Comprehensive features but still easy to useDecember 17, 2008 Spooky(Yorkshire, UK) 3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I bought my 540 a month ago. When I connected it to my PC and ran the TomTom Home software the first thing it did was download the latest map free of charge under the Latest Map Guarantee. I was pleased to find that the new ring road changes in Sheffield are mapped perfectly, a good start.
The mount supplied is a huge improvement over the old ones. It's easy to apply and is absolutely rock solid.
You need to use the TomTom home software and the internal Live services to keep fully up to date. For example, the static speed cameras are updated through home but the mobile cameras are updated via Live. Home will also download regular map corrections provided by other users.
I find the Live speed camera database to be something of a letdown. I also have the Pocketgpsworld database installed and it knows about many cameras that TomTom doesn't. I suggest that if you have a heavy right foot then the Pocketgpsworld database is a must have add-on. Having said that the TomTom does alert for accident blackspots and correctly identified one near my house that's claimed many lives.
The Live service provides a Google search which I have found useful on a couple of occasions. It doesn't provide full access to Google but rather a subset of results from sites that specialise in locating local services.
The traffic information is updated every three minutes. If it finds a delay on your route it will warn you and if it can find a better route it will ask you if you want to take it. I don't travel enough to have tested this facility thoroughly.
IQ Routes does give different journey times and even different suggested routes depending on the time of day. I've found the anticipated arrival time to be very accurate.
Advanced Lane Guidance is excellent; I really have no excuse for missing a junction any more.
There are many nice touches to play with; the Bluetooth hands-free works well with my Blackberry, the display adjusts its brightness to suit the ambient light and will switch to night colours when it gets dark. The voice control works but takes a bit of practise.
You get a three month trial of Live when you start, after this it's 7.99 a month. If you're not keen on this then much of the functionality won't work and you might be better off with a non Live unit.
I'm happy with it and recommend it especially if you spend a lot of time on the road.
If you can afford it, this Tomtom is a revelation.December 15, 2008 N. Bristow 1 out of 1 found this review helpful
We've all experienced the dilemma, haven't we? We want to change the route on our satnav, perhaps as a result of congestion, and we're trying to press the buttons whilst driving, without anyone seeing us perform such a crazy stunt.
If you can accept the usual Tomtom failures, as described by other reviewers, then this device is worth considering for one reason alone; its ability to automatically navigate around congestion without having to press a single button whilst on the move.
Unlike other traffic data systems, which update every fifteen minutes, Tomtom's new system anonymously looks at the speed at which mobile phones are travelling along roads, and that data is used to update your route (if necessary) every three minutes - completely hands free.
Sure, Tomtom's 3d view isn't as good as Navman's, the font used to display the street names is difficult to read, the noise dependant volume control doesn't seem to work, the voice commands take some getting used to and don't always work either, the Google search is not as good as Navman's new Bluetooth/mobile phone linked search system and Tomtom's customer services are bogged down because so many customers don't read their instruction books, but this device is such a revelation that I'd put up with a lot.
With live traffic, speed camera and fuel price updates, you only have to save 26 pence worth of fuel per day for the 7.99 monthly charge (after the initial 3 month trial) to be worth paying.
If you're the sort of user who sticks their satnav in the wrong place on your windscreen, drives along the motorway with your display set to the closest zoom setting so that junctions are always a big surprise, and can't quite get to grips with changing to a night time display when it's dark then this device may not be for you, but if you're prepared to learn how to use it properly then you will not be disappointed.
TomTom Go 540 LIVE works a treat for me...December 9, 2008 Ozvaldinho(UK) 4 out of 4 found this review helpful
We bought a Tomtom Go 540 LIVE for our sales vans. We already have various TomToms which are getting old and out of date. Our vans cover 1000+ miles per week each, all over the UK, so we wanted to try one of these to see if it is worth rolling out across our fleet. So far, it's been a very positive experience. On my first day with it, it diverted me down a narrow country road, normally I wouldn't have trusted a TomTom's judgement on this, but decided to give it the benefit of the doubt. It had picked up on a traffic jam which hadn't even been announced on the local radio and diverted me via some very scenic backroads which I would never have found on my own, even with an atlas. A couple of times I crossed under motorway and saw the queue I'd avoided. The IQ routes sent me into Central London and plotted me a very efficient route into Covent Garden, and the reception was good in places where the older models just freeze up because of the tall buildings.
The Hands-Free bluetooth phone works much better than the 520, you can keep up a conversation at motorway speeds in our very noisy vans. On a 520, the mic just didn't pick up voices clearly because of the road noise. The unit connected very quickly with my Samsung J600 and a colleague's old Ericsson k510i. The only downside is that it doesn't download the numbers from the both SIM card and the Phone memory, but this is easily fixed.
The built-in SIM card is a Godsend. It picks up the signal easily and quickly. This is just so much easier than setting up a GPRS connection with your phone, which was a nightmare on the 520. The coverage was 100% in the place we went to, but this was mostly in urban areas. We expect the 7.99 subscription to be offset by fuel/time savings and GPRS data charges which often came to more than 10 per month on our older TomToms with the Traffic Subscription.
We just love the Google search facility and have only just begun to explore the possibilities. I found it really useful for locating Macdonalds restaurants in London when I needed a comfort break.
The fuel price maps are really good too, again, we need to explore the 'find the cheapest fuel on the route' option, but the prices it showed were accurate and up to date. I had huge frustration with the old 520 when I ran low on fuel once and used the POI menu to locate the nearest fuel...the first THREE places it sent me had been closed, one of them for several years. It's useful that this new model tells you the name of the station and the brand of fuel they sell. The camera warnings are generally good, but not completely up-to-date, and it did miss a couple of fixed cameras compltetely The dock is great, but I'd still recommend people to remove it every time you park. This design makes it much less likely you'll damage the plug socket.
