142 of 145 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Another solid offering from TomTom, July 10, 2009
This review is from: TomTom GO 740 Live 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable Live Internet Connected GPS Navigator (Electronics)
I have used multiple generations of the TomTom, and I have been a fan for a while. TomTom has always had the best user interface, but the rubber meets the road on directions and map accuracy, and here the new GO 740 Live shows solid improvement.
I drive in the Washington DC area, and occassionally commute up I-95 to New York and Long Island. In other words, it's traffic, traffic everywhere.
I depend on the TomTom GO 740 Live. The traffic updates are frequent, and almost always match what I am seeing in the real world. And IQ Routes are clearly having a positive impact on route selection. IQ Routes is the feature than anonymously gathers actual driving experiences from all TomTom users and then factors that history into its route computation. I suppose it works best in metro areas where there are many users.
Why this matters: Anyone who drives north out of DC knows that 16th Street is much, much better than Georgia Ave. They both appear as normal city streets, and though Georgia appears more direct, it has more untimed lights and more local traffic. Before IQ Routes, TomTom would suggest Georgia, and I would ignore it. Now, TomTom suggests 16th. With IQ Routes, TomTom is gathering the experience that only local drivers have.
After second-guessing TomTom for a few months, and usually being wrong, I now let it automatically route around traffic. Between the traffic reports and the IQ routes, I am getting the right routes and very accurate estimates of arrival times.
My previous TomTom was the 930, which reached its traffic service through a bluetooth connection to my phone. The connection was flaky (I blame Verizon, not TomTom.) and did not work if I was on a call. The new LIVE series has it's own cell circuitry built in. I stopped paying $15/month to Verizon for "broadband access connect", and I will gladly pay $10/month to TomTom for the LIVE services, which include traffic, fuel prices, speed cameras, Google searches, etc.
Final note: In addition to the LIVE services, I subscribe to TomTom's map update service, and I dock the unit to my PC often to download map corrections. I depend on my GPS, so these update services are a positive feature for me, and my review assumes use of all these services.
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