TomTom GO 730 Europe

When we first had a Sat Nav a few years ago I was distraught! I loved navigating with the map and felt redundant! lol! That was in the past, since I've used it a lot I love it and really it is a map and I can still navigate, this is our latest one bought a couple of years ago for travelling to France, these are the reasons I love it;

1.
I love the touch screen, it has a simple menu and you can navigate around using this, there is volume controls, brightness controls and much more, it has a setting for nightime driving and daytime setting.

Once on there click navigate to, put in the address or postcode or town, if you choose town it will always take you to the centre of the town. It will then tell you how many miles and the arrival time!

2.
There are a number of views to choose, we find it easiest to set it to direction of travel north, this means it's always going the way you're going.

I like the fact that this one zooms in when you get close to a junction so that you can easily see which lane you're to be in and what the junction looks like, also this one has the road gantry sign names which you should be following which is extremely helpful on motorway junctions.

3.
It tells you the speed of the road you are travelling on and what your speed is, it also has a little bleeping noise when you are approaching a camera which is handy to keep you speed in check. We especially found this useful in France when we weren't exactly sure of speed, you can also change the setting to Kilometers for this so it's easy to follow if you wish.

4.
If you are travelling along happily and then suddenly hit a road block or some other obsticle then you can just click on the screen and say 'avoid road block' or 'navigate via' and it will re-calculate a route for you. You can also plan a route without using motorway or toll roads if you wish the other option in the route planning is shortest or fastest, we find generally the fastest is by far the best although in London I have used shortest as everyone goes fastest and this way avoids some of the blocks!

5.
It has European maps on it! I was so amazed that when driving on the other side of the road it actually knows that! sad I know but it even goes round the roundabouts the wrong way so you know! I guess it has to because it'll say 2nd exit so if it went the wrong way round it would be completely wrong! lol!

It was so handy going to France, we've been in the past and got off in Calais or St Malo and had no idea where we're going, trying to remember to drive on the right side of the road and having to read French let alone trying to Navigate the route you want, this takes all the hassle out of that, you can pre-plan your route while on the ferry if you wish and as soon as you come off click go, it takes a few minutes to connect to the gps when you come off the ferry sometimes we've been spotted parked up while we wait for it to adjust this doesn't take long and off we go. The roads are sometimes hard to hear as the sat nav tries to say them in French!

6.
It is extremely compact and lightweight, it comes with a stick on the window thing which is quite good although I've just noticed you can buy one that clips into a fan grill which would be easier for us as this is in the middle and when hubby is driving I like to have a fiddle with it and see where we're going which I can't do if he's got it on the drivers side! It also can connect to traffic stations so that there is an extra little bit down the side which tells you of any accidents/holdups on your route and how long the delay is likely to be unfortunately I broke ours by squashing it! oops!

7.
This Tomtom can be updated with the computer, it also has references to POI's (Places of interest) which are good, including picnic areas, petrol stations, shopping, museums and much more. We especially find the petrol one useful as we use LPG (Liquid Petrolium Gas) and it lists these seperately you can also have it come on and say 'LPG forecourt in 2miles next one 10miles' which is handy.

8.
Browse map function is useful, by using this you can click a little symbol which then places the cursor where you are, you can zoom in and out of the area and have a look where you'd like to go with the places of interest marked on there, you can choose one and they click 'navigate there' which is useful. Sometimes we've been on some great little adventrues using this on holiday!

I've just looked to see how much these are now, I see a re-conditioned one is £129.99 or a new one is about £150.00 (Aug 2010)

The size of the screen is 9.5x5.5cm or 11cm corner to corner.

All in all it's a great little gadget and I wouldn't be without it now