Hammerhead Karoo 2: Final Word

I did get the Karoo 2 to function 100%- for a little bit!

Hammerhead Karoo 2 Review Short Version: Not a good GPS unit. Read on for the longer take, if you want to know more.

Longer Version: Last week I got two bits of help after posting my "Part 3" of the Hammerhead review. Apparently, you cannot work an upload from a PC computer to the Karoo 2 head unit. You have to do it by your WiFi connected phone, or phone-like device of choice. 

One would think that would be front and center in the set up for the Karro 2, but neither my wife, nor I, saw this. We had to find out via other people who had gone through this. That's not right. This is not how you sell a device and have it be used by a consumer. Not such an expensive device as the Karoo 2. THAT should have been communicated during the set-up procedure. Had I known that, one of the several strikes I have against this device would have been mitigated. But I still would have nixed this in my review as being a bad product. At least the example that was purchased by my wife for me. 

Second strike? That I had to back out of a turn-by-turn ride to keep the unit from randomly shutting down while riding. In other words, if you choose a saved ride and want turn-by-turn directions, you choose it from your "Collections", and the Karoo 2 says it is preparing the ride for you. Then the screen pops up with the map and icons ready for a ride. You roll off, and everything seems okay. You get a prompt to turn, and the map is showing your progress and the data is compiling. All good, right?

 

I got this message repeatedly until I bailed out and started up the unit again.

Nope! I kept getting the above message and despite restarting the app, I had to completely back out, by using the power off button, refire the unit, and then it would behave. But only then. Does that seem right? Is there anywhere in the instructions that details this? No. there is not....

And then to top it all off, I got everything working Friday on my ride, but the map froze, so the tracking was stopped at a couple miles into my ride. I was still getting correct and punctual audible and readable turn-by-turn prompts, but nothing on the map was moving. Oh,. and time, speed, and whatever else was fine as well. 

On a stop I rebooted again, and then the evil message prompts came back, and well, I had had it by this time. 

Final Words: When one buys a device, one should not have to hop through hoops and have to spend hours to "figure it out" to get it to work. That is simply not an acceptable way to have consumers deal with any electronic device. There is no reason a device shouldn't be intuitive, easy to figure out, and run smoothly. For instance, Hammerhead touts the "smart phone" power that the Karoo 2 has. The "app" style navigation with a swipe is supposedly intuitive and makes for a great user experience. I say that is simply not the case at all with regard to this unit I have had. 

I recently had to learn a new smart phone for work. A Motorola phone. I use an iPhone and have for years, yet it took all of about 15 minutes for me to figure out how to operate the Motorola phone. Now that's intuitive. Additionally the Motorola phone doesn't randomly shut off, require me to visit a website to "research my problems", because, well, there aren't any. Furthermore, there is no need to dig through hundreds of queries from other dissatisfied users on the company website to see if your question has been asked before. Contrast that to the literal hours I have spent online, in Hammerhead's FAQ, on their user forum, and dinking around with the unit itself, and I still do not have a clue as to how it works. 

My contention is that this is not tenable. I shouldn't have to be running around trying to find out how this unit works after all the hours I have tried to interface with it. The company should have a cleaner, easier to understand interface, and their FAQ is literally useless. The user forum is fine, but if this unit is all that and a bag of chips, why are there literally thousands of queries- many with no answers? 

Speaking of no answers, I sent in a question to Hammerhead and still haven't seen an answer. Nice customer service there....

 Yes, I am upset, and I am frustrated, and this unit has been shipped back to Hammerhead with a note. We'll see what happens...... Frankly, at this point, I don't care if I ever see one again, but we'll see. 

I suppose it goes without saying, but this was not a sponsored product and it was bought by my wife as a gift to me.