Tomtom 730 used during Euro Tour 2700 miles

[Redimp]

I've just returned from a 2700 mile European tour taking in France, Italy and Switzerland. There are two musts for a journey like this the first is cruise control to save ankle problems during all the driving and the second is a Satnav with European maps. I went with a Tomtom 730 which made life much easier compared to previous Euro tours where we travelled by map, some say this adds adventure, I say maps add stress especially if you're lost in big cities.

Generally I found the 730 a god send in the car and on foot. For some reason it's continental maps seem more up to date the the UK ones and the Intelligent Lane Guidance seemed to work more often on the continent than in the UK, it's an excellent guide to ensure you take the correct lane when approaching those complicated junctions on the autoroutes. I found even when driving into autoroute service stations all roads were shown where as on my return from Dover to Lincoln I often ended up in service stations and no roads were shown. I know this isn't a major issue because Service Station roads are marked to aid entry and exit, the point I'm making is this rule applied in general supporting my comment that route guidance on the continent was better than and more up to date than the UK.

The FM transmitter is very good and I was able to play music via my car stereo with the satnav instructions breaking through when required. I must say the FM facility is hopeless in Italy due to the excessive number of FM station hogging the FM frequency range leaving no spare unused space for the Tomtom to be tuned into. I even removed the arial but the radio station signals still blotted out the 730 FM transmission.

Both my wife and I were impressed with the 730, my wife is a technophobe but actually said it was fantastic, I coudn't believe my ears. A few major issues I have which may stop me from staying with Tomtom are as follows:

1. Refresh rates are so slow that when you are traversing a roundabout you become confused and can easily take the wrong turning.

2. It sometimes takes an awful long time after power on to refresh and update your route. I was leaving a town in Switzerland called Locarno and powered up my 730 well before leaving the car park for some reason though in full view of the satellites on a sunny day it took almost 5mins to refresh the route in the mean time whilst in heavy traffic I almost missed my turning which could have cost me 20+ miles on the wrong motorway, thank god for road signs.

3. On one occasion whilst travelling to Venice the screen froze and I had to explain to my wife how to initiate a reset. This is hopeless if in full nav mode and it does this, what are you supposed to do in a big city you've never visited before.

4. My last gripe revolves around the English language used. For some reason Tomtom decided to make the Tomtom English sound foriegn. For example instead of saying Venice it says Venitzia in a strange English dialect which is difficult to understand, Paris is Parie which almost sounds like Mary, Milan is Milano there were many instances when niether my wife or I could tell what it said and what was said bore no resemblance to what the signs said, absolutely hopeless as far as we were concirned. If English is selected then why can't it say, Paris, Venice and Milan. We visited Marseille and the 730 pronounced it with accents like a Frence person talking poor English and we struggled to understand it. For heavens sake Tomtom make the thing talk English correctly on the continental maps.

Conclusion

We were impressed with the 730 but felt it had been seriously let down by the cons highlighted above. I wonder whether it was released to early with buggy software which may be sorted out in future updates. We feel this isn't good enough when you buy the device for reliable navigation. I have used Garmins and Tomtoms, I sold a Garmin 670 to buy the TomTom 730, I'm not entirely sure after this journey that it was the correct decision.

[FrequentFlyer]

I've just got back recently from towing a caravan down to Portugal and back....(and via the Tunnel..on a free ticket,)..and that is a long haul. I'm still using TT6 and no problems apart from one around the new Valladolid ring road, which is not on the current (old) map. Apart from that...door to door and right to the site we had booked. Way over 3000 miles in total. Mind you, I would still have got there with a map !

[tonyoung]

Based on this correspondence I've just ordered a 730 (not waiting for 740) which will be delivered tomorrow by Amazon, as I'm off to Holland for the day.

I've suffered a Road Angel 6000 for the last two years (great speed camera alerts but everything else is frustrating - like waiting for a satellite which was there five minutes earlier and still not visible three re-boots later at least twice a week, like trying umpteen times to update the database on the web and the server is always busy, like trying to update on the move via my HTC Touch Dual which only ever worked once, like, like, like etc) so ... watch this space!

[FrequentFlyer]

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