The first responded to ghost touches in the upper right corner of the screen. (You didn’t have to actually touch it, it just thought it was being touched and responded to that.) If you keep pressing a spot in the upper right, the unit will eventually call the police. This is a rapid fire sequence of touches and very difficult to cancel. It called my local police 9 times before I could stop it.

The second had a problem in which when you press a key on the onscreen keyboard it would actually select the letter above or to the right of the one you pressed. I posted a video of that.

The third unit hard crashed every time I connected it to my computer. Only pressing the reset button with a paperclip would bring it back. It seemed to work correctly other than that.

Overall I liked the operation of the Go 720, but Amazon got ripped off by the company that supposedly refurbished these units. They just repackaged them and sent them out again without sufficient testing.

This unit supposedly works in Europe, there are several options for downloading European road maps at fairly reasonable prices. This is a Dutch company so they should know about European roads. You will need the 2 GB SD card for this, and you will have to download it to your computer and transfer it to the GPS unit. I haven’t done that yet, but I expect to use it in Switzerland next year. The Swiss want a lot of money per day for use of a car equipped with GPS, so there is value here in bringing your own unit.

I’ve a TT LE (2d Ed.), like it & decided to upgrade to the refurbed GO 720. The unit has great features and the price ($119) was OK.

However, ‘refurbed’ to me means ‘like new’ and the major problems are AMAZON does not tell you that it carries only a SIX MONTH factory warranty and that the map is at least 21 months old (on my unit). Cost to upgrade to the latest map from v.7 xx is $47 plus $48 for 4 quarterly updates. So, you’re looking at another $95 or $215 for a ‘refurb’ with a 6 months warranty. AMAZON should have full disclosure on their listings so the customer can decide! Another poster said they should be ashamed. How true! I may return it because of this. By the way, Staples ‘Black Friday’ ad will have a brand new TT GO 830 for $169 with an extra coupon discount of 10% on a single item.

Maps –

When I purchased it was promoted that you get one free map update with the device. What they don’t tell you and isn’t apparent unless you dig into their website is that the free map update is good for ONLY 30 DAYS from purchase date! This seems pretty ridiculous to me. Since I purchased the device, there are several major roads including part of an interstate that has been mostly completed in the last several years that are NOT on the map it came with. They did not release another map update until June of this year and I bought the device in January. I assumed the free map update would be for whatever map was released after the device was purchased so as to guarantee you’d have current maps. It does not seem like I should be penalized for them not releasing an update within 30 days of my purchase. That isn’t my fault.

Imagine my surprise then when I asked for my free map update and was told I could not get it. I had to pay $60 (normally $80, on sale now in July 2010) to get my map update. Tom Tom provides free map updates for the life of the product I’m told. Honestly, I realize these maps cost money but if you promise a free map update, I don’t expect to have to read the fine print. I just want my ONE free map update.

Magellan should realize there is a LOT of competition out there for devices now and understand that map updates are critical. Without current maps, the device is useless!

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Pros -

- Large Screen

- Touch screen works better than some of the Garmin devices I’ve used

- Bright Display

- Pleasant voice

- AAA feature is nice

Cons –

- Outdated map when I received it – my FREE map update wasn’t free!

- Buggy software and no updates for quite some time when clearly there are bugs

- Click to go from 3D to 2D map in interface – there is no way to go back to 3D

- Pressing letters to enter text doesn’t work all the time – frequently you’ll press a letter and it SPEAKS the letter but it doesn’t show up on display – clearly a BUG and very annoying

- Often showing route options shows SHORTEST TIME as longer than one of the other options such as MOSTLY FREEWAY. I don’t understand how this is possible. I think SHORTEST TIME really is SHORTEST but the times displayed in the interface are wrong – another BUG

- sometimes I’ve not been able to find some things in the AAA or Magellan database until turning the unit off and back on

- Searching for something nearby in another city is frustrating – if you change the city and then don’t like your choice of category or go back to options you have to input the city again.

- I’ve entered zip codes for areas instead of cities and been told they are in California when these are East Cost zip codes. Re-entering sometimes works.

- FINALLY – FERRIES ARE NOT ROADWAYS!! – I went two hours out of my way (yes I should have double checked but we were on a leisurely trip) because the unit insisted we take a FERRY across a lake instead of go around out. The best part is we were near the southern tip of the lake (this is Lake George, NY btw) and it, under any circumstance, would have been faster to go south of the lake to Vermont vs taking a ferry. Unfortunately, the ferry wasn’t running in the early spring and the info on the map display was cut off such that you couldn’t see FERRY on the display. It was only when it SPOKE the exit (when we were at it) did it speak the full name and say FERRY which surprised the heck out of me. I’m not from the area and had thought maybe there was a bridge across the lake so didn’t think twice about it. I know now that there was a bridge a long time ago (I guess) and the ferry doesn’t run until after Memorial Day. Roads still would have been faster.

With all this said, I’ll live with it with a current map but feel the need to double check routes on my phone now. In another year or two, when I replace it, I absolutely will NOT purchase another Magellan unit. They are slow to update their software when there are clearly bugs in the device and interface and I don’t want to be fooled again by some contractual fine print for a promoted feature such as my FREE MAP UPDATE which I DID NOT get.

The Texas StRANGER

Garmin nuvi 1350T gave me almost no control over the traffic information it provided. Suddenly, it would reroute me without telling me why it was doing it. The reroutings were so out-of-the-way as to not be believable.

The lane assist information was very often wrong on routes that I was familiar with that it made me unwilling to believe it in new situations on unfamiliar roads. For example, on one 27-mile trip that I often take, which includes two interstates and two divided-but-not-limited-access roads, its lane information was wrong in 5 out of 11 cases.

The TomTom 540TM promises to give you the fastest or shortest trip, depending on the option you choose. It consistently did not choose the quickest or the shortest routes. If you forced it to take a specific route, it would show that it was quicker/shorter, but would not choose it itself. Multiple emails and calls to TomTom support never went anywhere. I am a Software Engineer. They clearly have serious bugs in their mapping algorithms. Don’t trust them.

The lane assist information was very often wrong on routes that I was familiar with that it made me unwilling to believe it in new situations on unfamiliar roads. For example, on the 27-mile trip that I mentioned before gave wrong information in 4 out of 11 cases. That was one better than the Garmin.

Although it would show you traffic problems in the area and on your route, it seemed incapable of using that information to reroute me. On multiple instances, it routed me thought road construction, which clearly showed on its display, rather than taking me a variety of alternative routes that would have been faster which had no traffic.

It also had one very annoying feature on roads that were divided-but-not-limited-access that I mentioned above. It seemed to treat many of the center u-turn lanes as though they were major intersections on a freeway. About every mile, it would tell me to stay to the left (in my two lanes) and then go straight. There was no need to stay left, because the u-turn lane formed extra for the u-turn; the left lane was just fine to use. This was far too annoying to be acceptable, even if there were no other problems.

While I was not entirely happy with the lane information of the Magellan that I settled on, it was far better than the Garmin; it was wrong only 2 out of the 11 cases on the route I mentioned. While the Magellan is not as feature rich as the Garmin and the TomTom, for regular day-to-day use it performed the best. Its only major limitation is that they do no provide a one-time forever maps-update option.