On the day of the test I used my girlfriends Vauxhall Corsa. This test was performed on an Orange SPV C500 running the TomTom Mobile software. As you can see, I've got one of the most expensive and sturdy car phone holders around. I had to attach this elastic band because the grippers on the side kept popping open and the phone simply fell out.

Yes, it really is 8.13 in the morning! :)

One of the first things you notice is the blue arrow. This is you, and which direction you're facing.  On the bottom right is the signal strength from the GPS satellites - it can go up or down, depending on trees or surrounding objects etc. Next to this you've got a trip distance reading, current time and the trip time. You can use your phones' joystick / navigation pad to zoom in and out on this screen. There's a number of shortcuts such as pressing "back" to mute the voice prompts, or left / right to adjust the volume.

At the bottom is the road you're on and then on the left we have a nice big arrow indicating the direction to go next, and how close that instruction is (you can change the yards to metres). One thing that I had an issue with here is that I'm from the UK, and we use miles-per-hour (MPH), which is standard across the UK, however I'm not at all familiar with yards - I grew up with metres, so yards mean nothing to me. When changing this in the settings you either have the option of (a) Miles & Yards or (b) Kilometres and metres, but not a combination of the two.

Ok, it's a little tricky to see here but you can see some of the detail. Each road that you approach you drive past is labelled, so if you're looking for a certain road and some rascal has ripped the road sign down or you want to know where to turn.

Oh, and did I mention ? The dark red line with red dots indicate the route that you're supposed to be following. TomTom Mobile will even show you other things around you, like this reservoir on the top right. It'll also show petrol stations, railway lines etc.  

OK, so we know what the main navigation window looks like. Let's set a course and actually go somewhere!

This is the main menu, which is easily accessible by just pressing the action button (joystick down). The very first option here is "Navigate to", which is great as it's the most used option. The best of it is that you can access this option just by pressing "1" from the main screen. You can also press "5" from anywhere to get to the preferences and so on. After a while you'll get used to these shortcuts, so you can quickly access things while you're on the move.

I'm going to press 1 here...

The first option after pressing "Navigate to.." is "Home", which is great, as - if you've visited somewhere and just can't remember how to get back, just hit "1" and then "1" again.

You can set your "home" location using the "Change preferences" option above. Do this when you're at home (obviously), just click "Change Preferences (5)" and then "Change home location" - you can then use either the GPS to find out where you are now or use the address finder.

Now, the address finder is also really cool, and you'll be using it quite a bit if you're a regular traveller or go to different places daily. Here's how to use it.

Now I've clicked "Address" and the first thing it asks for is the City you want to go to. You can enter a postcode here, which is ideal. I've chosen Reading .. for no good reason other than to show you what happens. It's picked out Reading, plus some street names and things that sound similar too it - again this is excellent if you didn't write the place name down and you're not quite sure how to spell it.

I chose Reading, then click "Select", which brings me onto the next screen.

OK, now here's the streets, roads and motorways in Reading. You can see the postcodes alongside, which is also good for finding the right place. It'll even show you roads that you can't take a car down, like Acacias Road here.

Depending on what road you've chosen (some roads of course don't have buildings on), you'll be asked for a house number. If you don't know, just click "OK" and you get more options like "Anywhere" (on that road) or one the roads off that road.

Once done, click OK and it'll go through the maps and find the best route.

Here it is, trying to find the best route to number 12, Adelaide Road in Reading. I must state right here that this is phenomenally quick, it takes just seconds. Once done you'll see the route on the map and you can return to the main screen and see the dark red line guiding the way.

You can either just go ahead and follow the route selected, or you can edit the route which TomTom has chosen. To do this, you simply go to the main menu again and choose number "2" or just click "2" from the main screen.

Here's the "Find alternative" screen. You can choose to recalculate the journey and find an alternative route (this is good if you don't like the route it planned), avoid a roadblock (I've never used this, and never come across a "roadblock" before in my life. You can also choose to do many other things which are all pretty self explanatory here - adding a "Travel via" is good to use if you have to pop into the office before visiting a client.

