Tom Tom 720

[Denis O]

I have an old Becker Traffic Assist which is basic and pretty poor in many respects. It is time for an upgrade and I am leaning towards the 720 which is very cheap on Amazon at present (£229)

What is the speaker like for anouncements and for bluetooth telephone repro. Is it correct that the 720's FM transmitter can have both telephone and direction anouncements played through the cars stereo system and if so how good is this.

[Denis O]

Thanks for that Lambo. Very infomative. The little box arrived this morning and is currently in it's dock, charging up after having all the updates downloaded and the preferences set.

It certainly feels a lot more substantial and better built than mu old Becker and I look forward to using it in anger once it's fully charged.

[Denis O]

Jonny TVR said:

I have this model and use it for handsfree. The speaker is fine but the microphone is not very good as sometimes people have problem hearing me and I end up shouting! Is there a bluetooth microphone that can be used instead that can be mounted disceetly in the car

I wonder if that would work on the basis that you already have your phone attached via Bluetooth and I don't think you can have 2 bluetooth devices attached at the same time.

I'm now a few weeks into ownership and can report as follows:

Phone Compatibility
No problems with a V3 and a V3i in both linking and downloading the phone book. Minor issue is you have a phone book for each phone as opposed to combining all phone books without duplicating numbers. A lot of numbers are repeated in mine & my wifes phonebooks but the Tom Tom cannot use a common phonebook.
My Nokia 6310 (brilliant phone) is not compatible and could not connect via bluetooth. Had to upgrade the handset and went for a Sony Ericsson 850i. This paired easily but has some gremlins in the downloading phonebook process. First try and it wouldn't download. 2nd try it did. No idea why but that's what happened.
In essence, check on the Tom Tom site for phone compatibility. Actually the 850i is not listed but I tried it with my sons 850 and it connected so that's why I went that way.

Downloading Up-dates
This seems an strange process in that you download an update and the following day the same update is asking to be downloaded. Hey ho.

InUse
Apart from playing about indoors I haven't actually used it in anger yet. It was bought primarily for a car which is not in the UK at present so will have to wait till Xmas to use it. Certainly when using it indoors it acquires a signal quickly, inputs are easy and mapping looks fine. Phone works well.

It is very robust and looks like it will take a lot of punishment. Windscreen sucker mount looks flimsy though so will try to get something more substantial.

All in all I nice piece of equipment.