Review TomTom RIDER

GO fun on two wheels?

December, 2005 - It's only just been released, and here we are with our review of the TomTom RIDER. Read everything about TomTom's first Personal Navigation Device especially built for use on the motorcycle or scooter!

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Finally! At the official announcement last March they promised us a sunny RIDER-summer, but shortly thereafter it became clear that we would have to be a bit more patient than that... But now it's here! Naturally we're very curious to finally get some questions answered. How is the RIDER's reception? How quickly does it calculate new routes? How long does the battery last? Is the screen superior to the GO's screen? Are the maps an improvement?

Box
There's no denying it, the RIDER comes in a beautiful package. A nice yellow box, cubical shaped, about 17 by 17 cm (that's 6.7 by 6.7 inches), comparable to the size of the box of the original GO Classic. Filled to the brim with goodies! Here's a line up:

• The RIDER itself (of course!)

Specs TomTom RIDER

ARM920T-CPU 380MHz; 32 Mb RAM; 3.5 inch, 320 x 240 TFT LCD touchscreen; Measurements: 113,4 mm x 95 mm x 52,4 mm Weight: 310 gram Integrated GPS-receiver based on SiRF Star III with 20 channels 'All-in-view'-tracking; SD-slot for card with software and maps; Internal rechargeable lithium-ion battery which, depending on use, lasts about 5 hours; USB-cable for PC connection, for updates; Alternative power supply in mount, which connects to the 12V/24V-battery of motorcycle; Bluetooth-set with earpiece and microphone for instructions and handsfree phoning; Operating temperatures: -10 to +55 degrees C; Weatherproof: IPX6; Mounting-kit for motorbike/scooter.

• The RIDER holder
• RIDER software + maps on an SD card
• A registration card for the software
• A power cable to connect the RIDER to the motorcycle's battery
• A power adapter
• A Bluetooth receiver
• An earpiece + mic for use with a helmet
• An earpiece + mic for use in the car
• A USB cable
• different kinds of mounting brackets
• Screws and hex keys for installation of the mounting brackets
• A cleaning cloth for the RIDER's screen
• A CD-ROM with digitized manual + backup tools
• A manual, quick start guide and a leaflet which mentions the accessories

Quite a lot! But that doesn't meant that the installation is incredibly difficult. Quite the opposite even: it's surprisingly easy.

Unit
It has to be said: I like the unit's looks! The cover is made of some sort of hard plastic and feels a lot more firm than the cover of a GO. This is only normal, because of course the RIDER will have a lot more to endure than his brother, simply because it won't have the luxury of being used in a protected area like the inside of a car. But we don't think the RIDER will have any problems facing the sometimes hard weather conditions of a lot of the European countries and/or some American states. Our test have also proved that, but more on that further on in this review.

If we look at the RIDER from all sides, the only thing that's really notable is the small lid on the underside of the unit. When we open it, we see the SD card slot (3), with underneath it the reset hole (1), the power connector (2) and the USB connector (4). The on/off switch is located on the right hand side. On the back of the unit there's the TomTom logo imprinted, and below that a sticker which contains some info, amongst other things the serial number.

There is no connector for an external antenna. But that doesn't really matter at all, because the RIDER uses the new SiRF Star III chipset, which is also used in the TomTom ONE. This receiver chipset's capacities are starting to become widely known, and for good reason! Terrific GPS signal reception, also when used in "problematic" areas, like when driving through narrow streets surrounded by high buildings, underneath overhanging trees, or when used in the car behind an athermic windshield. This chipset really makes an external antenna otiose.

First use
I press the on/off button. Hmm..., this takes a bit more effort that had I first thought! There's a decent amount of pressure required to switch the RIDER on or off. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, because this means it won't be possible to turn it on or off just by touching it by mistake. On the other hand, this also means that it will be impossible to turn the unit on whilst wearing gloves. But that really doesn't matter. It's clear that choices had to be made, and as far as I'm concerned, TomTom has made the right choice. In short, after a long (hard) push on the on/off button, I'm greeted by the well-known TomTom drumroll. On the screen a nice colour photo is shown of a motorcycle on which the RIDER is installed. And it has to be said: the screen looks magnificent! It looks even better than the already extremely nice screen of the ONE! But more on that further on.

