TomTom Go 950 Live

Posted on 21 Jul 2010 at 15:56

VERDICT: An excellent satnav, packed with features, but only worth it for people constantly on the roads

PRICE: £206 (£242 inc VAT)

RATING: 5/6

TomTom’s products have long been a favourite of PC Pro for two key reasons – they work brilliantly and they’re stuffed with features. The most recent range, at the top of which sits the Go 950 Live, reinforces that opinion.

Its preinstalled maps cover all of Europe, North America, Australia and Africa, and therein lies its key advantage. Where Google Maps Navigation and Ovi Maps come initially with no map data onboard, you can simply buy a TomTom, stick it to your windscreen (with a top-quality mount) and be on your way.

The Go 950 is solidly built and boasts a high-quality speaker that will adjust its volume depending on cabin noise. There’s multipoint route planning, optimisation for speed, fuel economy and distance, plus voice recognition to name but a few of its many features.

Where it really stands out from the competition, however, is in routing and online services. Although the Go 950 chose similar routes to the other packages in our tests, its IQ Routes feature is more likely to offer the fastest routes in tricky situations.

Based on data drawn from a vast base of TomTom owners, IQ Routes plots courses based on average road speed, not speed limits. The Live services, of which you get a year’s worth free, offer Google search and excellent live traffic information.

If you do a lot of driving, that investment in a Go 950 will pay off in the long run; for casual drivers, it’s just too expensive.