Product reviews can be overly subjective and we’ve seen conflicting reviews of GPS devices before. But a couple of reviews of the new TomTom GO 740 LIVE that appeared online this afternoon define subjective in its most extreme form.
To be honest, both Gizmodo and GPS Review did test out the GO 740 LIVE and the latter site takes objective reviewing very seriously. Furthermore, Gizmodo is known for its snarky writing and can be quite negative at times. But when Gizmodo absolutely despises the Go 740 LIVE and TomTom as a company (it seems), and GPS Review says the device “could quickly become your favorite travel companion,” how are you supposed to know which review to believe.
I would take the GPS Review conclusion over Gizmodo any day. But just take a look at these two excerpts from each of the publications about the same darn device and you can see how consumers can become confused.
GPS Review’s take:
If you must have the best traffic system available– even though it isn’t perfect, then the TomTom 740 LIVE could quickly become your favorite travel companion.
And then Gizmodo’s tongue-lashing:
If TomTom isn’t willing to address its products’ fundamental problems, it deserves to fail in this business. Does that sound heartless? What’s heartless is foisting sub-par hardware on unsuspecting moms and pops, who don’t have the privilege of testing a bunch of stuff side by side. Because I have a heart, and care about your hard-earned money, it’s my duty to tell you—and your mom and dad—to avoid TomTom like the freakin’ plague. (In case you were wondering, Garmins are still the best—even the cheap ones.)
It would be nice if some hacker out there could take each GPS device available, pull major reviews of each device off the net, and then apply some sort of rating or authority system to the actual reviewers. For end consumers who use the internet to find out information pertaining to a GPS purchase decision it would eliminate the obvious confusion these types of conflicting reviews cause.
If you have any ideas regarding how a system like this could work, or if you think you could put something like this together I’d like to hear from you. Alternatively, if a service like this already exists I’d love to know about it! You can either leave your ideas in the comments or email me at justin at gpsobsessed dot com.
Update: GPS Review has a new post up that pulls apart Gizmodo’s article point by point. Check it out!
GPS Review-Read
Gizmodo-Read
