TomTom for iPhone review

If you’re buying this for someone who’s already familiar with standalone TomTom devices, they’ll feel instantly at home with this iPhone app. The familiar TomTom user interface is neatly combined with iPhone techniques such as pinch gestures to quickly zoom the map, making TomTom the most user-friendly application in this group.

A notable advantage over other products is that TomTom uses what it calls IQ Routes, which try to anticipate how busy roads will be at certain times on particular days of the week.

At times, this was useful; where other products would try to send us down a road serving three busy primary schools at 8.30am, TomTom was aware of the school-run congestion and routed us a different way. Trouble is, it also did this during half-term, when the road was comparatively empty. So IQ Routes is good, but not perfect.

Also less than perfect is the underlying map data, which comes from TomTom’s own Tele Atlas subsidiary (most of the other products we've tested use NAVTEQ maps). In our testing we found too many errors for our liking.

It isn’t the maps that ensure TomTom lags behind CoPilot Live 8, though: it’s the price. With similar features but at twice the price, TomTom is no match for its main competitor.

Author: Paul Ockenden