I'm going to choose "Avoid part of route", because TomTom Mobile is telling me to go down the M6 Toll, which I don't want to pay for today. Ah - the M6 Toll, yes, this is included in the TomTom maps, even though it's a fairly new motorway - a lot of the surrounding newly-built feeder roads are also included, which is excellent work. You can be confident that the maps are up-to-date.

Here's the next screen, I'm choosing the M6 Toll because I don't want to pay the 3 quid fee (hey, I need to save money to pay for a new phone cradle!).

Once done, the map and route will be recalculated quickly.

While I'm here, I must mention another great feature - Favourites. Just click on it and you can add your current GPS position as a favourite (good if you're somewhere on an industrial estate or business park which may not have street names or close postcode matches).

You can also add addresses as favourites, which is bloomin' brilliant for preparing your journey. Imagine the scene, you're watching the late night news and suddenly you think, "Oh balls, I've got to to that new customer tomorrow and then to that house I'm interested in buying".. You can simply add them in as favourites following the same steps as "Navigate to" (above), but this time you get to save those positions, along with a name - such as ...

 - Mr Smith (New customer)
 - New house

Then you can go straight to bed knowing that you're not going to get lost tomorrow. Just get u pin the morning, choose "Navigate to..", then "Favourite", then one of the ones you saved. Job done.

Just before I show what happens on a typical journey, here's a quick look into the "Change preferences" option.

1) Night / Day Colours - as you've seen, the colours are nice and bright - the backlight is automatically switch on, and stays on while you're using TomTom, making it easy to see - however in the dark these bright colours will illuminate the inside of your car like a Christmas tree, so switch to night colours for a nice mellow colour theme which makes it easier on the eye for you.

2) The funky 3D display that guides you round can be turned off here and you can get an over-head 2D thing. I suppose this may be useful if you want to know where you are in relation to other roads, or if you want to try and spot a sneaky shortcut.

3) You can actually turn off the map (the 3D one that shows you the way around) completely, or above a certain speed. A good safety feature I guess.

4) Hides the places of interest, which reduces distractions.

5) You can also press "back" on the main screen to turn off the voice.
 

1) Changing the volume can be done here, or you can press left/right on the phone.

2) You can rename and edit your favourite locations here

3) Mentioned earlier. Self explanatory.

4) Blimey, this is a hidden gem - you can have loads of languages. German, Spanish, French, Italian etc etc. Pretty much every European language is included plus American English and UK English. There's male and female voices for each language. TomTom have got this spot on - the voices are calm, relaxed and clear. I don't even mind having some posh English bird bossing me about, so that's brilliant.

5) Maintains the places of interest - you can add new ones too.

1) I didn't mess with this. You can use it to re-find the GPS box.

2) You can turn things on and off here, like showing street names, showing the next road on the instructions etc.

3) Self explanatory

4) Give it some funky colours!

5) Delete the planned route

1) This is where you can change from Miles to Kilometres and the time format.

2) Self explanatory

3) Oh.. there's that option again. I'm not quite sure why it's here twice.

4) Ermm.. yeah, the Change voice option .... again. Dunno why it's here again.

5) Self explanatory really.

An example of TomTom going off-road when you drive onto a strip of road that isn't recognised on the map.

Quite a steady, long video of TomTom working.

On the motorway. You have to consider here that we're in quite a noisy car (the Corsa 1.2i engine gets a bit noisy when you're nearing 80.. ermm.. 70mph). Plus I have the radio on, and the voice-prompts are still audible.

Another one on the motorway, plus coming off at the right junction. TomTom Mobile tells you in plenty of time when to get of the motorway.

Getting onto the motorway, this is a good example of the non-glare night colours.

This is a longer, more stable video of the TomTom Mobile operating at night.

This is a great little video showing the water features and road names as they go by.

See what happens when I make a turn that TomTom Mobile wasn't expecting. We knew of a short-cut, so I took it and it only took TomTom a matter of seconds to figure out where I was going, then to calculate a route up the new road I'd decided to take.

I make the turn about 15-16 seconds into this video.