Is the TomTom car kit worth the price?
By Michael W. Jones
The TomTom car kit has at long last hit the Apple store, and presumably other retailers. The big question at this juncture will be, is the car kit worth the $199 price tag being asked?
The car kit for the TomTom GPS navigation system for the iPhone has been available for several weeks in other countries. It has just become available in the Unites States in the Apple store, carrying a price tag of just under $200, according to an i4U story. That is a fairly hefty investment for what is, in essence, an accessory to your telephone, rather than being a complete product unto itself. That begs the question as to whether or not the car kit is really worth the money being asked for it. Does the car kit provide good value?
What it does is important, after all. It holds the iPhone safely where a driver can see it. It keeps the phone battery charged, important since GPS and the TomTom system drain batteries so quickly. More importantly, the car kit contains a better, stronger GPS chip that gets positioning information more frequently, helping the iPhone GPS lag issue. It contains a speaker to insure that the driver can hear the system’s spoken instructions. The kit also interfaces with iTunes and will allow hands-free calling.
Still, $200 is a fair chunk of change. For that amount of money, you could buy a middle-of-the-road navigation device. Throw in the $99 that you spent for the iPhone TomTom software and you could buy a much nicer one. Look around for a GPS navi system for around $300 and you will find some very good stand-alone devices, including some from TomTom. Given some of the features that are missing from the iPhone TomTom system, like pronounced street names and exits, and it is easy to question the price.
Perhaps the most important single reason to get the car kit for the iPhone is simple convenience. It does everything that you need it to do, including giving better GPS, and you don’t have to carry around yet another tech device to get through your day. The kit stays in the car. I have an iPhone because I happened to need a cell phone and an MP3 player at the same time. The iPhone meant that I could buy a single device and be done with it. The same is true of an e-reader. A Kindle would be nice, but in a pinch I can read books on my iPhone using the Amazon Kindle app. The GPS issue belongs in the same bag. It saves me from having one more device to carry, making the iPhone at least a four in one device. But heaven help me if my iPhone goes south again, as it did a few weeks ago…
Related:
Entry was posted
on Monday, October 26th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
under 
Print This Post
Read more entries by Michael W. Jones.
Stumble It!
