I purchased a Tom Tom One yesterday and i thought it would be nice to write a review on this product. The price was £240 but i got it for £200 because of Bank Holiday sales and therefore made a profit of £40 🙂
The Tom Tom One comes with a charger which needs connecting to the cigarette lighter in the car for recharge and a stand which will hold the actual screen and sticks to any glass surface. There’s also the instruction manual and a CD for your computer.
Setting up the Tom Tom One was easy – all i needed to do was setting up the stand and switching on the device. As soon as it receives a GPS signal, your current location is found. It means you dont have to ever enter where you are – especially good if you are lost and you cant find a road name!
When you type in an address or a postcode, your route is calculated and you can have a demo of your journey. I used this to analyse the journey for one particular destination and it happened that the route given by the Tom Tom One was slightly different to what i usually do. So it clicked me, if i go my usual way, the Tom Tom One should recalculate my route (dynamic re-routing feature) and still lead me to my destination. I set off for my usual route and the device was happy i was doing the same route it was telling me until i made a turn into another road which would eventually take me to where i wanted to go. The device soon realised this and re-planned my journey from where i was. It didnt make me come back to where i made the wrong turning but guided me to some new roads which eventually led to my destination. Brilliant!
As far as instructions are concerned, there is a 3D map which moves around as you are driving. The map shows your path and names of roads start to appear as you drive further down. This is really cool since you can double check whether the roads on the sides are the same as what the 3D map is saying. Moreover there are voice instructions which tells you that you need to turn left or right 100 yards ahead and when you come closer to where you are about to turn, it tells you again. In addition to this, you can visualise the path you are taking on the map – what do i actually mean by this? Well sometimes when you take a road, it can bend to one side and then the other but it is still the same road. On a 2D map they normally show the road as a straight road but when you are driving, you may get confused. Not anymore though because the Tom Tom One 3D map allows you to see the actual road with all the curves, which means you’ll always be sure where you are going.
But one thing i have noticed with the Tom Tom One though is that sometimes it loses its signal. It didnt happen to me when i was driving (thank God!) but before i set off i had some trouble picking up a GPS signal. Also when i was in a parking zone (Ground Floor), i couldnt get any signal until i started moving to open areas.
Having said this, i think the advantages far outweigh this little inconvenience with the Tom Tom One satellite navigation system. This is a device drivers should have especially for people like me – who get lost when driving 15 mins away from my home!