Which similar products have you used?

TomTom Go 710

Summary

In short, great unit with some very good features and functions, it's not cheap though and has been spoilt by penny pinching with the design of a cheap and nasty windscreen mount.

How long have you used the product?

Less than 1 month

What are the strengths?

Just purchased a GO 530 to replace my GO 710 and am impressed with the latest software and GPS antenna. The unit seems to aquire satellites much faster than my old unit and the signal is much stronger.
Routes are now calculated using TomTom IQ Routes which is based on real average speeds, rather than just using road speed limits. This results in a much more accurate route calculation and it even takes into account such things as speed bumps!.
Speech recognition is also a new feature, this allows you to enter an address by speaking, rather than typing it in. This has got to be a great safety feature, however I will defer judgment until I have tested this under all conditions.
Another new feature is the built in FM transmitter, this allows you to play the navigation instructions and any stored MP3 files through your car radio, this is a great improvement on the built-in speaker.

What are the weaknesses?

The windscreen mount is absolute rubbish!. The mount on the 710 was very good as once it was installed it was very secure, and as it had the power lead connection incorporated into it, it was very easy to attach and remove the unit. The new mount is very flimsy by comparrison, its now difficult to attach the unit, and as it has no power lead attachment, every time the unit is attached or removed, the power lead has also to be plugged in or unplugged. The new mount has also fallen off the windscreen 5 times in two days, this never happened with the 710 style mount. This may seem like a minor point, however like many others who will use this type of unit, for security reasons I need to remove the unit every time I park, this can be many times per day, so what was very easy to do has now become time consuming and fiddly!. I can appreciate why they have done this, the new design will be much cheaper to produce, however this has degraded what was a very good design.