Great piece of technology (TomTom One)

Member Name: mikebelgrave

Product:	TomTom One
Date:	23/08/08 (53 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: You'll barely need your map again

Disadvantages: can't always find the address you want

In my job I have to use my Tom Tom all over the country. It is one of the best purchases I have ever made for my job. At the time (over a year ago) some of my friends decided they would use their fancy PDAs to be their Sat Navs. But they constantly lost signals and we would miss turnings and would have to get road maps out or stop and wait for the signal to come back.

This is why I decided to buy a separate bit of technology to get around the country and I love it. It has only crashed once and that's because I accidentally managed to knock the memory card out. But all I needed was a pin to reset it.

It does really what it says on the tin, it gets you from A to B with very little fuss and I recently attached it to my computer and downloaded some free software which made it even better to use.

I haven't updated the road maps but that's fine because it's always going to be a rough guide as there's digging going on everywhere and as there's whole sections of the country where they're improving road works and motorways, but there are always signs to point you in the right direction.

You can set it up to have a compass arrow in the screen at all times to tell you which direction you should be heading, so that's always helpful in those situations.

Occasionally it can't find an address from the postcode you type in, but that's usually sorted by inputting the town name, street name and house number.

Other great functions are the "where am I" section. This was very useful when I broke down in a place I didn't know, so I was able to tell The AA exactly where I was.

The screen is nice and bright and easy to use. You can loads of options so you can set to whatever suits you. What I love about the new download is, you can set it to see what the speed limit the road you are on is and you can set it to bleep if you go over the speed limit. There is also a night time function which is mainly in blues so it's not so harsh on the eye when you're driving late at night on the motorway.

If you are stuck in traffic there is a very simple "avoid part of route" function to show you an alternative way to go, which I have used on the streets of London many times.

You can subscribe to other function like traffic reports, speed cameras, European maps and you can connect it to your bluetooth to get updates, but I have never done this, but I'm sure if it's anything like any of the other functions, it'll be first class.

An excellent purchase and I think I have save my self loads in petrol money by not driving around a town aimlessly asking for direction and racking up more miles than needed.

Summary: Great value for money and peace of mind