TomTom HD Traffic

[russ_a]

Has anyone got a TomTom with the new HD Traffic alerts?

Just wondering if it actually worked or is just a gimmick?

Cheers

Riss

[David Wiltshire]

I bought the TomTom 540 live about 5 months ago. The traffic jam updates on your planned route are accurate to about 1 minute of your arrival time and this was over a number of 50-200 mile trips. Its good as my car runs on V-power and it shows you the nearest/cheapest station. The camera alerts are good but not quite as good as the RA Pro Connected I have. So all in all my opinion is that its very good but unless you are using it a lot the monthly subscription is quite dear. Oh and the bluetooth phone system is 100%. On a couple of occasions I've had it on locally and the suggested routes to avoid problems is spot on.

[russ_a]

Many thanks Dave,

It's the 540 im looking at, have you got the RDS add-on too?

[David Wiltshire]

Don't think I have what is it?

[russ_a]

I think it's an aerial that plugs into the device to allow it to receive RDS Traffic Info

[Mattt]

Is it RDS? I thought there was a TMC add on?

[David Wiltshire]

As far as I know it takes the info on jams etc from the mobile phone network. Anyway it seems to be accurate, I understood that the radio based traffic info service wasn't very good so I avoided the bother and opted for the TomTom system.

[waremark]

My son has a 940 Live. He thinks the traffic info is brilliant.

The cheapest traffic info is 'free' in units which use TMC (traffic data from radio signals, using an external aerial). In my experience reception and quality of traffic info are both sufficiently poor to make this not worth bothering with.

Between the two in cost and quality come traffic subscription services using a mobile phone with Bluetooth and GPRS. For some reason the iPhone which I use is not compatible with this.