Hi David,
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Please feel free to post what you like about the TomTom, I'd be very interested to hear.
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Before you read the following, please bear in mind I've been using TomTom products for over four years and my experience with Garmin and the Zumo is very limited, so I'm bound to have pre-conceved ideas of how things 'should' work. Several of the observations are very minor, but when bundled together they all form a general impression which
for me, is not quite what I want.
Reasons I prefer Garmin/Zumo over my current TomTom
1) Zumo is waterproof. I currently use a TomTom 'One' (1st edition) with a plasic bag on standby in case it rains. This has worked flawlessly for many years but I can't deny it would be better if the device was inherently weatherproof.
Before anyone says 'why don't you buy a TomTom Rider', there are reasons I don't want one of those, but this post is going to be long enough, so I'll leave that for another day.
2) Mapsource is a far better way of pre planning routes than TomTom's 'Home' application.
I'm currently playing with '
TYRE' which goes a long way towards addressing this shortfall. The developer deserves a lot of credit for showing how TomTom should be helping it's customers. They need to hire this guy to sort out their PC application. Having said that, the major flaw with TYRE is that it uses Google Maps (which are fantastic), therefore if you try to 'fine tune' a route in TYRE, then export to the TomTom, the route has a very good chance of changeing as the TomTom will be using a different set of map data (and preferences).
If TYRE could be configured to use the maps on the TomTom device (or in the 'Home' application) then I feel this would be an excellent tool.
My current view is it's a good coarse planning tool, which could be used to generate a general route which would be 'refined' once it's on the TomTom device.
Reasons I prefer the TYRE/TomTom over the Garmin/Zumo combination
1) Planing a route on the Zumo is frustrating, in that if I want to plan a route involving several via points to force the route into the roads I want to use, I tend to use the 'browse map' option to add the viapoints. Problem is, that the Zumo always presents the current GPS (or 'set') location as the starting point of the map. I then have to laboriously scroll to the required location and select my point. Then when I add the next one, Im dumped back at the start again and have to scroll again to my required location. On the TomTom, it remembers the position I last used when selecting the previous point.
2) The spoken instructions are rather robotic compared to the high quality TomTom version. I should say this is the 'text to speech' voice and I've not yet tried a TomTom with text to speech so this may be an unfair comment.
3) Recalculation of route when you miss a turn or take a detour seems slow compared to my TomTom. First it seems to take quite a while (relatively) to detect the error, then the recalculation seems to take longer.
4) I'm having difficulty with the whole issue around how you can avoid a viapoint one you start riding a route.
I did a test recently where I deliberately took a wrong turning (simulating a diversion for whatever reason) and rejoined my route further along the planned route, but after one of my unvisited viapoints. The Zumo made no atempt to warn me I'd missed a viapoint it simply assumed I'd reached a point on the route and continued to direct me from there.
The TomTom would have doggedly tried to get me to go back to the missed viapoint UNLESS I tell it to regard that point as 'visited', in which case it would calculate directions to my next viapoint. The point being, that I am not in danger of missing a viapoint unless I explicitly decide to do so.
5) For some reason, no mater how hard I tried, I could not get the Zumo to consider ferry crossings as part of a route. This is strange, because if I try the same route in City Navigator, then the ferry is used without problem. Perhaps I failed to spot a setting in the config.
6) This is yet another minor point, but the Zumo on-screen keyboard is 'abcde' rather than 'qwerty'. The TomTom can be configured, and I prefer 'qwerty'.
7) TomTom has built-in speaker, no need for 'active' cradles for sound.
8) When calculating a route, it appears the Zumo can either include or exclude toll roads as a global setting, and you need to be aware what setting you have. Therefore if you forget you have 'include toll roads' selected, you may end up at a toll booth without the money.
TomTom will warn me that the route would include toll roads and ask me if I want to avoid these. I prefer this as I have to make a concious decision to accept or reject (this is configurable in TomTom).
9) I don't like the rather large Car or Motorcycle icon at the bottom of the screen, I find it clutters the map. I understand you can upload your own custom images so I could probably create some minimalist or empty image to remove this.
Obviously the above are my views, and I'm happy to be taken to task or corrected if I'm missing something.
Cheers,
Glenn