Excellent piece of kit packed full of extra features (TomTom Go 540 Live)

Member Name: damsmi2002

Product:	TomTom Go 540 Live
Date:	09/02/09 (196 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy to use, reliable, no other sat nav comes close to the features this contains

Disadvantages: Mount doesnt feel adequate

As with a few of my other reviews on sat navs, I do not own this product, but have been product testing it and was very impressed so am now writing a review on it as nobody else has!

The Tomtom 540 Live is one of three in the latest set of sat navs to be released by Tomtom. The others include the 740 and 940 Live, which work excatly the same as this one does so the review can also be applied to these.

Appearance:
The product has a 4.3inch screen and is quite sleek in its design. It has a glossy finish to it and is quite slim and therefore can fit in the pocket to be carried around very easily. I think that it is one of the best designed tomtoms around.

Features:
This unit has the same basic features that every Tomtom has, these being full postcode search, UK street level mapping and Help me function, however being a more expensive product, it obviosly has more features.

The main feature of the Live series is the Live information you recieve. These services are a subscription based service so if you dont subscribe then you wont recieve any of them. The subscription costs £7.99 a month and you get three months free as soon as you turn the device on.
These services have never been offered before by any company so I was intrigued to find out how good they were, and I wasnt dissapointed. For the money you will get live speed camera information provided by Road Angel, which are of a much higher accuracy than the normal cameras information you get on a sat nav. Live traffic information, which again is a lot more accurate than the normal traffic reciever you would use on an older unit. The traffic is HD traffic which will be used by all future tomtoms too. You can search for places through Google search and recieve live weather reports for where you are visiting. Finally you get up to date fuel prices when you search for a petrol station. You also have bluetooth and lane assistance on this model.

So there are a lot of features on the unit, much more than a basic unit, however, despite this, it is still incredibly easy to use.

Usability:
Some of you may have never used a sat nav before but that doesnt matter. It is so simple to put in a destination, you simply press about 4 buttons on the screen, type the postcode in and click 'done' and you are ready to go. Sometimes it will be wrong, or may not recognise your postcode, I have found this to be true on this unit as well as cheaper ones, it is purely down to the mapping and is not a fault with the unit.
The extra Live features which I was a bit dubious over before worked a lot better than I expected. I think my favourite has to be the google search, whereby if you wanted to go to B&Q, yet didnt know the postcode, you could just search for B&Q and it will show you all the nearest B&Q's! This is true for any point of intrest, so works very well with restuarants too.
The up to date fuel prices are handy too, although I just go to the closest petrol station, there are people out there who shop around. With this you can search for the cheapest and closest petrol stations and then highlight the one you want to go to and then you are on your way...simple!
The traffic information was never used for me as I never hit any traffic, although I have heard from many people that it is a lot more accurate than the older units. One advantage with this is older units had a seperate reciever which got mounted on the windscreen but this is built into the unit so looks a lot neater.
The speed camera information again was like the old units, whereby you get a warning and a speed limit indicator showing you what speed you should be doing and how far away the camer is. The main difference being that it will pick up on cameras if their locations have been changed recently, or new ones added without having to connect it to a pc and download the updates.
The bluetooth is also fantastic too. Pairing the phone can be a bit of a pint so check that your phone is definatly compatable first, but once paired it is faultless. Making and recieving calls are very easy, you just touch 'accpet' to answer the call, and it will transfer your phonebok over for you so you dont have to mess about with your phone if you want to make a call.
Also the lane assistance is incradibly helpful. On an older unit you would get a warning of 'bear left' or 'bear right' when on a motorway, which was quite ambigious, whereas this one will show you excatly which lane you need to be taking by zooming in and pointing with an arrow. I found this very helpful when on the motorway, espicially where one motorway joins another.

Whats in the box:
You get the unit, a windscreen mount, a USB cable, instruction booklets and an in car charger. Carry cases and home chargers are extras.

Anything else:
The mount is ok, if I had to fault one thing this would be it. It never feels secure, and does look small and neat, but when you need this to hold the unit on the screen, it just feels slightly inadaquate, although it never fell off!

The £7.99 subscription is on a rolling contract, it can be started and stopped whenever you like and you dont have to pay for a year up front. I think this is much more appealing than paying a lot for the unit, followed by a huge bill for a contract.

You can also update the map information fro free through Tomtom home's Mapshare technology. This is great as other companies charge for these services which totom are giving away for free.

Overall I think that this unit is a fantastic piece of kit that is so easy to use and packed with so many extra features that you just wouldnt know what to do with! It is around £250, but I think that for this price you do certainy get what you pay for and you will be getting a very good, reliable unit that you will be very happy with. If you wanted European mapping, the 740 has this, if you want USA and Canada on top of that, the 940 would be the one for you!

Summary: A great piece of kit but I would only reccommend it if you think you will use all the extra features