Is Tomtom Navigation Good

[Leontina Heidgerken]

WhatI can't do, at least from playing with it, is ask it to take me to a POI in another city. Say I'm traveling from NYC to Miami and have a room reserved at a Hilton in Richmond, VA. I can't seem to find a way to say, "Route me to the Hilton in downtown Richmond, VA". The best I can do is to say, "Take me to a nearby Hilton" - which makes no sense.

Am I missing something with this navigation or is this just how it is. With other in-dash Garmin products the offering was very similar to what their independent offerings were. I'd expect the same from TomTom and can't believe that a TomTom GPS on the shelf at Best Buy would be this limiting.

In my opinion, the in-dash TomTom is not effective for navigation unless you know your destination address in advance. As one example, you can't really find an upcoming rest-stop with the in-dash TomTom, whereas you can with a Garmin. We have a Garmin 650, which we still use.

That being said, it sounds like I'll ignore the TomTom GPS built into my dash because it's crap and just use my Garmin DriveSmart 55 on my dash (bean bag mount) because it works and can do everything I want.

One other thing: It has traffic information from SiriusXM, which is nice. I'm not convinced that it actually uses it in routing, though. It appears to be super simple with: "Here's your route. Also, completely unrelated, here's some traffic information for you."

What works very well is Google Maps through Android Auto or Apple CarPlay. Or if you prefer, Waze. Real-time traffic updates and voice searching via the Google Assistant or Apple's Siri. All controlled from the steering wheel Voice button and displaying on the big screen. Personally, with most new cars supporting Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, I don't know why they even bother adding a built-in nav function any more. Guess they figure there is still a lot of folks who don't have smart phones yet.

The in-dash navigation, especially TomTom, may be somewhat obsolete. Nevertheless, the media display screen is still very useful for receiving the Android Auto map navigation so that the driver can see the navigation.

Has anyone that owns a Subaru with navigation bought a subscription of SiriusXM's "NavTraffic" (about$3.99/month) which supposedly gives you "REal Time" traffic report markings on the navigation screen...ie incidents...accident. This NavTraffic feature is not the same thing as Sirius's "Travel Link" which basically only gives you nearby restaurants...gas stations...sports scores etc. Sometimes SiriusXM just calls the NavTraffic "Traffic" on their website pages......they're not very consistent. According to SiriusXM website, their NavTraffic feature is compatible only with Subaru's that

come with the built in integrated navigation unit.

Thanks.

After playing with it a bit more it's not as bad as I had thought OR the update fixed some issues I had with it, I don't know. Either way, I can find my way around using the in-dash GPS and it works pretty well. It's not Garmin GPS good but I'd say it's good enough.

We've been using our Garmin and Android Auto for our trips. However, I still suspect that the TomTom map database that we get for the Subaru is obsolete. Has anyone ever confirmed that?That probably depends upon the contract that Subaru signed with TomTom.

For their stand-alone GPS units, TomTom updates the maps four times a year, and my personal experience with their units has shown them to generally be timely updates, but I have no idea how current their contract with Subaru requires them to be.

One comment that I have seen on a TomTom forum is that sometimes they have lagged when user input has conflicted with a government database, and they stayed with the government data until they had multiple user inputs.

It does route me around traffic via SiriusXM's traffic and I even figured out how to find POIs in different cities so I'm OK with it... I recently bought a Subaru Legacy with the TomTom nav system and SiriusXM. Since the traffic service is supposed to be a 3-year "trial" I decided to test it out [I'm a long time Garmin user so this was going to be going into foreign territory for me]. So while this thread seems all but dead I'll still post a comment just in case anyone is interested.

First, don't ever call Sirius customer care unless you want the worst possible experience in dealing with a product/service. I had to call 3 different CSRs to get a decent answer for my question. It was, "What's the difference between Traffic, Traffic Plus, and Traffic Plus Weather?" When I asked CSR #2 "What is Traffic Plus?" She immediately responded: "Can you tell me more about that?" To which I immediately said: "So I called you to tell me what Traffic Plus is and you're asking me to tell you?" On to CSR #3 after that.