The first time the RIDER is activated, it asks it's new users a couple of questions. Like language settings, home address, and if you want to configure the RIDER for left or right-handed use. That's of course a matter of personal preference, but we choose to go with the left-handed use setup, since the throttle on a motorcycle is on the right-hand side. Good thinking by TomTom! Besides that, I can also enter the Bluetooth settings at this point, but I choose to wait a bit more with those. The Bluetooth connection is mainly used to connect to the TomTom PLUS services, and other reviews have learned us by now what we may expect from that. We're a lot more curious as to all the other things the RIDER has to offer. Quite a lot, it seems!

Screen
The quality of the screen on the RIDER is superb. It's by far the best TFT screen of the entire TomTom range. It's very colourful, extremely sharp and it has an anti-reflection layer. This makes the screen exceptionally easy on the eye, and very easily readable. Besides that, it also responds very quickly to the commands that are given via the touch-screen. Excellent!

Sound
The RIDER holds no internal speaker. Instead, it transmits the audio by Bluetooth connection to a little receiver that can be clipped onto the user's clothing. To this receiver, an earpiece (with built-in microphone for telephone calls) is connected. The earpiece itself is a small speaker that can be fitted inside the helmet by means of Velcro. The Bluetooth receiver works on a rechargeable battery, and can be charged by using the same home charging adapter that the RIDER uses.

Then, the first test. Which was, to be honest, a little disappointing. The sound quality was not exactly on par as to what I've become accustomed to from other TomTom products. It sounded pretty dim, dull even. Very much different from the crystal clear sound that a GO produces eg. One voice is also accompanied by a lot a creaking. So much even, that the entire voice is pretty useless. Fortunately, other voices are more useful, and once a good voice was chosen it could be understood pretty good. Well, except for the "it being dim" issue … I've not been able to find out why this is so. First I thought that it was the result of the audio being transmitted by a Bluetooth connection, but further tests changed my mind about that. See, when later on in the tests I tried the RIDER to work as a hands free phone kit, the voice of the caller was extreme clear. Much better than the command voices! This proved to me that the Bluetooth connection wasn't really the problem here. I suspect TomTom has still got some fine tuning to do in this area.

Hands free
As already mentioned, the RIDER can also operate as a hands free phone kit. It works just as good, and in exactly the same manner as the hands free option of the GO 500 and 700. For this reason, I won't go any deeper into this feature of the RIDER. Suffice it to say that the option is there, and that it works very well. I'll refer to the review of firmware 5.0 for more details on the hands free phone function.

Reception
There's only one work that comes to mind when I describe reception quality of the new SiRF Star III chipset: phenomenal! Even inside the house, the RIDER gets a satellite fix within seconds. And once it's got it's fix, there's almost no letting go! It even has GPS signal reception in a room that doesn't even have windows! By means a small test, I put the RIDER in a closed cupboard. And even in there, it still keeps it's fix! To everyone who has experience with the GPS reception of the GO, this might seem too good to be true, but I guarantee you that it's really the truth!

Of course, GPS signal reception is one of the most important things of a navigational unit, and here the RIDER passes with flying colours (same as his little brother, the ONE)! As already stated, an external antenna is really overkill with a reception like this right out of the box! So the first impression is a very positive one, but of course, for a complete and accurate picture, we need to test the RIDER in it's natural habitat, the motorcycle...

