TomTom Car Navigation

RRP: $449

The Specs:

- 5-inch capacitive touchscreen

- Pinch-to-zoom

- IQ Routes

- Map Share

- Easy Click magnetic mount

The Verdict:

With a large 5-inch capacitive touchscreen, the GO 1050’s screen is much clearer and responsive than previous models and is more akin to a smartphone. The mounting system has had a rethinking with the introduction of a magnetic mount to hold the device in place. The TomTom performed well when navigating, delivering directions with good timing and clear speech. The time to recalculate when going another direction was also fast. This device is not perfect though. Locating the specific destination I wanted took a little too long and seemed to lack the prediction efficiency of competing brands. Voice guidance, while generally good, has a tendency to read out way to much information about roads and despite a choice of many different options, only one UK voice is supported with spoken street names. While the new mount is great in theory, for some reason a charging port has not been included on the mount. The cable has to connect to the device through a gap in the mount, making it very difficult and fiddly to remove the device. The GO 1050 is also much larger and heavier than expected with a thick metallic exterior and there is no live traffic information provided. Overall a good device that will reliably get you from A to B, but has seemed to lose the ease-of-use of some of its predecessors.

7/10