battery life of TomTom 910?

[kryten]

Just wondering if anyone can comment on the battery life of the 910 or any of the 510/710 (or even the One)?

Its claimed as 4 hours but I was wondering if that was a real life 4 hours (with Bluetooth on for example) or a 'best case if you're lucky' time?

I like the idea of the text to speech, especially for when I'm on my motorbike but that doesn't have a 12v socket plus my Elise is a little weedy in the voltage dept so i tend not to connect much to its power supply either. I just figured with a hard disk it might be a little optimistic on the estimate of how long it will work for.

I currently have an iPaq with external jacket so i get two batteries, plus an external bluetooth GPS with its own power but its a big hassle and i'd like to switch to an all in one unit.

Do the Garmin ones have a longer battery life??

Overall battery times isn't something I've found in many reviews as I assume most people connect them to the car power

 

[per-Sony-fied]

I can confirm that for the 510 on a full charged battery you can expect a life of at least 4hrs. On a long round trip thats over the 4hr battery life where it is likely to get switched off prior to return for a few hrs or more and possibly for a stop on the journey for 1/2hr or more then you should expect 5hrs. I've managed 5+hrs.

A quick boost of 30mins or so from the car charger (while in use) will normally allow the unit to charge sufficiently for a further couple of hrs use.

Provided the unit is charged fully prior to a journey it should last for most journeys without the need for the car charger.

 

[kryten]

Can noone comment on the battery life of the 910 without power?

As its hard drive based my concern is the battery life may be quite a bit lower than the 510

 

[per-Sony-fied]

I've now got a 910 and while at present I have not used it to the same length of usage as the 510 I can say that I've taken it on a journey of over 2hrs with switch off during stopping points and it still had a good deal of battery life left. How much further it would have run before dying is something I can't say.

During it's usage it was purely used as navigation without using any fancy facility's like bluetooth or MP3 playing which would surely shorten it's life by some margin.