Mounting
Three different kinds of mounting brackets are shipped with the RIDER. One for mounting on the handlebar (this is the preferred method), one for mounting on the mirror connection, and finally a solid sticker to stick the RIDER straight to the motorcycle's bodywork. Needless to say that this last method is the "final resort" way of solving things, and I wouldn't really recommend it. I wouldn't really trust double-sided sticky tape to hold and keep holding the RIDER in it's place. After all, it'll have to endure a lot of bumps and vibrations...

I go for the handlebar setup, and fixing the bracket onto it is easy as pie. It's just a matter of fixing the bracket to the handlebar, tightening one screw with the supplied hex key, and voila: you're done! Ten minutes of work. At most! Of course, not every motorcycle will be equally RIDER-compatible, but most of the bikes shouldn't pose a problem. After fixing the mounting bracket, you can also opt to connect the permanent power supply to the mount. This is pretty easily done by connecting one end of the supplied cable to the motorcycle's battery, and the other end to the mount itself. In essence a pretty simple task, but if you feel unsure to work on the electrical system of your motorcycle, then I'm sure that you can ask your local motorcycle dealer for help.

As already made public by TomTom, besides using the RIDER on a motorcycle, you can also use it in your car. For this, you need the optional car mount. This is a variant to the already well-known suction cup mount of the GO. It doesn't do much else besides mounting the RIDER to the windshield. At least, I don't think it does. I can't really tell for sure since we didn't receive our test unit in time for this review. Should I receive this test unit at a later time, I'll post an update to this review with our findings.

But, for now, what I can tell you is that this mount, as far as I know, does not provide an external power connector and does not have a speaker integrated. So it's not possible to hear your RIDER out loud through the additional mount. Which is a shame, because that's an option I would have liked to see. For now, you have to drive around with the earpiece to be able to hear the voice commands. That works, but I would hardly call it an ideal solution. An alternative could be that you connect your RIDER to a Bluetooth handsfree car kit like eg. the Parrot car kits. This would enable you to hear the commands through a speaker, but the downside is that you would have to have (or buy) one of those car kits in order to be able to do so. And they don't really come cheap.

The actual test
Now, it's time for the actual test drive! I mount the earpiece inside the helmet, and immediately notice that it's a big too thick to be good. Even when pressed together, it's about one cm thick I guess. What I fear turns out to be true: a helmet normally fits exactly around the head of the wearer. It's supposed to be like that. Then, pushing an object which is about one cm thick between the helmet and the ear soon results in a pretty painful ear. The helmet really doesn't fit snugly anymore either. In short, not only is it not comfortable anymore, it's downright painful. In order to solve this, I mount the earpiece a bit more higher up in the helmet, where there's a bit more space. This works better! No more pressure on my ear, and the speaker is still loud enough to be able to hear the voice commands without a problem. Ok, all set. Off we go!

Maps
If there's one thing I'm really curious about, it's the quality of the RIDER's maps. The RIDER uses NAVTEQ maps, as opposed to all other TomTom products, which use TeleAtlas maps. Why TomTom has opted to make this choice for the RIDER is not really clear to me, but it does mean that I will be able to directly compare the quality of the maps!

But is seems we're off to a bad start… the street where I want to start my trip isn't known by the RIDER! Well, correction, it does know the street, but only up to house number 19, and not up to the last house number in the street, which is number 53. The rest of the street is named "unnamed street". Strange. The house at number 53 has been there for more than 30 years! Actually, it was one of the first houses that was even built in that street! Small mistake? I decide to think so and I'm off on my trip.

But also during the further tests, I have to determine that the NAVTEQ maps have slight errors. Ok, I know maps can never be 100% complete, but to me these maps seems to have more errors than the TeleAtlas maps. Well, not really errors per se, but they seem to be less precise, especially with regards to the house numbers. Almost all the roads are present, but some of them are "unnamed" or don't show any house numbers. That is a disappointment. What I also found peculiar is that the RIDER does not take roads into account that are may not be used by cars, but on which motorcycles are allowed. That might be nitpicking, but since this is a product specifically created for use with motorcycles, I had hoped that TomTom would have taken this into account. Unfortunately, this does not seem to be the case.

