Bought one of these recently (just over £400 from Curry's online with a discount voucher, ended up with free delivery too) so I thought I'd share a few random thoughts!
Basically, it's great. We navigated door-to-door from Surrey to South Germany and back without opening a road atlas once (we did have one - just in case!). An unexpected trip to visit an old school friend one night would have been a nightmare without it - an hour's drive, in the dark, cross-country to a city we'd never visited ... and it took us straight to their door.
Recalculating is lightning fast if you do manage to miss a turn - VERY impressive.
The remote control is excellent. It's radio (not IR), so it can be used anywhere in the car - I leave it in the mount on the dash. On my Sharan I can't reach the touch screen while driving, so I use the remote for everything. Visibility of the screen is OK in sunlight with the brightness turned up to 100% (default is 85% I think). The auto dimming and switching to night mode is very nice, I turned night brightness down from 15% to 10%.
Signal reception seems pretty good, it even works most of the time inside the house. A friend with an older TTG 500 struggles to get a signal round here sometimes when driving. My 'everyday' car (Sharan) has an electrically heated windscreen which doesn't seem to bother it, I did buy the magnetic external antenna (which was only about £20) and we used that in Germany ... gave a maximum signal 99.9% of the time.
I subscribed to the "Traffic" and Speed Camera services for 49 Euros / 12 months, since that covered all of Europe for both. Traffic seems a mixed bag, quite often we hit big jams that weren't shown at all but other times it was very useful e.g. telling us that an accident ahead had now been cleared - and sure enough the traffic started moving again. This does use your mobile phone for data transfer, I will wait for my next bill to see see how much this came to! The Tom Tom TMC receiver doesn't seem to be available quite yet, that's a one-off purchase price. Speed cameras worked well, it updates potential mobile camera locations via your phone (if you have this feature switched on).
Enabling POIs is a bit clunky, for example I'd like a shortcut to turn petrol stations on and off as that's something we were doing quite often. The display of POIs and warning when approaching are also independent, which means you can be warned of them without them showing on screen or vice-versa! But the petrol station warnings are pretty good, it tells you how far it is to the next one if you don't take the one you're approaching.
The Bluetooth to my phone (Nokia 6230i) was dead simple to set up, and seems to work fine. Automatically reading out incoming text messages is pretty neat! The 'computer voice' is generally pretty good, it's very useful to have place and road names read out (rather than just 'turn left' etc.) - although the pronunciation of names on the continent is pretty hilarious when it's in English!
Toll roads could be improved. If you set 'ask me' in preferences, it calculates the route first - THEN asks about toll roads, and if you say 'avoid' it starts planning a route afresh! The 'arrive by' function is nice, 5 mins. or more in hand and it shows in green, 0-5 mins in amber, and if you're going to be late it shows in red. Being able to customise the status display is good ... if you switch off things like speed it put the remaining items in a bigger font, which makes them easier to read. We ended up with just distance to run and arrival time displayed, and the car computer showing miles remaining on the fuel tank.
No problems with the windscreen mount, car charger, or PC 'dock'. Battery life seems pretty good without the car charger connected.
The photo album and music storage bits seem totally pointless to me! Of course I do have a nice customised startup screen (picture of my R129) though
That's it for now!
Basically, it's great. We navigated door-to-door from Surrey to South Germany and back without opening a road atlas once (we did have one - just in case!). An unexpected trip to visit an old school friend one night would have been a nightmare without it - an hour's drive, in the dark, cross-country to a city we'd never visited ... and it took us straight to their door.
Recalculating is lightning fast if you do manage to miss a turn - VERY impressive.
The remote control is excellent. It's radio (not IR), so it can be used anywhere in the car - I leave it in the mount on the dash. On my Sharan I can't reach the touch screen while driving, so I use the remote for everything. Visibility of the screen is OK in sunlight with the brightness turned up to 100% (default is 85% I think). The auto dimming and switching to night mode is very nice, I turned night brightness down from 15% to 10%.
Signal reception seems pretty good, it even works most of the time inside the house. A friend with an older TTG 500 struggles to get a signal round here sometimes when driving. My 'everyday' car (Sharan) has an electrically heated windscreen which doesn't seem to bother it, I did buy the magnetic external antenna (which was only about £20) and we used that in Germany ... gave a maximum signal 99.9% of the time.
I subscribed to the "Traffic" and Speed Camera services for 49 Euros / 12 months, since that covered all of Europe for both. Traffic seems a mixed bag, quite often we hit big jams that weren't shown at all but other times it was very useful e.g. telling us that an accident ahead had now been cleared - and sure enough the traffic started moving again. This does use your mobile phone for data transfer, I will wait for my next bill to see see how much this came to! The Tom Tom TMC receiver doesn't seem to be available quite yet, that's a one-off purchase price. Speed cameras worked well, it updates potential mobile camera locations via your phone (if you have this feature switched on).
Enabling POIs is a bit clunky, for example I'd like a shortcut to turn petrol stations on and off as that's something we were doing quite often. The display of POIs and warning when approaching are also independent, which means you can be warned of them without them showing on screen or vice-versa! But the petrol station warnings are pretty good, it tells you how far it is to the next one if you don't take the one you're approaching.
The Bluetooth to my phone (Nokia 6230i) was dead simple to set up, and seems to work fine. Automatically reading out incoming text messages is pretty neat! The 'computer voice' is generally pretty good, it's very useful to have place and road names read out (rather than just 'turn left' etc.) - although the pronunciation of names on the continent is pretty hilarious when it's in English!
Toll roads could be improved. If you set 'ask me' in preferences, it calculates the route first - THEN asks about toll roads, and if you say 'avoid' it starts planning a route afresh! The 'arrive by' function is nice, 5 mins. or more in hand and it shows in green, 0-5 mins in amber, and if you're going to be late it shows in red. Being able to customise the status display is good ... if you switch off things like speed it put the remaining items in a bigger font, which makes them easier to read. We ended up with just distance to run and arrival time displayed, and the car computer showing miles remaining on the fuel tank.
No problems with the windscreen mount, car charger, or PC 'dock'. Battery life seems pretty good without the car charger connected.
The photo album and music storage bits seem totally pointless to me! Of course I do have a nice customised startup screen (picture of my R129) though
That's it for now!
