TomTomCar Sat Nav VIA 52, 5 Inch with Handsfree Calling, Traffic via Smartphone and WE Maps, Resistive Screen

Love the face I don’t need to balance my phone in a flimsy holder for satnav… this little unit is now hardwired to my jimny and is super easy to use and very accurate

I've had this for about 4 months now so reasonable time to post a review.I used this in France (and updated it prior to leaving). We didn't have a postcode as it was some barn in the middle of rural France, but had the GPS co-ordinates, which it does allow you to input. It handled it very well and noted that it disabled the speed cameras as soon as it determined it wasn't in the UK (AA handbook states that it's illegal to track speed camera locations), so that was a nice touch. Acquiring the satellite on start-up takes a little while - 2-3 minutes but provided you're not in a hurry, this is fine. However, it's very easy to set "avoid motorways" when defining your route options which results in you constantly being sent back on yourself - if you go and recheck this, you should be ok.The updates take a very long time though - 6 hours. TomTom probably have some piddly little server in the US dishing out files on a dial-up modem. I saw everyone here complained about that, it's true. I just set mine to run overnight and in the MyDrive app, clicked on the "prevent computer shutting down when this app is open" as laptops will powerdown over night if you don't do this.Even then, it missed out a community update (only 271kb) but that was sorted in about 5mins.If you get locked out of your MyDrive account due to too many wrong passwords, all I had to do was wait a few hours - I saw a few comments on the forums about needing to call the TomTom helpdesk - thankfully I didn't need to do this.The bluetooth tethering for traffic didn't work so well for me, but then, I didn't really make much of an effort with it. If you're going to do that on a regular basis, you may as well use your phone and stick it on the dash (but I'm weird like that).I purchased it primarily for EU/UK wide travel so having all the maps preloaded works for me. To compare, when I went to France, I also downloaded a section of the offline maps on my phone to use with Googlemaps. It's good, but you have to have quite alot of space on the phone for this if you want to cover the entire journey, which to me is a pain. There is a micro-SD slot you can insert in the SatNav just for maps/routes etc. - this is better as you won't be competing for space with photos or videos.I like the fact that you have lifetime updates, as my previous one charged me £30/pa for the pleasure. The speed cameras in the UK cost extra but I suspect that the community updates have included those anyway.Finally, you might ask yourself - why would you want to buy a satnav these days?Well, yes, your phone could do the job, but the following scenario is entirely possible:-you're driving at 50mph + you have no 3G signal in a new area....-Googlemaps is updating very slowly-you haven't preloaded the data on your phone (if you tried to be clever)-you're driving in the sticks somewhere (Uk or EU)

I was very pleased with this product. It is a great improvement on my last Sat Nav which I have had for a number of years.

Great sat navSuction did not stick on dashboard only windscreenI’ve used it about 3 times and it fell from the windscreen once maybe because of bumpy roadsEasy to set up

I was shocked when I went past where I was going and instead of this thing refiguring out how to get there, it just sat there, allowing me get stranded and figure it out on my own. It's a NO for me. Not using.