If you end up not liking the NAVTEQ maps, there is an alternative however; the RIDER turns out to also be completely compatible with the TeleAtlas maps. This enables you to use the recently released accessory maps on this device as well. We think this is an excellent initiative from TomTom, because it provides the users with a choice: TeleAtlas or NAVTEQ. And even though the NAQTEQ maps are by no means bad, I have to admit that I have a slight preference towards the TeleAtlas ones.

Volume
While driving I quickly notice that a volume level of less than 70% is completely unusable. 90% is do-able. While driving on highways, at a speed of 120 km/h, it's absolutely necessary to turn the volume up to it's maximum setting. This has also always been the case with the GO, but I still think this is a bit strange. Maybe TomTom can start using a different volume scale, because as it now, only the last 20 to 30% of the volume scale is usable. And I believe that's not a whole lot.

I also quickly notice that woman's voices are not really useable. That's not a sexist remark, but a simple fact. Because of the wind noises, men's voices can be understood a lot better than woman's. Fortunately there's a lot of voices shipped with the RIDER, so everybody should be able to find a voice to their liking.

Besides the volume, I also quickly notice something else: the RIDER's menus have changed! I thought that was strange, so I stopped the motorcycle, and it soon became clear to me. TomTom has built a safety precaution into the RIDER. While driving, only 4 icons are available: "navigate to", "turn sound off", "erase route" and "add to favourites". This has been done like so to prevent the user from giving complicated commands to the RIDER while driving. Doing so would surely take the motorcyclist's attention away from the road, and I don't have to tell you how hazardous this can be. So it's not bad that TomTom has thought about this. On the other hand, it does come across as a bit patronizing. Therefore I would have liked to see this as a user-configurable option, and not as a fixed setting. I wouldn't at all be surprised if this would become one of the most discussed features of the RIDER in the forums.

In essence, it's like this: when the RIDER gets clicked into the holder and it has no GPS fix, or when the RIDER is moving and does have a GPS fix, the simplified menu is displayed. There was also something strange about that simplified menu. When I chose "navigate to" and then "recent destination", the RIDER automatically chose the most recent destination, instead of showing me a list of recent destinations to choose from. (like is the case with the normal menu). Strange, but this is something that will probably get fixed in the future.

Operating
When it comes to operating the RIDER I can be brief: if you can work with a GO or the ONE, it should come very natural to you. It operates exactly the same. The only downside perhaps is that TomTom hasn't really paid attention to operating the RIDER while wearing gloves, meaning it's pretty impossible to do so. The characters on the display are, even at the largest setting, too small to be of any use. Now, do I think this is a bad thing? No. I'm a pretty big advocate of setting up the RIDER before departing, and not whilst driving. And if you set up the RIDER while standing still, you don't really have to worry about the gloves issue either.

Also, another important note: while testing, I ended up in a few showers. Not very pleasant, but it did prove one important thing to me: there's no problem with the RIDER being water proof! The RIDER kept functioning without a hitch, despite the elevated humidity level. As it should be!

TomTom PLUS
Just like all the other TomTom all-in-one solutions since the Classic, the RIDER is also fully compatible with the PLUS services. This works exactly the same as on all the other TomTom devices, and it works equally well. For this reason I won't go any deeper into those services in this review, meaning that I won't explain how I tested them, since this has already been reviewed a few times. (see the review of the GO's version 5.0 firmware, and the ONE review) Suffice it to say that it works, and it works well.

I will do a small recap of the possibilities though. The PLUS services offer handy (paid) add-ons for your TomTom unit. The most interesting add-on no doubt being Traffic, which, once connected to TomTom's servers via a Bluetooth connection on your mobile phone, keeps you updated in real-time about traffic-jams or other forms of road blocks on your chosen route. If a certain blockage should appear on your route, then the RIDER (if you choose so), automatically diverts you around this blockage by plotting an alternative route. I've tried this service out myself and I can say that I'm pleased with the results: traffic does what it promises.

