the new mount is starting to irritate me. Mounting and un-mounting the new GO is really not as easy anymore as it was with the former models. At first I though that I just lacked the experience, and that with some practice attaching the new mount would become an equally easy, one-hand operation for me as it was with the older models. Well, it doesn't. And also the fact that connecting it to the docking station doesn't always go right the first time makes me suspect the there might be a flaw in the structural design of the construction. I'll keep a close eye on this and would also like to hear what your findings are regarding this issue.

Not tested

Two things I was unable to test: one (iPod connection) because I don't have an iPod here to test it with, and the other (TMC options) because the necessary RDS/TMC antenna is still unavailable. I'll update this review with my findings, as soon as I've been able to do the necessary testing.