My TomTom Go 500 is wonderful. I never go anywhere in the car without it. I have even used it on foot several times.
So what are its best features - apart from the basic one of getting you to where you want to go?
1. When travelling on motorways/dual carriageways and that ilk, clear indication of how far it is to your turn off (not the wife). It is so much easier to decide whether it is worth overtaking that awkward slow ******* in the middle lane or not. If you're only going another 2.3 miles then it isn't, is it?
2. When you have to divert unexpectedly. I travel in London a lot, and I know my usual routes very well, but these days I frequently encounter complete gridlocks and have to take to the side streets where it is easy to get lost. No matter where I get to, "She" knows and is able to get me back on track, without me having to do anything with it. So now I have it running even when travelling well-known routes. Even so, nothing can absolutely protect you from the curse of the Blackwall Tunnel.
3. The speed indication. I didn't realise before just how low my speedometer reads.
4. The reminder of local speed limits. Sometimes I forget what the current limit is. This is a new feature on my TomTom (I got a software upgrade) but many of its speed limits are wrong.
5. Locating places by postcodes is just fantastic! I don't need anybody's address anymore, just give me the postcode!
So what are the weak points?
1. The maps are not perfect. I have been told to turn right in 80 yards, when at the time I was travelling at 70pmh (honestly, officer) in the right hand lane of the M6. I have been told to enter one-way streets from the wrong end. And I have been told to turn right where right-turns are prohibited. And these have not been due to recent road changes.
2. It is not easy to get an overview of the area of your route. Zooming in and out is quite clunky.
3. It is quite difficult to tell it to take a detour like "don't go in the direction we need to go until we have detoured in the opposite direction for 10 miles south and then 10 miles west, to avoid a snarl-up.
4. It is an absolute pain that you can't leave it visible in a parked car without it being stolen through a smashed windscreen. You can't be seen to put it in the boot either. In some areas you even need to clean off the rings it leaves from its rubber foot on the windscreen.
5. It is very easy to accidently switch it on when carrying it about in its little cloth bag. If you don't notice and it goes flat, you are absolutely stuck for about 3 hours while it charges up again. You can't give it a quick blast to get it going. If your complete weekend itinery is entrusted to it then you're stuffed.
6. The cable is not very strong. Mine is split where it plugs in.
7. The TomTom people have a big website, full of information, which is most unhelpful. My TomTom came with a 256Mb SD card which was almost full with the supplied maps. After a year or two I bought an updated map (expensive) and it wouldn't fit, even when I deleted the old one. I went out an bought a 2Gb SD card and spent days trying to make it work. After much research I discovered that different sizes of SD cards are formatted in different ways - and the TomTom can only support cards upto 1Gb. At no time would the TomTom people actually publish this explicitly on their help site. After I got it out of them (by email) I went back to the help site and it still was not there, despite all sorts of trivial information being there.
8. They keep emailing me with crap offers. Every now and then there is an offer worth considering so you have to put up with it, but it is so irritating. It is like buying a sofa from DFS, you feel that if you don't buy it at 50% off then you are being done.
9. It is easy to accidently increase the volume to deafening levels.
10. For people who wear glasses like me, the printing on some parts of the screen can be hard to read with glasses on. Mostly I just listen to what she says (why do I get so much pleasure from doing the opposite occasionally?) and only glance at the screen to confirm an overall route through a complex junction.
For a tradesman travelling to multiple sites then it must be indispensible. When I'm God, possible now that Blair has stepped aside (his opinion, not mine), then it will be mandatory for all vehicles involved in trade to have them.
I don't have the traffic-trouble avoidance feature as my phone is not supported by the TomTom. Before I go to the expense of an extra phone with facilities that I would not otherwise use, can anyone tell me if it works well? It is no use to me at all if by the time it tells me to avoid the Blackwall Tunnel I am stuck in the 3 mile square gridlock leading up to it.