Besides this service, other things can be requested and pulled from TomTom's servers as well, like eg. the actual weather forecast, new colour schemes, speed camera POI's, etc. Honesty does dictate me to mention, concerning the speed camera POI's, that those also can be found for free on certain specialised websites. But the PLUS services make installing those POI's a bit easier for the user. So it's up to you what you prefer really.

The PLUS services are, just like with all other TomTom devices, free for one month. This in order to let the new user try the service before he or she buys. If you like the service and want to continue using it after this first trial month, then it is going to cost you. The service costs € 29.95 (£20) per year in the Benelux, Austria, Spain, Italy, France, Sweden and Switzerland. In Germany the service costs € 39.95 (£27) per year and in the United Kingdom € 59.95 (£40) per year. For the entire continent of Europe combined the price is € 79.95 (£54) per year. Also, don't forget that, in order to be able to use these services, you'll have to be connected to TomTom's servers. This means using a data connection via your mobile phone, and your mobile phone provider will surely charge you extra for this. It might be good to know that certain mobile phone providers also offer some sort of "data subscription" to their users, and with such a subscription you can use a data connection virtually limitless for a fixed amount per month. If you're on the road a lot, and plan on using the Traffic service a lot because of that, then this might be an interesting option for you. Check with your mobile phone provider for details, because these deals differ from provider to provider.

Battery life
Something that I haven't mentioned so far in this review is the battery life of the new TomTom RIDER. Well, I can be brief about that really: it's excellent! My test model easily lasted longer than four hours, so battery capacity will be between four and five hours, depending on the use of the unit and taking differences between units into account. That's a nice and very useable score!

The Bluetooth receiver to which the earpiece connects scores even better! During the test, I haven't been able to completely drain the battery of this little device. Which is a good thing and a comforting thought, because you have to take into account that, while on the road, the RIDER can always be connected to the motorcycle's battery in case of low battery. But if the Bluetooth receiver ceases to function, there's no option to charge it while on the road. So it's a very good thing that it lasts quite a bit on one battery charge!

As a final note I would also like to mention that the RIDER has no "charging led" like the GO does. But that's not such a big deal. I've always thought that the way the GO led was used didn't really serve a purpose anyway. After all, it always lits up from the moment that the unit is connected to a power source, but it doesn't indicate if or when the unit is fully charged. In my opinion, that defeats the purpose of a charging led, and if so they might just as well not implement it. As they have done with the RIDER.

Conclusion

The new RIDER has a few minuses, but in general it's fair to say that TomTom has once again shipped an excellent product. The unit's reception is superb (I cannot stress that fact enough!), the quality of the screen is very good, the (re)calculation of routes is very fast and the battery life is more than sufficient. The box in which the unit is shipped is filled to the brim with accessories, so that's a big plus also. The biggest minus is no doubt the sound quality of the command voices. There's still some room for improvement in that area. But, although not of ideal quality, they are still adequate and don't hinder the usability of the unit.

The NAVTEQ maps are up to the job, so don't worry about that. They may not be a good as the TeleAtlas maps (in my opinion), but they'll get you where you want to go. Besides, if you really don't want to use the NAVTEQ maps, you've now got the option to upgrade to the TeleAtlas maps instead. At a cost of course, but nonetheless the choice is there if you want it.

Pro + GPS signal reception quality + Screen quality + Battery life + Completeness of package

Con - Sound quality of voices - Thickness of helmet speaker

The price of the unit isn't exactly what I would call cheap, but compared to the price that competitors ask for competing products, you'll find that this RIDER is actually a bargain. I even dare to say that, at this moment of writing, no competitor has a comparable product for a comparable price in his range. So it's clear that the RIDER is a worthy addition to TomTom's all-in-one Personal Navigation Device family.

The long wait turned out to be worth it!

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