TomTom GoLive 1005 World – Product Test

Navigating in a foreign country can be difficult sometimes, navigating around a whole other continent can be something else altogether. I tend to overpack when it comes to my trips to lands afar, but traveling to Australia required some clever packing as space was going to be tight. I’d be traveling by air and also on two and four wheels. Time to pack and road test TomTom’s new GoLive with Global Maps. 

Global Maps you say? Yes, this little bit of kit comes pre-loaded with (almost) every mapped road on the planet already stored inside it. Very handy when hopping between countries as there’s no need to bring different back up discs and re-load maps. So how well does it all work?

Day one in Perth, Australia. Climb into my large temporary mode of transport and fire up the TomTom for the first time. Within seconds it acquires the necessary satellites and politely informs me that I appear to be in Australia and asks should it use those maps. Very clever so far. So now I have all the routes I’ll need as well as all the additional functions that are on offer like Google Search functions, and the ability to find all the local points of interest – handy for a tourist like me.

One thing I do like about the GoLive is the large screen which makes use while driving very easy although I did have to mute the volume due to the constant speed trap alerts going off like morse code. And no, it wasn’t me speeding! I’m sure there is a way of simply turning it off it he settings, but my limited attention span and patience couldn’t find it and of course I didn’t pack the manual.

Reading the screen is pretty simple thanks mainly to the large colour screen which is very sharp, but a tip of the hat is also due to the software which has a few neat features including one which displays the correct lane to be in when approaching busy junctions. This helps that little bit more when you’re in a foreign country that also has different approaches to driving – hook turns anyone?!

My only real gripe with the GoLive is that the touchscreen has a bit of a tendency of being that bit too sensitive particularly when inputting street names for example. That said, their voice control system does work fairly well and I actually found it easier to use this for entering addresses. These addresses may have included the Albert Park Grand Prix Circuit, Phillip Island & the Surfer’s Paradise Indy street circuit – and the GoLive now also gives you the option of tweeting a destination when you arrive (ideal for annoying your friends). To paraphrase @MorganArtist ; “I was in Australia…”

The GoLive 1005 is available with all European Maps for €349.95 from TomTom.com. World Maps are currently only available in selected countries.