This new breed of reduced features GPS navigation is now referred to as no-nonsense and easy to use. They are rather surprisingly pitched at an older predominantly female audience as these are the groups that are buying SatNav to make a journey stress free.  The TomTom One is certainly smaller than the current Go range measuring 110 x 89 x 34 mm and weighs 260 grams, the screen is a good sized 3.5" unit but it's very clear and portrays vibrant colours, plus it has an antireflective coating similar to that used on the Tom Tom Rider.

The innards of the One consist of a 380MHz ARM920T processor and 32 MB RAM, UK maps (excluding Ireland) are held on an SD card which slots into the underside of the unit. Power is from an internal lithium Ion battery which TomTom claim only provides 2 hours use, less than half the time of a TomTom go unit. The package includes the 12 volt cigarette charger cable to keep your One operational all the time and a nifty suction mount which is built with the rigidity we've come to expect from the Dutch company.

Another new feature for the mini TomTom unit is the use of the SiRF Star III chipset bringing the latest in satellite reception technology to the GPS user, in reality this makes for faster TTF (Time To Fix) so you are not sat in a car park for minutes when you first power on. Plus SiRF Star III offers much improved in journey lock, meaning more satellites to navigate by, making the system retain lock even in difficult situations like inner city driving and under leafy trees.

The routing engine is the same as the one used in the main Go range and is highly recommended by everyone in the Lordpercy.com office, again the One delivers fast route planning using the full address, city centre or postcode. Navigation en route is swift and can easily adapt to you taking the wrong turn without resorting to the dreaded "turn around when possible" message. There is the full set of traffic jam avoidance options with the ability to avoid the route for a set distance (the next mile) or to avoid the whole road i.e. avoid the M25.

The Tom Tom One may be small but it still packs a Bluetooth connection, not for hands free calling, this time it's data only and allows the use of TomTom Plus which provides downloads of POI's (points of interest) and also access tom TomTom traffic. The traffic service is getting more accurate and uses a compatible mobile phone with Bluetooth connection as a GPRS modem, the One unit gets traffic data over the GPRS data connection and displays any hold up's on your planned route. The traffic service is an extra available for £60 a year but the One ships with a free 1 month trial, this excludes any data changes from your mobile provider.

It's not all sweetness, the biggest drawback of the One is the audio quality and volume, the speaker is smaller and therefore struggles to fill the car as well as the full size Go does. Crank the unit up to full volume and the voices sound distorted and the case seems to add some reverb to make it a bit tricky to understand some of the more unusual instructions. Drop the volume setting to about 70% and the spoken instructions sound much better but it's not anywhere near as loud as the TomTom go units and may not be adequate in a noisy older vehicle.

The on screen guidance is that same as the Go range with a full graphic scrolling map and next turn and distance to turn information, the whole display is configurable with a choice of colours and a night mode to dim the screen and use darker colours.

So finally to the last feature of the TomTom One, it's price. We somehow expected the device to have less features but it's not really that stripped down and neither is the price, retailing at under £200 its £100 cheaper than the full on Go 510 device. It's worth that money especially with the improved GPS chipset and also the new slim line form factor but somehow we feel that this unit was created to take on the Garmin i3 and Navman iCN320, both of which it beats hands down.

The key question is do I buy a Go 510 or a TomTom One and right now we'd have to recommend the One.

Published - 25/11/2005

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