The speech recognition seems to work ok but is somewhat limited.
The journey times are now much more accurate. We were really surprised about just how accurate the predicted delays were.
Overall, we are very pleased with our new gadget. Unfortunately for our company, we'll have to buy three more to avoid squabbles between our drivers.
Useless!December 6, 2008 Ess DoubleU(Wales, UK) 9 out of 10 found this review helpful
I bought an earlier version (a TomTom GO 500) a few years ago and was really pleased with the device so when I took the plunge and bought the latest sat nav, the GO 540 LIVE that has just been released, I was sorely disappointed. I'd come to expect clear sound, an easy-to-use touch-screen and a solid and reliable product from TomTom. No other make came close when I researched sat nav devices a few years ago. How things change! The 540, on the face of it, looks like a feature-packed device with many improvements over my older 500. And maybe that's where all the problems begin. After using the device for a few days I realised that this sat nav has been packed to the rafters with badly tested features. I got the impression it had been rushed to market to cash in on the lucrative Christmas sales. All I can say is they should have taken their time. The device's imperfections, foibles and bugs annoyed me so much I sent the device back for a refund. What had been easy to use, even a joy, was now an endless source of frustration:
- The maps were still out of date - showing roads as they used to be FIVE years ago! - The new computer-synthesised voices struggle to pronounce place names properly and sound just awful. - The TomTom Home software is buggy and crashed often - LIVE services are very expensive at 7.99 per month (that's nearly 100 a year!) and not very useful (see below) - Sometimes the touch screen didn't respond properly - when touching a button it would light up but nothing would happen - The menus are too long now - so many options, in no particular order - makes it tricky to find anything - Dodgy light sensor; switched to night view in bright sunshine but really intense brightness in the pitch dark, as well as flickering in intensity, which is quite distracting - road numbers spoken as if they were figures in a spreadsheet rather than "names" (e.g. A4232 was read out as "A four thousand two hundred and thirty two" instead of the more vernacular "A four two three two"). Makes instructions such as "turn left on to the A4232" very long-winded.
The new HD Traffic was perhaps the biggest let down. I was expecting the HD part of this to signify a higher degree of accuracy with traffic reports but not so in my experience. Twice last week there were very serious incidents on the motorway on my route that were so severe that they got a mention on the news (dozens of vehicles involved) yet neither of these incidents were picked up by my sat nav, which told me my route was clear and then directed me straight into the hold-ups. In the few days I tried this device I was stuck in stationery traffic for well over an hour - exacty the sort of thing i was hoping I would avoid by using this device.
Other features of the LIVE service - a summary of the weather forecast and looking out for "buddies" (people you know who have the same device and who are nearby) add little value to what is an expensive subscription service. If you are driving to the shops and you happen to be passing your mate Jim as he is on his way to the station, why would you need to know?
If you have never had a sat nav before you might well be impressed by all these "bells and whistles" but if, like me, you are an experienced user then you may well find that this time TomTom have gone a bit overboard and strayed from what the device should be - an aid to help you get from A to B safely and quickly.
Amazon have been great, I should say, and their returns process is faultless. Not sure I'll be buying another TomTom though - they seem to have lost their way!!!
It should be great, but too many initial flaws get in the way.November 19, 2008 Mr. P. R. Lancaster(Greater Manchester, UK) 30 out of 31 found this review helpful
I was very excited to take delivery of my new Tomtom 540 Live. On opening it up I found it to be a very good solid feeling device.
I used it for a couple of journeys in the afternoon and the mapping was good, more up to date than previous models and the traffic data seemed to be working though I didn't have any hold ups to test it with.
Anyway that was all fine until I connected it to the PC with the TomTom home software. This is required to update the maps (corrections are made daily), speed cameras or generally to change anything about the device.
The software told me that a newer software and map was available and recomended me to upgrade. So I allowed it to run its process, which was simply me pressing 'OK' and letting it go. Everything seemed to work fine, but in performing this update I effectively broke the Sat Nav on the first day!
This is apparently due to me previously owning a Tomtom and using the same computer before, nothing in the manual tells you this, nothing on the software told me this. It just went about its business corrupting the device.
TomTom support replied after 2 days asking for a large amount of technical information including taking a number of screenshots and attaching them to my reply. At no point did they appologise for the way their software destroyed my device within 1 day, and they expected me to wait another 2 working days for a follow up message (which may or may not solve the problem).
Having purchased from Amazon, I simply sent it back. Amazon's customer service is second to none and a new Tomtom arrived on the same day as the old one was collected by courier.
My new device is now working great having uninstalled the Tomtom software on my PC, however there are some bugs which I have not seen on a Tomtom before.
1) The volume seems to be all over the place. Disabling 'increase volume during high noise' setting helped, but its still not perfect.
2) The voice occasionally stutters - "turn left into ma..n..ch..est..errrrrrr road" quite annoying.
3) You cannot as of yet setup a PIN number, or operate your device from your PC, as they have not created the necessary software file to do this. No mention of this problem in the manual, so if you didn't google search for the problem you would keep trying forever.
4) The HD traffic information is a bit patchy - it doesn't seem to be working properly all the time and suffers from some periods where it doesn't connect at all.
All in all, I think it is a very good device, but it has too many early glitches which should have been fixed before they released it for sale. I think they rushed it out early in time for Christmas.
If I was you I would wait till January and see if these problems have been resolved before making a purchase - oh and buy from Amazon, any problems and they will come and collect it from you whilst delivering a new one.