Okay, for more useful info--I hope. So the TomTom does seem klunky compared to my Garmin 2639--slow to respond to touchscreen inputs (this may be a Subaru problem however). It also can't show both the miles to go and ETA at the same time. You either pick one or allow the nav to alternate the info in a tiny upper RH corner. An interesting feature is a linear line showing your location to the destination. You can have up to 5 different types of POIs indicated along the way. So say you've selected gas stations, rest areas, and restaurants as your preferred POIs, then as you progress through your trip those icons would show up in the line (not on the map itself).

You can save some "favorites" which could be POIs by any other name, but I have 500,000 POIs saved in my Garmin that I could not even imagine as something that you would do even if you could on the built-in nav system.

So...in my testing the only thing I might use the built-in nav system for is "real time" traffic: eg, accidents, volume, etc. However, I haven't yet had the chance to fully try it out that way. I suspect that I will keep my Garmin up and running, the built-in nav also for the traffic, but keep its volume down.

What's good?

Small touches here and there, such as a pop-out menu with shortcuts to volume, 2D/3D map toggle, and day/night map mode toggle, make the app easy to understand and interact with while driving. I do miss being able to input destinations and addresses by voice, but it may be possible that certain Android input methods that support voice may work with the app. My phone's default keyboard's and Swype's voice input functions did not work.

After installing the TomTom app, you'll have to first download the map data that is used for navigation. TomTom stores all of the licensed map data locally on your phone's SD card or internal storage, so that it can continue to operate if you go off the grid and lose your data connection. This is also advantageous to users on a limited data plan. The maps require a Wi-Fi connection to download and I found maps of the U.S. and Canada occupied about 2.26GB of storage space.

TomTom's IQ Routes pathfinding algorithms, which we've praised many times before, are still quite good at picking paths from points alpha to bravo. Routing modes for Fastest, Shortest, and Eco routes are available for motorists and Walking and Bicycle routes are there for everyone else. I also like the option to avoid highways or stick to roads with speed limits below a certain speed, which is great for those just learning to drive or uncomfortable at speed, but also good for maximizing range on vehicles like EVs and certain hybrids that quickly lose efficiency and range above, say, 50 mph.

Spoken turn-by-turn directions are available in a wide range of languages. However, spoken street names aren't available in all of these languages, only American English, British English, Canadian French, and Mexican Spanish.

TomTom's HD Traffic service is available as an in-app purchase. We've seen this system in action on TomTom's Live series of GPS devices and praised its ability to deliver traffic data bordering on prescience on busy highways and reasonably accurate traffic data even on major surface roads.

The final piece of the puzzle is destination entry, which is how you tell the TomTom app where you're going. There is integration with contacts stored on your phone, so you won't have to take time to re-enter or import new favorites. You'll also be able to search the Internet for destinations via the Local Search function if you have a network connection. (Curiously, the app kept telling me that there was no network connection available during my testing, despite the fact that I had a functioning Internet connection. So, I was unable to test this portion.) Additionally, there's a Point of Interest (POI) database that's downloaded with the map data and stored locally, containing the addresses and phone numbers of thousands of businesses.

What's annoying?

For starters, TomTom's maps aren't infallible. I encountered at least one map inaccuracy per trip routed. These inaccuracies were usually minor. For example, the speed limit on the segment of I-280 within San Francisco city limits was given as 35 mph when it was actually 65 mph, triggering an excessive speed warning every time I went that way. On a few occasions, the app instructed me to turn at intersections with longstanding turn restrictions.

Of course, no navigation app or hardware that I've tested has 100-percent-accurate maps, but unlike with an app like Waze or even TomTom's own Map Share-enabled PNDs, I was unable to make corrections to these road segments to prevent future route inaccuracies for the rest of the TomTom community and, more importantly, my own future routes. I'd like to see Map Share make an appearance in the next update.

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