IntelliRoute TND 720 GPS For $197 Plus Tax.

I just order a refurbished TND 720 and used the coupon code, it still works, paid $ 197 with tax, free shipping UPS ground Bear

I usually avoid "factory refurbished" pieces like the plague. However, I have been to the Rand-McNally site and it appears they operate a bit differently than "wholesale warehouses". I may try the refurbished TND 720 piece, but only through them.

We should keep this thread updated with input on the functionality of the GPS itself. It seems to be a very popular device.

I have noticed the unit likes to lock up sometimes when you have it connected to wifi. When this happens I press on the bottom bar a few times (where it shows city, cross street, etc), and it will start moving again, but sometimes it will just lock up again. If I am going somewhere I have never been before, I will disable the wifi when I get in the vicinity, because usually it will start spazing out right where you need the most help. This seems to happen in areas where the cellular service for the hotspot is trying to find a new signal, or during a handoff to a different tower.

I subscribe to the traffic service. Sometimes it's on the ball, sometimes it isn't. If you're really worried about traffic ahead and possibly having it figure an alternate route, periodically manually hit the traffic report and let it do a search. It takes a while to get an alternate route option calculated, so don't wait until you're rolling up on the last exit before the parking lot to do it. There was an area I drove through daily that got backed up pretty bad, so I would start checking traffic when I got 30 miles from the area (the max distance it will check). Sometimes if I have a pretty good idea of where it's going to take me I will just exit and let it recalculate on the fly. One day there was a bad accident where a driver died on I-65 and they had both lanes shut down. I had a general idea of where to go around by the chatter on the CB, so I exited in that general direction and let it calculate as I went. Coming back, though, there were accidents and stuff from the congestion, so I went a longer way around, not the way the GPS suggested. That's one cool thing about the RM GPS, it's basically their electronic atlas, so you can click around on it and stuff and see the same basic info you'd find in the atlas. On New Year's Eve last year, I got stuck in the snowstorm in Chicago, and 80 was backed up for miles. Well, I picked its alternate route, and it took me into Chicago where it was worse!

It's never let me down, but it's taken me the LONG way several times. If it doesn't make sense, go the way you know you need to head out and it will fix itself usually. For instance, if it has you going north for 30 miles then turning around, when you need to go south, start heading south instead. When I was a student I followed it onto a road that didn't exist out of a truckstop once. I am glad my trainer never woke up while I was trying to back around the corner on the single lane dirt road with huge ditches on either side. It was dark and I had to keep getting out with a flashlight to make sure I wasn't going to flip the truck off the road.

A little common sense is required, but I love the thing.

I use the wind condition display on it mostly. I have been using the RADARNOW app (thanks GuyJax!) for windspeed and direction details, but the GPS gives a good indicator of base wind speed in the areas you're traveling through, and is amazingly accurate in some respects. For instance, if you see the color is changing up over the hill, you're probably going to get blasted by a gust when you hit that hill.

The traffic is the only thing that requires a subscription. I will probably renew mine next month when it expires, even though I seldom use it. For the many times it was worthless, the once or twice it helped was worth the $20/yr.