This new GPS could well mark a new chapter in the history of personal navigation tools.

The Go 740 is the first member of TomTom's Live collection, which are updated in real time to ensure you always have the most accurate information at your fingertips.

What sets this range apart from other satnav systems is the fact they include a SIM card as well as a GPS chip, allowing them to connect to mobile phone network and download up-to-date information on traffic conditions, petrol prices, the weather and so on.

The SIM card can't be used for voice calls or text messages though--its only purpose is to keep your TomTom Go 740 permanently connected so it's always up to date wherever you are.

This is one of the great advantages of the new HD-Traffic system: it now knows the state of just about every road, not just motorways.

Earlier systems focused on main routes, and often created secondary traffic congestion by sending drivers round complicated diversions through residential areas.

Universal Coverage

This new system has been made possible thanks to a series of deals that TomTom has struck with mobile phone networks across Europe.

Different networks have agreed to provide anonymous data about the number of mobiles connected to different base stations to give an accurate picture of how many people are in the vicinity.

After a while, average patterns of usage become clear, and TomTom can calculate whether a particular road is busier than usual or not.

The intelligent algorithms filter out any mobile signals that are moving too slowly to be cars--so a large crowd of pedestrians won't trigger a 'jam" before being combined with the other data sources.

Once matched with input from 'traditional' traffic management tools, like traffic patrols and cameras on main roads, the current state of nearby roads is sent directly to the TomTom LIVE models' SIM card.

It's almost stupidly simple, it works instantly and it covers the whole of the country that you buy it for--three reasons why this system is already a big hit.

Unfortunately, TomTom have not yet managed to convince the different operators concerned to sign roaming agreements with it and with one another, so a UK HD-Traffic SIM card will only work in the UK, and the same is true for every other country where the service is available.

On The Road

We were very impressed by HD-Traffic in our tests.


Unlike the older RDS-TMC systems, HD-Traffic knows what traffic is like on smaller roads too.

While earlier generations of GPS would recalculate your route to try and provide a quicker way of getting to your destination, the Live system knows what conditions are like everywhere so it will not only give you a route that should be better, it'll also tell you how long your journey will take on this new itinerary.

Nevertheless, HD-Traffic isn't perfect, and we still found ourselves stuck in a few traffic jams on roads it claimed were wide open.

It didn’t happen often, but the HD-Traffic is not quite the perfect navigation system, even if it is a large step forward.

Slow Planning

One side-effect of processing all of this information is that the Go 740 takes longer than other GPS systems to calculate an itinerary.

In general, the heavier the traffic, the longer it takes the system to examine alternative routes.

In these conditions, though, there's more time to be saved overall by waiting a little longer to find your itinerary, so it would be unfair to compare the HD-Traffic to faster GPS systems that don't take into account as many details.

The model we tested only rarely took longer than thirty seconds, and that was mostly on routes of over 500 miles.

In our opinion, 'losing' fifteen seconds at the start of a trip to gain extra minutes or even hours across the rest of a long journey is more than worth it.

Other Live Services

The SIM card isn't just used for keeping up to date with traffic conditions, though--it can provide a lot more information besides.

Search facilities from Google complement the Point of Interest (POI) database included in the 740's map files with an almost endless catalog of shops, services, parking lots and so on.

The coverage is extremely vast, and a lot more detailed than we're used to from 'regular' GPS systems. 

We have a collection of particularly obscure addresses that we like to throw at GPS we're testing, and even the most up-to-date models usually struggle with some of them.

This time, though, the ability to search online as well as in its own internal database meant the TomTom Go 740 Live managed to find every single one of tricky POIs.

The interface could well be perfected as it doesn't seem to like fuzzy searching--sometimes you have to look for 'Hairdresser', 'Hairdressers' and 'Hairdressing' before you find the business you want, for instance.

The sorting of search results also seems a little random, and it's a real shame you can't put them in order of how far away they are from your current location.


Other services offered via the SIM card include weather updates, petrol prices and speed camera locations.

Also included are mobile speed cameras reported by other TomTom users.

All of these 'Live' services are available for free for three months, and then as a monthly subscription of 9.95 euros (7.99 GBP for the UK).

If you choose to cancel the subscription, the GPS still works as normal, but without any of these services made available by the always-on connectivity via the SIM card.

Other Features

As for everything else, the other aspects of this system are either lifted directly from the TomTom Go x30 series, or improved.

The iQ Routes system, for instance, has been updated, and now uses the average speed of five-minute segments of an itinerary to calculate how long it'll take you to get from A to B.

A new voice recognition system accepts a hundred commands, and you can display a list on the screen of the GPS to work out which ones you'd like to use.

It's still a little flakey, though, especially when it comes to inputting addresses.

In some cases, we found it was quicker to pull over, punch in the address by hand and then drive off than to wrestle with the voice system--especially given how easy the rest of the interface is to use.

While driving, navigation works perfectly: the screen  zooms to give different amounts of detail based on your speed, direction signs from alongside the road are reproduced on screen so you can't go wrong, and even the lane you need to take is drawn for you.

Conclusion

After the arrival of iQ Routes on its Go x30 line, TomTom has once again managed to innovate with its impressive collection of new Live services.

Even though our tests found one or two weaknesses in the system, adding an Internet connection to a GPS puts a huge amount of extra information at its disposal that can only improve their functionality.

Once your free three months are above, we're betting you'll be tempted to subsribe to this incredibly useful service.