Ashford at 6am always a mixed blessing as we sat waiting  to board to Euro shuttle to Calais and our 2 hour drive into Northern France for a Birthday party. Lordpercy had already set-up the TomTom One Europe the previous night, not that it took much configuration, more like a quick attachment as the One's sucker mount gripped the windscreen and a few minutes for it to gain satellite lock.

Once LP had it all up and running the wife and I couldn't resist a little spin around the block in a child like fashion to try out our new toy. We drove around 5 miles away from home with the TT Europe 3.5" screen beaming at us from the dashboard, the wife commented on how good the revised screen is and I have to agree the whole package is much more stylish and brighter than the older more bulky unit. Setting in our home via the postcode was very simple indeed, which was good seeing as the instructions were still on the driveway in the box! We were soon under the guidance of a young lady by the name of Jane who politely guided us left and right back to the front door, very impressive.

LP gave us all the facts and figures including that the TomTom One Europe was now only 96 x 82 x 25 mm and 174 grams making it easily fit into the glovebox although this is not advised as the best storage location. The accuracy should also be better as this unit used the latest SiRF Star III chipset which not only brings the details down to around 5 meters but also copes better with leaves and tall buildings. It all sounded good and the wife joked with LP about it working in the tunnel! not sure if she was serious or not. Anyhow we headed to bed ready for our early start.

With the car loaded and no one on the roads we made our start with Ashford programmed as the first stop on our multipoint route, this is a feature of the TomTom that enabled me to set all our stop points the night before while running from the inbuilt battery. LP had also loaded the speed camera map as I tend to have a heavy right foot and from what I could tell there were other points of interest active too showing things like petrol stations and local landmarks.

The journey to Ashford was largely uneventful and we appreciated the ability to set the bright screen to night mode which changed the colour scheme making the user interface less in your face than the standard colour scheme. One thing that is blatantly apparent is that TomTom know how to make user friendly systems, the menu icons do exactly what you expect them to do and combined with the large touch screen it makes driving it easy even for novices like us.

We were soon sat at Ashford which is where we started this story and TomTom had gottten us here in one piece without any arguments. While waiting to board the train we had a bit of a play with the optional extras but were disappointed to find that most of the useful ones were cost options. Things like traffic information and the rather cool sounding buddies system required both a subscription to TomTom and a connection via Bluetooth to a data service on our mobile. This all sounds a bit scary as we had no idea how much data it could consume!

Soon enough we were being whisked through the tunnel and emerged the other side remembering to drive on the other side of the road! The unit took a minute to work out where we were and seemed a bit in a daze as we crept up the slope from the train. Momentarily panic set in with the thought that we'd reach the roundabout ahead and have no directions, fear not TomTom sprung to life and plotted our next leg to Rouen on the E402. Jane was once gain on hand helping us negotiate the European roads and this removed one element of stress as we could concentrate on going around roundabouts the wrong way etc.

It was about an hour until we finally made a howler while looking for some toilets and managed to head in the wrong direction, normally this would have caused ruptions with the wife shouting at me and me blaming her navigation skills. But Tom just recalculated which took about 15 seconds and took us via a very picturesque village and back onto the E402 with the minimum of fuss. In fact my stress levels were so low I let the wife drive! This experience of watching the TT Europe screen and listening to the wife shriek every time a large French lorry overtook us was more like a video game than real life.

Arriving tired but remarkably unstressed we set about enjoying ourselves for a few days, normally the discussion about venturing out and exploring would bring fear to us of getting lost in France. But with Tom tucked in the wife's handbag we were happy to play backseat drivers safe in the knowledge that when our friend Mark got lost we had a gadget to help. Sure enough late on Saturday we couldn't find the restaurant the group had agreed to meet up at, at this point we produced tom and ran on the battery in order to guide us right to the front door, grinning like Cheshire cats we were the centre of attention at dinner much to Marks embarrassment. Luckily I didn't have to explain that we almost ran out of battery as the One only has 2 hours life on a charge.

Our return route to pick up the EuroStar was very smooth, we opted to use the arrive by feature where you tell the TomTom One what time you need to be at the destination and it then shows you how much time you have to spare. This gave us enough confidence to stop off en route to pick up some local plonk and cheese and to spend a little time on the coast. Jane once again guided us door to door with the minimum of fuss and we were soon sat back at the train terminal ready for the return leg to blighty.

Emerging from the Ashford depot the RDS radio leapt to life and warned us of trouble on the M25, I decided to see how we could get TomTom to route round the Dartford river crossing and quickly found the diversion menu. Here you can select a part of the route to avoid which forced Tom to re route via the Blackwall tunnel a route that neither I or the wife have used much. We may as well have been in France for all our local knowledge but Jane steered us safe and the speed camera warnings were very much appreciated as the southern approach to the tunnel should be named Gatso canyon!

Arriving home we both commented on what a difference the TomTom One Europe unit had made to our stress levels and that we hadn't even argued if you discount a small tiff over me running off on the beach! The next morning I dropped  the unit back off to LP who asked me to guess how much the TomTom Euro unit cost?

I thought that inline with other Nav systems and the cost of the one that Audi could have fitted to my car that this would be at least £400, so it came as a massive surprise that it was just over £200 all in! For that kind of money we'll probably invest in our own Tom for UK and Euro trips later this year, after all £200 for a stress free row free drive is well worth it.

Countries included on the SD memory card - Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, San Marino, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Vatican City

More TomTom Reviews

Published - 04/03/2007

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