TomTom Start 25 5″ Sat Nav with Europe Maps (45 countries)

Posted by Notcot on May 8, 2012 in In-Car Technology |

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3 Comments

Mr. R. Pope "guitaristtv.com"
at 10:31 pm

262 of 269 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Yeah, like it a lot.., 21 Jun 2011
By 
Mr. R. Pope “guitaristtv.com” (Tring, Herts. UK) –
(REAL NAME)
  

I’ve been somewhat cynical in the past about owning one preferring to stick with a paper map. I thought I should get with the times and having seen a more expensive unit when a friend came around for the weekend, I decided to opt for an entry level device. The price for this Tom-Tom did not seem overly expensive.

In the box is:

the Sat Nav itself
a car charger lead [which joins to…]
a USB cable [which joins the unit itself to the charger]
a paper quick start guide

This Sat Nav can sit on a dashboard beanbag [purchased separately] if you decide to go for this. It uses a sucker which with a simple twist locks the seal. Alternatively it will attach itself to the inside of the windscreen using the same method. Out of the box and into the car then, the Sat Nav found my home position quickly after powering it up. I set this and I was up and running in five minutes tops.

The first thing to do is to find your destination and you can do this easily using a postcode or a place of interest, once it has searched for the destination, highlight it, and the machine will do the maths for the journey showing you how long it will take and details of the destination. It can also show you parking options near where you are going or if you wanted to do a trial run of the journey, you also do this and watch the proposed route.

First I gave it a local test and it found Tescos about eight miles away very easily. The display giving me adequate time to adjust lane if necessary, giving the correct number of exits on a roundabout or giving me adequate time to turn. It was here I tested the Sat Nav’s ability to adjust itself when I made a mistake. It recalculated a different route very quickly without fuss.

I discovered by playing with the unit whilst parked up that there are a number of voice options to try as well. There are a number of English female or male voices to choose from however, only one English female voice will tell you the name of the road you are turning into or approaching. The rest will just say “turn right” or “turn left” when you need to.

I took it on a more sophisticated journey to London NW5 at around 3pm on a Thursday and it coped well on the A40 into central London. This would have been normally a slightly fraught journey as I am unfamiliar with driving in the city, but I came through well particulary at junctions. This is because the display shows [with a quivering yellow arrow symbol] which lane to get into in good time, and I wasn’t left with that awful feeling of other drivers staring me down because of my hesitation in choosing the correct place to be.

The unit will beep if you are within range of a speed camera. This is a distracting noise but can easily be turned off along with a number of other alerts by removing a tick from a list under the settings menu.

The journey back to my house in Hertfordshire from NW5 after midnight early Friday morning was quite simply executed. I switched the Sat Nav to night mode so the screen was illuminated more clearly, set the desination to Home and off I went. Initially, it did try to make me turn right where I couldn’t, but I insisted and the journey was quickly rerouted towards the M1.

I rate this Sat Nav highly for someone who wants a simple starter unit.

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G. Visser
at 11:16 pm

328 of 339 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
TomTom Start 25, 16 July 2011
By 
G. Visser
(REAL NAME)
  

