TomTom GO 540 Satellite Navigation System – LIVE UK & ROI
Posted by Notcot on May 15, 2010 in In-Car Technology |
- TomTom LIVE Services – HD Traffic, Safety Camera Alerts, Real Time Fuel Prices, Local Search with Google, TomTom Weather, TomTom QuickGPSfix
- Voice Command & Control
- Hands-free Calling
- IQ Routes, the smartest route any time of the day
- Advanced Lane Guidance, for navigating difficult junctions
- Active Dock
- Maps of UK & ROI
TomTom GO 540 LIVE UK & ROI
purchased this unit from another website. mine came with a tomtom promotional £30 fuel voucher. i think this should be the case with most of the first lot of 540’s. check before buying in any case!
this unit is slimmer than a 520 that i had briefly a couple of months ago.
main changes i can notice are the overall UI icons have changed…which doesnt really bother me too much. the IQ routes service is pretty good, it does take you to places via different routes depending on day and time of day which is pretty handy. the lane assist feature is good too if you have trouble getting into the correct lane at motorway junctions and the like. all 3 of these features are available on the 530 i believe.
one major addition to this unit is the addition of LIVE services. on previous units if u wanted weather or traffic services you would have to allow the unit to use the GPRS connection on your mobile phone via bluetooth. however now, the unit has a sim in it already so it can connect to the server itself and access weather and traffic information. the traffic information is also the new traffic HD service which is meant to be much more accurate and up to date than previous sources such as TMC etc etc. i have found this to be true, it is more accurate than the traffic i used to receive via GPRS on the 520 unit i had. note that these LIVE services are free for 3 months i think, after that there is a £7.99 MONTHLY charge.
the google search feature is also useful. you can be anywhere and just use the unit to search using google to find anything eg restaurants. then the unit will direct you to that place!
the change that i am most thankful for is the new windscreen dock. to stick it to the windscreen, you dont just slap it on the windscreen. there is a rubber bezel that you must twist, this then causes the suction cup to stick very well to the windscreen (or dashboard). the cigarette power cable then connects to the dock rather than the unit. i used to find the old docks fairly flimsy and it was always difficult to take the unit and the dock apart and put them back together with any kind of haste. with the 540 it is very simple to attach/detach the gps unit from the dock. the unit actually clicks into place so it feels a lot sturdier.
having a few problems getting the tomtom home software to run properly with my mac (10.5.5). it is unable to recognise some of the files that it downloads in order to update the unit and hence cant unzip them. so mac users be careful!
also note that it is only the 940 that now has an FM transmitter. this unit DOES NOT have an fm transmitter.
overall i think it is a very good unit. havent really got any major complaints about it (other than the mac problem). i am really pleased with the new dock and the fact that it doesnt need my phone to get the traffic info so i think it is worth the extra £’s!
Rating: 5 / 5
I held back from buying the new GO LIVE sat nav from TomTom thinking it might be full of gimmicks, but now I have one I am SO pleased. I travel a lot with my job, and it made an immediate difference to how I drive and plan my journeys. I bought the 540 version.
Local Search with Google: this is truly awesome and almost makes the previous POI redundant. It enables you to find just about any named place you want to go, local, or in any town or city. Just type in the name (Sainsbury,Odeon,Fitness First,Waterstones,anywhere) and lists appear showing location, address and contact no’s so you can pick one and let TomTom take you there. It’s truly fantastic.
HD Traffic. This has to be the best yet. It informs you of realtime traffic delays and enables you to decide whether you want to wait in a queue or take a different route. A 5 minute delay might be better than a 20 minute re-route so you might decide to stay in the queue. A 20 minute re-route might be better than a 1 hour queue, so you might choose to avoid the delay. It’s not about ‘never’ sitting in traffic, it’s about making your own decisions with the information presented to you. Very clever!
Fuel Prices: Excellent, with lots of choices and real pricing and of course TomTom will take you to the station of your choice.
IQ Routes: Made a noticeable difference to my journeys when compared to my basic TomTom model. This can only get better as TomTom collate more and more journeys each day to give you better routes from A to B.
Cameras: It’s good to know that Road Angel are involved now giving information on portable speed cameras. MapShare allows you to update this information if you find one while you are driving and warn others in a matter of minutes.
In conclusion, the GO LIVE is truly impressive, leaving other brands like Garmin and Navman way behind and in the doldrums. Don’t hold back..GO GET!
Rating: 5 / 5
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.
Rating: 3 / 5
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.
Rating: 5 / 5
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.
Rating: 4 / 5