TomTom One 130S - 3.5 in. Car GPS Receiver

"I don't know if I'm going the right way or not." Yeah, that's a sentence you don't want to hear when you are travelling home from a vacation. But luckily, I had secretly packed my TomTom One 130S for a just in case sort of situation. We had made it to Florida fine, but for some reason on our way back it was troublesome.

Anyway, I had bought the unit a long way back for only $83 on EBay. I had never really gotten to use it much, I had tried it on a couple of short trips, but this was a good opportunity to try it on a 14 hour drive home. In the box, you get the unit, car mounting system (suction cup) a USB cable, as well as a car charger. The instruction booklet is pretty easy to get along with. The screen of the TomTom is about 3 ½ inches, and you can change the colors on it to night vision colors, (where it's not as bright ) then day colors. The screen is a touch screen, and it reminds me of those debit card readers at the store. The buttons may be small for some, and in a hurry you could easily push the wrong one, but I don't have a ton of trouble out of that.

This is really so simple to use- after it is fully charged (the battery life is only 3 hours or so, so the car charger comes in handy) you turn it on and it will take a few minutes to get a signal. The first time you use it, you will set up your ‘home location' and it will keep it in memory and adjust all directions from your house. You can change this if necessary. To enter an ending destination, you can hit state, then go to city, then type in a specific street as well as address number. Or you can be given directions to the city's center, gas stations, points of interest.

While driving, you will see a little green line where you are going. This also gives street names, and things on exits like gas stations, and you can find other things like hospitals with this also. Also, ours goes ‘honk honk' when you run into severe traffic. You can change any of these settings as well. At the bottom of the screen it calculates how many more miles you have to go as well as what time you will reach your destination. It also has the speed limit as well as how fast you're going. I must say the screen on this is so clear, it's like having a small TV.

When driving, the lady's voice got on my husband's nerves. I mean, this thing calculates down to the second, and you'll hear- "In one half mile turn right" then "In one quarter of a mile, turn right" Ok lady I got it he said. Seriously though, if I'm driving in an unfamiliar area, I want this thing to tell me that stuff every 5 seconds. He's not that way about driving though. I've got the volume pumped up as loud as it will go, and we can hear it pretty well even with the radio on.

There are a few qualms with the unit, for example the battery life isn't just all that great, especially on a long trip. So be sure to have the car charger. Also, this little dude isn't just the best at giving the greatest directions. Well, when planning the trip to Florida, it kept sticking us going through Atlanta (no thanks, Atlanta traffic) when you could just go from TN down through the whole state of Alabama and then go to Florida. I kept trying to recalculate the route but it came up with some really off the wall directions, like driving to South Carolina then going down to Florida. Also, on the way home, it wanted us to go all the way to Memphis but you could go through another area and avoid Memphis. Once we got on the way home and knew where we were, I took the unit and turned it off. It is really good for those emergency situations though, when we didn't know exactly where we were I plugged it in and turned it on and it navigated us right to where we needed to be.

Also, let me say that TomTom's service is really great. To update your maps, you go to TomTom's website and download the TomTom home application then connect the unit to your computer. You can also plan routes and send them to your unit from there as well. I had a bug in my TomTom Home and I called and they were so helpful with giving me the steps to get it fixed. Map updates are free as well, which is a good benefit.

Overall, this is a useful little unit, but not perfect, but it's there to help.