TomTom ONE 140-S 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator
by TomTom
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of TomTom ONE 140-S 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator
Customer Review: Great GPS system with awesome features!
Summary: 5 Stars
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
I've used a few different GPS systems and this one is almost identical to the Tom Tom XL 340 S. If you are wanting a larger screen or are purchasing it for someone with vision problems, then I would definitely consider that one instead, but if you are ok with the smaller screen, this one is perfect. When starting up the unit, you can choose from male or female voices and language preference and there are actually many to choose from. You can also change the color and lay out of your map, etc. This system actually has a feature where the unit gets louder as you accelerate, to compensate for the noise the car is making. Miles and time left to arrive at destination are displayed in the lower middle of screen along with the current time and estimated arrival time. It displays the speed limit and your actual speed in the lower right corner, which turns red if you are going 5 miles or more over the limit. The limit changes almost instantly when you see a speed limit sign. I was really amazed by the accuracy of that. Keep in mind that this is only on interstates, highways, and main roads. It actually didn't display the speed limit at all on other roads. It displays the miles until your next turn in the lower left portion of the screen. I thought that only the 340 had all of these things displayed on the screen, but this smaller-screened one does too. It's just so difficult to flip back and forth when you aren't familiar with the roads you're on anyway, so it's nice not to have to with this system. The keyboard on this one was in alphabetic order when we started it up, but it was easy to switch the keyboard layout to that of a computer. This unit also shows you which lane you need to be in when exiting the interstate, etc. There are green arrows and it is so very clear which lane you should be in. I am female and sometimes have real trouble understanding directions. So this thing is never leaving my dash board, we now have one for each vehicle(the 340 in one and the 140 in the other). Even my husband was impressed by this one. I added photos of the different displays, so please check them if you are interested in viewing some of the things I've discussed. My only problem with this GPS is the problem that everyone is stating about not taking any of the updates offered to me. I'm not going to download any updates, but it would be nice to not to have to worry about my system being wiped out, so hopefully the people at Tom Tom will do something to correct this issue. Other than this small issue, I love this one and the 340. Tom Tom has definitely impressed our family more than any of the other brands, so far.
NOTE: There is a place in the settings on this gps that allows you to change your preferences, so that when you turn off your ignition, the gps powers off as well.
Customer Review: Another Happy Customer!
Summary: 5 Stars
I will admit that this is the first one that I've owned one (I dabbled with another brand, but I found it confusing), so maybe there is better out there, but my overall summary is that it's a very good GPS without the bells and whistles. There are a couple of things that could be improved, battery life for one and re-routing, but the others are not worth mentioning since these are personal preferences.
Before buying I had read the negative map update comments about this unit, but decided to buy it since it was selling at a good price ($80) and the good outweighed the bad. Anyway, I received the GPS and decided not to get the latest map until after I got back from my trip to Florida.
My trip to Miami and Orlando would never have successful without the GPS since I had many places that I wanted to visit. It got me from A to B which is what I wanted in an unfamiliar area. I just planned my routes ahead of time, looked it over and off I went.
Now for the map update. No doubt about it, I was scared I would damage the unit, but having done it recently it was an easy process that involved tech support at one point since the map update disappeared. Tech support helped me to fixed the problem and the GPS is working even better than right out the box. For one, I now get satellites signals in my home which tells me there is less chance of losing signals while out on the road.
To do the map update I followed the advise of others and below is my experience to the best of my knowledge - use it as a guide and not an absolute. Give yourself a number of hours to do the whole process but realize that it's mostly downtime - go read a book, clean your car, or whatever it takes to keep your mind off the downloading.
1) Opened a TomTom account and installed TomTom Home
2) Connected GPS to computer via the USB, clicked "yes" when asked
3) In Home I went to the the Back Up and Restore tab and backed up
4) Deleted all voices but the computer voice Susan to free up space
5) Deleted the map to free up space
6) Went to the Tools menu - clicked on the Use The Latest Map Guarantee
7) I did NOT download the map, but checked the map size which was about 1709 MB
8) Since I had enough free space on GPS to include the map I then downloaded it
9) When the new map was loaded I did a second back-up
Finally, you will only need an activation code if you get a unit with Lifetime Traffic Updates or some other feature that does not come with this GPS model.
Customer Review: Makes Navigation Easy
Summary: 5 Stars
I upgraded from the TomTom One 130 to this TomTom One 140s for the advanced lane guidance and I absolutely love it.
