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France without tears

Published: 11/10/2007 - Filed under: Archive » 2007 » November 2007 » Lifestyle » Features » Lifestyle » Car Rental » Features » Lifestyle » Technology »

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Arriving in a foreign country is always a challenge, but driving off a ferry on the right side of the road and in the correct direction – in the dark – is another. And so began my close relationship with the TomTom ONE Europe, as I embarked on a two-week road-trip through France.

Business Traveller has reviewed other TomTom products in England (in the June issue) but the TomTom ONE Europe is preloaded with maps for the whole of Western Europe. So we decided to put it to the test on the ground.

 It took around 15 minutes for the TomTom to find a signal when it was first switched on but then all I had to do was enter my route and drive – there is no fiddly software to download (unless you want all the extras). It’s a slight gadget (96 x 82 x 25mm) weighing in at 174g (lighter than its larger-screened upgrades: the TomTom ONE XL Europe weighs 208g and the TomTom Go 710 a relatively hefty 300g). It comes with a windscreen holder, a USB car charger and, when fully charged, the battery lasts for two hours. There’s also a CD with software so that you can plan and load routes while at home and download additional software, such as 36 different languages and 55 extra voices (including John Cleese).

What can it do? A lot. The 3.5-inch touch-screen is easy to navigate: you just tap on the relevant symbol to view different options. A good starting point is touching on the house symbol and then typing in your home postcode or street name so that you can always navigate back home (but be warned: thieves have been finding this very useful for finding their way straight to an empty house).

You can also choose Points of Interest including restaurants, petrol stations, hotels etc, which are flagged up en route. After a tense moment between motorway junctions with a rapidly diminishing tank, I chose to have petrol stations flagged up (and an amusing cuckoo sound reminder, which I set up to chirp 500 metres before each station). Thanks to this, I found every petrol station en route, even in remote villages in the Alps. The gadget also comes with TomTom PLUS, which you can use if you have a Bluetooth or GPRS, the benefit being that you can get live traffic updates and weather reports.

Because I was driving on French motorways, the TomTom asked if I wanted to avoid toll roads, whenever it was planning a route. This was useful as toll roads in France can be expensive (I paid around e80 for one stretch) and not necessarily faster depending on the time of day. Unfortunately it does not have the capacity to calculate the cost in road fees so there were times when, even with a GPS, a decision had to be made.Sometimes the gamble paid off (e11 for an hour and a half less in the car).

I had the TomTom stuck to the windscreen on the passenger side but every 20 minutes or so the suction pad and the TomTom would drop abruptly to the floor. This caused mild panic the first couple of times as you are so used to having it there for every bend in the road. After two weeks I learnt exactly when to give the pad a little press, and became so skilled at it that on the eight-hour journey back it didn’t fall off once.

If you do manage to get into an argument with your passenger, and voices are raised, don’t worry. If you mishear your TomTom instruction you can tap the screen twice and it will be repeated. This was especially useful for motorway junctions as there were often several exits and choosing the right one was done solely on trusting the TomTom rather than the confusing French signs.

And that was what the journey became all about – trust. Even when occasionally a road did not exist any more, or I was diverted through roadworks, the TomTom would immediately readjust, and recalculate the route. I had a road map for back-up but only used it a few times, and that was to get an idea of the whole country rather than worrying whether I was going the right way.

And just one more thing. It’s recommended to always take the TomTom with you when you leave the car – and remove the windscreen holder – to avoid tempting opportunistic thieves. But remember to turn it off – I went to a service station bathroom and made two women scream when the male voice in my pocket told me to take the next left.

The latest model of the TomTom ONE Europe is the third edition with extra software such as mapshare, where you can download the latest maps for free as well as see speed cameras. But it still has the same-sized screen, weight, and 1Gb of internal memory. Price £149 for the regional and £179 for the European version. Visit tomtom.com.

Customer service

While Business Traveller found the product very satisfactory, when we lost the case for another TomTom device, the TomTom customer service was put to the test. What we found was that the website has no visible contact details, so if you have a problem with your device or a query, you have to click on “Support”, type in your product model number and then scroll down a list of frequently asked questions to see if your query is there. If it is not, you are advised to go back to the main page and create a TomTom account, which involves filling in your contact details and emailing your query. We included a phone number for them to call us, but instead were emailed their phone number, so we had to call them (and pay for the privilege). To save you time looking, here it is: +44 (0)845 161 0009.

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