As a new version of the best-selling portable navigation device (or PND) in the UK, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the TomTom Go 930 would be an easy sell. Not necessarily. Most people who want sat-nav have it. A massive proportion of those people have one of TomTom’s previous models.
So, in a way, the new TomTom Go 530 (with UK coverage), 730 (with European coverage) and our Euro and US mapping 930 test sample have to entice current TomTom users to upgrade. They’re going to need some new tricks.
The new black finish is classy, and TomTom’s renowned build quality is still all there, but that’s surely not going to be enough. The dreamily simple windscreen mount continues from the previous version, no problems there.
Killer new features?
The two new features that are most likely to catch a buyer’s eye are advanced lane guidance and IQ Routes. The former, as the name suggests, serves to help you navigate complex multi-lane junctions with a new driver-eye view of the lanes available and which one you should be in.
It only works on major roads and motorways, but does a good job, certainly more so than just an instruction to ‘keep right’ when there are potentially four right-hand lanes to choose from.
Use your IQ
The second new feature is IQ Routes. Normally, your sat-nav chooses routes for distance or time based on the speed limit data for the roads, which can be a wildly inaccurate method. IQ Routes uses actual recorded average speeds on roads, so can plan a route more effectively.
It’s a difficult thing to test objectively, because it all happens in the brain of the TomTom Go. After two or three days of driving around, the 930 didn’t appear to taking us in a much different direction than any other sat-nav. We still got caught in traffic jams (ones insignificant enough not to show up on the TMC data, but large enough to irritate).
Extra TomTom perks
But, as with all TomTom Go products, we also got to where we were going with the minimum of fuss or difficulty. And we were able to enjoy the usual TomTom perks, like an FM transmitter, Bluetooth handsfree and Map Share, the service that lets you take advantage of a whole community of users reporting routing discrepancies.
But are these things going to be enough to interest current TomTom owners into upgrading to a Go 930? Will they even be enough to attract Garmin or Navman fans, especially now that the latter has the might of new owners Mitac behind it? Perhaps not.
But we can’t mark down the excellent, easy-to-use Go 930 because it’s only slightly more excellent and easy to use than the 920 before it. New buyers will love it, and that makes it five stars in our book.
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