The spoken street names are nice but no big deal (You have to select a computer voice to get street names. The natural voice can only say pre-recorded things). The names are probably helpful for people who do not want to take their eyes of the road. However, those people will miss the absolute greatest feature which is the advanced lane guidance. It is so nice to get advanced notice that there are multiple lanes coming up and being told very clearly by means of the multiple arrows which lane(s) you can choose. I live in the Seattle area and found that it will show those arrows for nearly all large intersections that have multiple turning lanes. On the freeway you not only get the guidance arrows at the bottom, but frequently a big computer generated picture that clearly depicts all lanes and on/off ramps with big arrows inside the lanes you can choose. It is actually quite shocking when it then switches back to the standard lines view. They feel like cave drawings by comparison. I think it is already technically possible to make this realistic picture view the (moving) permanent view (kind of like a video game). All they need to do is extend their database to include the number of lanes of a road.
Two other improvements over the 130 are that you can add your own Points Of Interest. Although the 130 already allowed you to download locations from Google Maps as Favorites, adding them as POIs will display them on the map just as any other POI and reduce the clutter in your Favorites. The other minor improvement is the ability to create an itinerary. The itinerary is basically a sequence of destinations (with some minor editing capabilities such as adding, removing and moving a destination up or down in the list) which you can save as an itinerary. Just like the 130, the 140s is accurate, quick to draw the screen and recalculate the directions if you stray off course. If you notice after a while that the satellite aquisition is taking longer, connect the TomTom to your PC and update it and the aquisition will be back to a few seconds. I updated my 130 about once a month.
So far I haven't noticed the IQ Routes giving me different routing suggestions than the 130, but I have only had it for a few days and my trips so far may not have required a special IQ re-route. If I notice any specially great or bad routing later, I will add it to this review.
Customer Review: Sweet Spot of value and features!
Summary: 5 Stars
Let me start by saying I did exhaustive research prior to purchasing a GPS unit. I was convinced I was getting a Garmin 765,1370, or 1390 ( I also considered the Magellan 1470 and 4700). But they were all way more money than I wanted to spend- along comes this deal at less than half the price!~. I decided that features that were important to me were in order of importance:
Text to Speech - spoken street names
Lane Guidance -
Junction view
Blue tooth -
Lifetime free traffic
I live in a smaller metro area and so traffic was an easy perk to say good bye to, I only use my cell phone for emergency communication so bluetooth was an easy perk to say good bye to. That left me with 3 features that I knew at least 2 would be covered by the 140s. To my surprise on the test run of the unit I found that it has the equivalent of junction view not listed in the feature set (maybe that's what they mean by "advanced lane guidance").
Disadvantages-I've read dozens of reviews of this unit and the biggest disadvantage is the small internal storage size. But I've worked with computers that don't have HUGE drives and it's something you have to manage/work with. Updates require open space on the internal drive and if you download more than it will hold apparently it bricks the unit. So piece of advice - Back up the device then delete unwanted voices. To do this you'll connect the TOMTOM to your pc and go to "manage my one". Once that's done you should have about 200 MB free space. Download and install updates.Then to update your map using the "latest map garuntee" you'll want to do a calculation and make sure that you have enough space for the newest map. Go to 'Tools' drop down and click 'use latest map garuntee' and this will take you to the map update page. The update wizard will tell you the size of the new map available for download (you may have to click 'more info') DO NOT download and install yet. Click cancel or back and go back to manage my ONE. Verify in 'manage my ONE' that if you delete the map on your unit (same procedure as before) this will free up enough TOTAL space for the newest map. If so then delete your current map (about 1600MB the new map is about 1700MB)and proceed with the download and install of the new map. This whole process took about 5 hours so I just started it before I went to bed. Now that the unit is all up to date I think I'll back it up again so I've got a fresh place to restore to.
Customer Review: Great Little GPS
Summary: 5 Stars
I've owned a TomTom 125 for over a year and have been very pleased with it. When the wife expressed an interest in a GPS for Christmas I decided to buy her this model with the IQ Routes Technology, Spoken Street Names, and Advanced Lane Guidance. I borrowed her 140-S on a recent trip to see how well I'd like those new features. Below I'll discuss how each worked out for me.
1. IQ Routes Technology: I'm not 100% sure this feature changed my routing, but the 140-S did change the directions slightly on my return trip. Like many GPS routes that differ from my normal directions this may have been a little faster.
2. Spoken Street Names: That feature is OK, but it struggles to correctly pronounce subdivision names so you may need to glance at the screen for the written name. It's a nice feature, but one I could live without, at least until the technology comes up with more accurate sounding pronunciations.
3. Advanced Lane Guidance: This is a really, really nice feature; often I would wish it would flash up on the screen a tad sooner, but I still like it.
I think every GPS takes a short while to get completely comfortable with it. You need to learn how far in advance it's going to tell you to turn and other subtle differences.
I think the 140-S is a nice upgrade to my 125 and before I pay $50- $75 for a map update I'll just wait until they go on sale and get a new unit with these new features. ATTENTION TomTom, if your map updates were more reasonably priced, like at $25, I would have updated my 125 maps by now.
I did do the free map update on the 140-S before I left on my trip and it took longer than I expected, maybe about 2 hours. That's no big deal, just don't start a map update if you're headed out the door in a hurry.