Tom-tom's are first and foremost the best gps line I have ever seen in my store iv been lucky enough to test drive most the main branded gps's in the last year. Tom-tom 300, 500, 700 are right up there with the pro's for good prices.
This review is obviously on the Tom-tom 700 though you may want to read my other reviews on the other two when I get them up to compare.
In my opinion the 700 is the only in car entertainment that you need (except for a stereo). It has inbuilt Bluetooth to connect to a Bluetooth enabled phone. You can make and receive calls, right, send and read text messages and even accesses a built in phone book for phone numbers for restaurants, hotels, clubs, hospitals ext. A very large amount of the built in points of interest have a number to call for information or bookings. And the best thing of all is it can take you any where in the hole of the UK and Europe.
Some of the features of the 700 are standard things like home address button for quickly getting home, favorites where you can save friends, families, customers addresses, full post code search, normal address search and points of interest that are things like hospitals restaurants ext. there are a huge amount of different points of interest on all the tom-tom range. There is even web sites where you can down load different voices that tell you when to go left, right. My personal favorite is Ozzy Osbourne.
It also has other functions that some more basic sat nav units don't have. Itinerary planning where you can set up before your journey and have any number or different destinations set up, eg. Start at home got to London then go to Bristol then go to Bedford then go back home. As well as A to B planning where you tell the sat nav before you journey, I want to start here and I want to go there, so when you get in the car you just press start and you're off. The cover of the Tom-tom 700 can also be removed and the color changed. Though make sure when you buy it says tom-tom 700!!! Since the 300 and 500 have a hole in the bottom right corner where the memory stick is.
The unit has built in 20GB hard drive to save numbers, points of interest, favorites, and planed routes, and extra voice over's. For those of you that don't understand hard drive memory capacity 20GB is an almost impossible about of memory to fill up. (if anyone has filled a Tom-tom 700 up please tell me.)
The disadvantages, the size it's just a bit too big to practically fit in a pocket, and a lot of women will find it difficult to fit in an average hand bag. Though it fits great in a brief case. Also it's just like a Microsoft computer. It has hiccups, about 1 every couple of months it will decide that it does not want to do one of the following:
Turn off, turn on, change menu, do anything at all. To fix this just get a pin or a mechanical pencil and push the little reset button on the back of the 700.
SAFTY!!!! A word of warning to keep you tom-tom or any other sat nav unit safe from twats. Never leave the unit in the car and if you do never never never put in the glove compartment or under any of the front seats always under rear seats or in some random hidden cubby hole but even then its not safe as they always know where to look. Also take the window clinging device off and put in glove compartment. Then they wont see the clip on bit and smash your window just to see if the sat nav in the glove compartment. Remember a sat nav unit is NEVER 100% use your common sense if it says to go over a bridge witch is half built don't go over it, if it tells you to turn down a one way road don't be stupid. Be smart be safe.
To conclude the tom-tom 700 is almost exactly the same as the 500. though if you are thinking of ever going to Europe even only once of twice for holiday I would pay the little bit extra for the 700 since the 500 only has main roads of Europe and the 700 has road level mapping. The main grope of people I would suggest this for is families that are thinking of going to Europe and business men that go to Europe on business.
to compair the tomtom range and any other sat nav just look at my other reveiws ill try to get then up as soon as posible.