We absolutely love our Personal Navigation Devices, but all of them come with two very annoying complementary 'extra features': in direct sunlight the screen becomes hard to read, and at night, the unit creates an annoying reflection on the windscreen.The manufacturers of navigational devices all try to solve this issue by increasing/decreasing the screen brightness. While this allows for a reasonable quick fix, it doesn't completely solve the issue. Enter the Drumma Visor.
Looks
There are other manufacturers who tried this, but as far as we know, none of them have done their homework as well as Drumma has. Drumma's solution is as simple as it is elegant and efficient: it consists of a cover made from plastic which simply slides over the TomTom. No installation hassles: this is simply a 'slide it on and it works' kind of solution. The Drumma Visor is made out of hard, durable plastic. If you don't accidentally sit on it, this thing is going to last a lifetime. It's also very light: only 44 grams, so it will not make your TomTom unit droop.
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Drumma visors for TomTom GO x10 and ONE v1
Two versions
Currently Drumma is selling two versions of their visors. There's a visor for the TomTom GO x10 series (which we are testing in this review), and a visor for the TomTom ONE v1 series. While Drumma also sent us a version of their TomTom ONE visor, we didn’t have a ONE v1 series handy, so we could not test it. But we have no doubt it perform exactly like the x10 series visor.With new TomTom devices already on the market, Drumma is not sitting still: they are currently hard at work in developing new visors. The only thing they are not yet sure of is which TomTom models they should target with the first designs. So they would like to find the opinion of the yourNAV readers, which means YOU!
That's right: you can choose which TomTom unit you would like to see a visor developed for. Make sure to vote for your choice in this poll.
The test
We've done a double test with the GO x10 visor. The first in daylight, on a sunny day, and the other at night. Please take into account that these tests were done during the winter, when the sun is much lower in the sky. This means sunlight doesn't fall directly on top of the unit and the differences in use with or without visor is less pronounced than it would otherwise be.
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Day and night...
We slid the visor onto out TomTom GO 910, attached the unit to the windscreen and off we went. The first thing we noticed is that the visor does not interfere with satellite reception in any way: the unit received its satellite fix as quickly as it always does. The difference in screen visibility was striking though. The day wasn't even particularly sunny, but we already noticed a tremendous difference. We can only imagine how big a help this thing will be during the summer period.
The second thing we noticed was how the visor did not interfere with the sound output of the unit. The voice was as crisp and clear as ever.
Then we thought it was time for an endurance test, meaning we located the worst built road in our area, completely filled with potholes, and drove over that road as fast as the suspension on our car would allow. Not a problem whatsoever for the visor, which stayed firmly in place. To be honest, we didn’t really expect this, but it shows how well this accessory has been thought-out and built.
Excellent!
For us, this visor had already passed the test with flying colours, but the people at Drumma had told us to also try this visor at night. "You’ll see why", they mysteriously added. So we got in the car that same evening, and attached the unit to the windscreen again. First we didn't notice any real difference, but the screen didn't look any better to us. Of course not, why would it? There was obviously no sun shining at this time of day. But then it struck us: the annoying reflection the unit always projected on the windscreen whilst driving at night was completely gone!We’ve driven a couple of hundred kms at night, and its surprising to notice how much this accessory improves this experience. Driving around with the unit at night always produced an annoying reflection before, but it seems now it also added to the strain and fatigue of our eyes. This is no longer the case with Drumma visor attached to the GO.
