TomTom XXL Europe

I have recetly started using this navigation and so far am very pleased with its performance.

I wanted a navigator to replace a seven year old Blue Media Destinator, and at first assumed that things could only have got better and more featureful since then. Unfortunately, I had overlooked the modern trend for minimalism and to dumb things down, and the first replacement I bought (a Mio, reviewed elsewhere) was totally inadequate, and I sold it on eBay.

Then after much research, I got the Tom Tom XXL, which seems to be as good as you can get in the sub-£100 range.

The main feature I wanted, which the XXL has and most other navigators do not, was to be able to set what I eventually learned is called an "itinerary". ( It was a "trip" on the Destinator) This is the ability to constrain a route to pass through "waypoints". Eg, when I go from from Bristol to Holyhead, I want to go up the M5 to near Worcester, then cut across passing near Shrewsbury and on to the A5 through Snowdonia. But without setting waypoints on the A5, most navigators would send me up to the dreary A55 along the North Wales coast.

The itinerary feature is not just needed for my route whims. I gather that eg some fleet managers of delivery lorries like to set up daily itineraries for their drivers. Yet it was extremely hard to find out if the XXL (or any other) allowed itineraries, and it is buried deep in its menus and non-intuitive. And the attitude of eg the Cwmbram Halford's salesmen to itineraries (a concept I needed to explain to them) was "If you know the route, why do you need a navigator?" Indeed I know I the route in terms of waypoints, like Shrewsbury-Llangollen-Holyhead, but I still need the navigator to tell me detail like to "Take the next right in 500 yards".

So a plus for the XXL there, and an advance on my old Destinator is to give the road name or number to follow when instructing for the next junction. A downside though is that there is no verbal confirmation when you start a journey that you are in the right mode and its navigation has begun, nor that you have passed a waypoint and it had picked up the next leg; not until the next change of course anyway. My Destinator used to say "Drive safely" when you started or passed waypoints.

I never look at the navigator in use ( it surprises me that others do) so their comments on the display and bracketry are over my head. I wedge it in a cloth pouch down at the bottom of the windscreen and follow the verbal instruction. I find the XXL fine for the verbal instructions.

Replaced my 710 version with this almost all singing and dancing version. My usage did not justify the live traffic updates and live route planning, so I thought I had selected the right model for me.

First things, boxed instructions so sparse as to be useless. You do need to initiate your TomTom in car before anything else. There are three spring clips that hold the slim line unit onto the screen windscreen mount. Time will tell how they survive heavy usage. Everything is slimmer and neater than before. The angle mount feels very firm and there is a satisfying click as the screen is rotated around. Again time will tell how reliable in use over cobbled streets.

First downside, the car charger at the bottom of the unit is a righthand cable feed, so it dangles over the air-vents, rather than a lefthand feed to suit UK. The cable is as before rigid so is not easy to slip out of the way. So no magnetic auto-docking on this model

Out of the box there is no unit protection. You have to buy an accessory, if you feel like me, the need to protect the screen face as it is carried around off the car.

From previous experience not too happy about the screen mount so have bought at exorbitant cost as an accessory, a soft removable adhesive mount for the dashboard.

The wider screen enables all the usual trip information to be displayed clearly and easily visible. The new colour scheme seems to enhance visibility, until you are driving into the sun of course. Some new preference and menu additions added to the already extensive choices, so the good has just got better. The one must buy addition, the advance lane guidance has yet to be tried out by me. Hoping it lives up to my expectations.

Now for the big big downside. The unit no longer has an SD slot so relies on a fixed built-in memory, there is no scope to expand. When you go to update your map you are suddenly confronted with a choice of a selection of parts of Europe. There is insufficient onboard memory to store all of Europe. All of a sudden your all Europe satnav has become a partial Europe only. Presumably the more option you choose to download, in terms of voices, symbols etc, the smaller covered of Europe you end up with. I bought a satnav that would take me from UK across Europe to Poland. I end up with a satnav in use that will take me from UK to Germany but I then have to discard that map and, I believe, yet to tested as true, download a new version of Europe that does include Poland. This is very bad mis-selling of the product, unless I have missed a trick along the way.

The next big downside. So slow to connect and so very slow to download, it crawls along and that is with a moderately fast connection. I dread to think what will be my fate when I try to change maps via an Internt Café!

Such a shame, a so promising units turns out to be the fabled pigs ear. Strikes me there are just too many TomTom alternate formats that they have lost sight of the core business. My advice, look elsewhere.