TomTom Start 25 5″ Sat Nav with Europe Maps (45 countries)

Yeah, like it a lot.., 21 Jun 2011

By 

Mr. R. Pope “guitaristtv.com” (Tring, Herts. UK) –

  

I’ve been somewhat cynical in the past about owning one preferring to stick with a paper map. I thought I should get with the times and having seen a more expensive unit when a friend came around for the weekend, I decided to opt for an entry level device. The price for this Tom-Tom did not seem overly expensive.

In the box is:

the Sat Nav itself
a car charger lead [which joins to…]
a USB cable [which joins the unit itself to the charger]
a paper quick start guide

This Sat Nav can sit on a dashboard beanbag [purchased separately] if you decide to go for this. It uses a sucker which with a simple twist locks the seal. Alternatively it will attach itself to the inside of the windscreen using the same method. Out of the box and into the car then, the Sat Nav found my home position quickly after powering it up. I set this and I was up and running in five minutes tops.

The first thing to do is to find your destination and you can do this easily using a postcode or a place of interest, once it has searched for the destination, highlight it, and the machine will do the maths for the journey showing you how long it will take and details of the destination. It can also show you parking options near where you are going or if you wanted to do a trial run of the journey, you also do this and watch the proposed route.

First I gave it a local test and it found Tescos about eight miles away very easily. The display giving me adequate time to adjust lane if necessary, giving the correct number of exits on a roundabout or giving me adequate time to turn. It was here I tested the Sat Nav’s ability to adjust itself when I made a mistake. It recalculated a different route very quickly without fuss.

I discovered by playing with the unit whilst parked up that there are a number of voice options to try as well. There are a number of English female or male voices to choose from however, only one English female voice will tell you the name of the road you are turning into or approaching. The rest will just say “turn right” or “turn left” when you need to.

I took it on a more sophisticated journey to London NW5 at around 3pm on a Thursday and it coped well on the A40 into central London. This would have been normally a slightly fraught journey as I am unfamiliar with driving in the city, but I came through well particulary at junctions. This is because the display shows [with a quivering yellow arrow symbol] which lane to get into in good time, and I wasn’t left with that awful feeling of other drivers staring me down because of my hesitation in choosing the correct place to be.

The unit will beep if you are within range of a speed camera. This is a distracting noise but can easily be turned off along with a number of other alerts by removing a tick from a list under the settings menu.

The journey back to my house in Hertfordshire from NW5 after midnight early Friday morning was quite simply executed. I switched the Sat Nav to night mode so the screen was illuminated more clearly, set the desination to Home and off I went. Initially, it did try to make me turn right where I couldn’t, but I insisted and the journey was quickly rerouted towards the M1.

I rate this Sat Nav highly for someone who wants a simple starter unit.

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 Comments (4)

Beware poor battery life., 24 Aug 2011

So far I’ve been impressed on the whole by the product – the lane selection indications are clear and very helpful, and the general usability of the system is well thought out; pretty much anybody could pick one up and find their way from A to B with limited stress. I recently found it to be a life-saver while driving through north London during the rush hour.

However, battery life is a concern. I initially charged the unit by connecting the USB cable to the PC. I left it connected for the best part of two hours, and the battery appeared to be charged, but on trying to use the unit it went dead shortly after I had programmed in the first postcode.

Thankfully I’d brought the 12v connector with me. I plugged it in and set off. Before too long the battery returned to the 50% level, but it never got any further.

Once I knew where I was heading I disconnected the power cable and in under 30 minutes it was on the verge of running out of power.

The implication of this is that you essentially have to have the unit connected to a 12V supply (cigarette lighter) most of the time during a long journey, and depending on the layout of your car and your preferred position for the unit this can be a real pain; in my car the cable rubs on my wrist whenever I change gears. It simply should be better in this respect.

Other small niggles:

i) System continually informing me that I’m breaking a 40mph speed limit on a stretch of motorway when there was clearly no such limit imposed. It makes alarming noises ever few seconds when you drift significantly above the limit. I’m sure that you can turn them off, but the fact that the information was incorrect is worrying.

ii) On the whole islands are great, but on one occasion it got confused and told me to take the second exit, straight on, when in fact it was the first exit. Small niggle, but it almost led to an incorrect turn.

All in all though a good unit. Just be ready to feed it some juice!

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