TomTom Go 750 Live review

With the explosion in Android smartphones and the arrival of satnav on the iPhone, prices for smartphone satnav software have plummeted in the past 12 months. It’s now a commodity rather than a luxury, and that puts standalone products such the new TomTom Go Live 750 in a precarious position. Is there any room for a £200 product when you can buy the equivalent on a phone for well below £100?

It can’t possibly compete on price, but that doesn’t mean this is a poor product. In fact, this TomTom continues in the vein of last year’s Go 740 Live (web ID: 237552). It offers excellent routing, with IQ Routes to ensure that those it calculates are based on real average speeds rather than posted speed limits. Map Share allows you to take advantage of user-submitted map corrections and send in your own.

And, if you choose to pay the £8 inc VAT per month charge, you get all the benefits of TomTom’s live traffic updates and data services (via the built-in GPRS radio). The services also include a live fuel price search, POI look-up via Google, and speed camera alerts.

It still works brilliantly too. In our road tests, the TomTom Go 750 Live, just like its predecessor, is the only product to come close to reliably finding the fastest routes in and around London, and its instructions are clear and timely.

So what’s new? Well, not a lot, and therein lies the 750’s main problem. The UI has been given an update – a long overdue improvement that includes a revamp of the dashboard panel and route overview screens. The map graphics have been tarted up, and IQ Routes info added to the traffic bar on the right of the main screen. In the routing options, you now have the option to go “Eco”, which will pick the route likely to use the least fuel.

Alas, it’s still packaged in the same dumpy 127 x 24.3 x 85mm (WDH) shell, which makes it awkward to stash in a pocket, and the screen remains stuck at a lowly 480 x 272. We’d love to have seen a sleeker device with a nicer screen.

But although the Go 750 Live is beginning to look old-fashioned, and it’s certainly not worth an upgrade from the Go 730 or Go 740 Live, it’s still the best in the business. And the bonus is that it’s available at a price considerably less than both its predecessors.