I bought the Start 25 EU as a replacement for a 3 year old Garmin 255W, which died on me soon after a map update. Was initially tempted by the XXL as the price of those have come down now TomTom has updated their range. However the XXL has only 2GB worth of memory and therefore any updates to the European maps will not fit (so one has to choose what part of Europe one wants to install- not great if you want to go to Italy e.g.).
The good:
- The Start 25 EU has 4GB memory.
- Excellent screen. Great detail, which gives you a good idea of the road system around where you are travelling. In case you want to
get off your choosen route e.g when motorway signs tell you there are delays up ahead.
- Also better size: 5 inches is easier to see especially when mounted further away on the windscreen
- ‘3D’ view is excellent.
- There are many ways you can adapt the screen and alerts to your own taste. E.g. how the map looks, how many instructions you want to
hear, even down to what sound, if any, for various types of speed camera’s!(Garmin sound was either on or off)
- An other little trick: when you go somewhere you can choose to be directed to a parking area near by.
- Great route planning tool.
- Plenty of ‘Points Of Interest’ installed
- Perfect timing for turnings, not too early, not too late (My old Garmin often just spoke a little too early – many times I choose
the wrong turn when 2 were close by).
- Despite what you find on TomTom’s website, this one needs the MyTomTom software (not TomTom Home) installed on your PC (follow
instructions in the box). Very easy to use. MyTomTom instantly showed me an update for the Navigator software. Installed without a
hitch.
- Very prompt reply from customer service to e-mails (within 24 hours).
The not so good:
- No HD traffic, however, unless your job is travelling (e.g taxi, sales rep. etc.) I do not see the need as, after the first year,
this cost around £50/yr as part of the Live services package; e.g. in the more expensive Via Live 125 EU (which cost around £50 more,
so one pays for it anyway).
- Can’t see the unit as a drive on ones PC. The reason is: the new generation of TomToms are using the Linux based file system instead of FAT/FAT32 as before. This was changed sue to Microsoft successfully sueing Tomtom for using the Microsoft FAT and FAT32 file system on a Linux platform. Microsoft claimed this was an infringement. Therefore Tomtom were forced to use another file system other than a Windows based one. TomToms have always run on Linux anyway, so the choice to use Linux file system was an obvious one.
- MyTomTom states my map is up-to-date, which is 8.65. However, the latest according to TomTom’s website is 8.70. In other words:
‘latest map guarantee’ does not work. Also ‘Map Share’ funtion does not work and there is no facility to back up the device.
- On MyTomTom it initialy appeared that I needed an Activation Card for the ‘latest Map Guarantee’. However no such card in the box.
Even after repeated questions regarding this to customer services, I still do not know if I need one. Somehow the Customer Service
staff ignore this question of me.
- Customer services has now passed me to a technical engineer, as they don’t know why I cannot update the map. Been e-mailing
to and fro for about a week now, without resolve. (maybe I do need that card??)
- Customer Services don’t seem to know the difference in software as I was advised by the first person to use ‘TomTom Home’. Should be
‘MyTomTom’
- Their website needs updating, e.g. The tomtom.com/getstarted website does not mention the Start 20/25 as sat navs requiring this
software.
- Reading the TomTom forums, these issues have dogged MyTomTom at least since February this year. Summer holidays are coming up and
still no resolve; not good to say the least. One would expect different from TomTom, being the Apple in sat nav land.
However: overal I think it is a great sat nav, let down by the update software of MyTomTom. Hopefully the TomTom folk get this sorted very soon! Together they would take some beating!

Update: It has been 2 weeks since I bought the device. It works fantastic. Advance Lane Guidance is a great help and screen is responsive. However still no resolve re the map update. I have tried suggestions from TomTom Forums like using a different PC with 32bit (instead of 64bit) of the Windows OS and different browsers, tried all the suggestions from the TomTom Team, incl. turning off the Norton Internet Security Suite temporarily whilst updating device, being ‘hardwired’ to internet and using the PC’s rear USB connection. From their end they got my map download to work, however it appears I was assigned the wrong map (error as it was done manually) and hence I was unable to install it. My TomTom…

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Richard
at 11:25 pm

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Beware poor battery life., 24 Aug 2011
By 
Richard

Amazon Verified Purchase(What is this?)

So far I’ve been impressed on the whole by the product – the lane selection indications are clear and very helpful, and the general usability of the system is well thought out; pretty much anybody could pick one up and find their way from A to B with limited stress. I recently found it to be a life-saver while driving through north London during the rush hour.

However, battery life is a concern. I initially charged the unit by connecting the USB cable to the PC. I left it connected for the best part of two hours, and the battery appeared to be charged, but on trying to use the unit it went dead shortly after I had programmed in the first postcode.

Thankfully I’d brought the 12v connector with me. I plugged it in and set off. Before too long the battery returned to the 50% level, but it never got any further.

Once I knew where I was heading I disconnected the power cable and in under 30 minutes it was on the verge of running out of power.

The implication of this is that you essentially have to have the unit connected to a 12V supply (cigarette lighter) most of the time during a long journey, and depending on the layout of your car and your preferred position for the unit this can be a real pain; in my car the cable rubs on my wrist whenever I change gears. It simply should be better in this respect.

Other small niggles:

i) System continually informing me that I’m breaking a 40mph speed limit on a stretch of motorway when there was clearly no such limit imposed. It makes alarming noises ever few seconds when you drift significantly above the limit. I’m sure that you can turn them off, but the fact that the information was incorrect is worrying.

ii) On the whole islands are great, but on one occasion it got confused and told me to take the second exit, straight on, when in fact it was the first exit. Small niggle, but it almost led to an incorrect turn.

All in all though a good unit. Just be ready to feed it some juice!

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