 TomTom GO 750
Theo Boshoff
With today’s state of the roads and all the changes happening, not only for the World Cup, but general upgrades to the road system, coupled with having to travel far and wide for either meetings or parties, having a GPS is almost a must-have.
TomTom’s Go 750 could just be the device that will assist you in getting around town and indeed the whole of Southern Africa and the world.
Apart from the normal satellite connectivity to get GPS signals and do the whole calculation of positions thing to help you navigate wherever you wish to go, the Go 750 also features 3G connectivity for added voice and data communication.
The device further features Instant Message capabilities for various networks, allowing users to always be in contact with people while on the road.
 The user interface is really simple to use, but we did experience some difficulty in finding certain spots in the points of interest (POI). For instance, searching for Soccer City in Soweto had us searching a while to find something resembling the stadium. We did manage to find it, but under another name, under sports facilities in the menus. But if hadn’t known the other names or roughly where the stadium is located, we would have had a hard time getting there. So it’s not great for international visitors.
Apart from that, finding other POIs was easy and the device directed us straight to where we wanted to go, both using highways and on the setting to calculate a route without having to go on highways – well, not long ways on highways.
We liked the fact that we got some informative route details from the device before we even departed for the stadium.
The integrated speed camera detection also helped us to not get caught and have to cough up some of our hard-earned cash to the traffic department.
As mentioned, it was easy to operate and navigate through the menus. It is, in fact, very intuitive and leads you to the next step you would have chosen, to set up a route or to simply check a map.
Something that did irk us was that the device was a tad slow in recalculating a route when we did take a wrong turn and went off the beaten track. At times it took up to ten seconds for a new route to be calculated.
The lane-guidance feature was good for getting in the right lane when you wanted to turn somewhere. We never had to change lanes at the last second, thus avoiding any accidents.
There is no wall socket charger in the box, so users will either have to buy one or always use the in-car lighter charger, which can be a bit annoying when you are on the couch trying to plan a route for tomorrow’s activities and the battery dies.
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