Bought this because my other favourite satnav kept sending me down very narrow country lanes in my 32 t lorry because apparently it was 30 seconds faster than sticking to the main roads. After a few hairy encounters, I decided that this could not continue, and bought this dedicated HGV satnav.

As far as the actual routing goes, I am extremely pleased. It keeps me on the main roads until the very last possible moment, and so far has not send me down any routes that included low bridges. Voice cues are easy to understand, and the advice about which lane to use is very helpful.

However, both the address database and maps are badly out-of-date, and that in spite of me updating the satnav every week before I go back to work. There are dual carriageways in my area Northern Ireland that were completed years ago that this satnav still knows nothing about, and while it is pretty good with actual addresses, from a dedicated HGV satnav I would have expected that it also knows at least the major companies in the area, but no such luck. For multidrop deliveries, I have to google the company first to then find out its street address so that I can enter the latter into the satnav. My “other” satnav which is not even supposed to be for commercial drivers, knows all but the most obscure companies in the area.

I also had to stop the Bluetooth pairing with my mobile as the satnav would try to take over everything, including phone calls, etc., without realising that I was hooked up to a handsfree, which it then promptly disconnected. How the unit interacts with a modern smart phone certainly needs a lot more consideration before this function will be useful. However, using the phone as a hotspot to allow the satnav to update the maps and get traffic information seems to be working well enough.

Overall, a lifesaver when driving a lorry, but some more refinement needed to bring its performance in line with other modern smart devices.

This is clearly significantly more technically advanced than the Hieha satnav that I have been using in my truck for the last few years (see separate review). However, this TomTom satnav is definitely overpriced for what it is. The Hieha currently sells for about 46, whereas this TomTom product is currently over 270. Big difference.

I wanted to reward myself for passing my artic test on the first attempt, so I waited until Black Friday and bought the TomTom when it was just over 200. It was a bit of a shock going down to a smaller screen size, but it was nice that it acts as a hands-free for my mobile phone. It also gives you the option for it to read out text messages as they are received on your phone.

I also like the fact that it tries to guess where you might be going next. So, for example, I regularly do trailer swaps where I take an empty trailer anywhere around the UK, then always take the full trailer that I have collected back to our customer in Kettering. So it often asks me ‘Are you going back to Kettering?’ and gives a YES button and a NO button. Nice touch.

What isn’t so nice is that it randomly decides to turn itself off and back on again whilst I am driving, probably once a day or maybe every other day. Bit disconcerting. Not what you would expect from a 270 device. The map updates work better with the TomTom than with the Hieha. I update it by connecting it to my PC at home, same as the Hieha, but it’s nice that the TomTom device tells you when there are new updates available, in the main menu. Updates seem to appear roughly once a month, whereas Hieha didn’t update their UK map for about two years. Pity that there don’t seem to be any silly voices available on TomTom, like the crazy squirrel voice that I used to have in my Garmin satnav.

Another thing that can be a bit frustrating is the small buttons that it puts up on the screen, such as the YES and NO choices mentioned earlier, or when you have an incoming call and it gives you a button in the bottom right corner to accept the call, or you want it to read out an incoming text message. In a truck your device tends to be quite a long way away from you, quite a long reach, because a truck cab is much bigger than the area where the driver sits in a car. It’s a small screen anyway (compared to my Hieha) and you have a very small button, and it’s easy to jab at a button and hit somewhere else on the coloured bar. When that happens, the whole bar disappears! So they need to move the YES and NO buttons a bit further apart, then allow you to touch somewhere in the general area of a button to activate it.

You set up the options how you want them so, as an example, I set my satnav never to use toll roads. With the Hieha this would mean that it would never, ever send me over the Dartford crossing, which is a toll crossing. TomTom have a much more practical solution. It will send you over the Dartford crossing, but when it has calculated the route it will flash a warning across the top of the screen, telling you that part of the route doesn’t meet your preferred options. It would be better if that warning stayed up a bit longer. It would also be nice if there was a bigger button to click if you wanted more info, instead of the tiny line of text that you can click on now.

Another thing that takes a bit of getting used to is it working as a hands free unit for your phone. Obviously that’s great when you’re driving, but can be a bit of a pain in the backside if you’re out of the truck but have left the ignition on. If someone rings you and you swipe the phone to accept the call, or you ring someone from outside the truck, the satnav will promptly ‘hijack’ the call, meaning that you can’t hear them and they can’t hear you (until you climb back into the cab). I have always left the ignition on in the past when leaving the truck, mainly so that I can obtain an instant response from my tachograph (by pressing the down button) of how long I have been waiting or been on other work, or on break. Now I have to try to get into the habit of leaving the ignition off when I’m not in the vehicle.

So although this product is good, it definitely could still be improved further. I would probably be willing to pay about 200 for one, but no more. So I agree with the other reviewer who said that this TomTom product is currently priced at about 75 more than it should be.