TomTom GO 2014 series
UPDATE: I’ve added the above image, plus several screen shots at the end of this post.
The US will finally get the new TomTom GO series, perhaps within a year of when they were announced for Europe. The company still hasn’t released model numbers, saying “more details, pricing and availability will be announced closer to the launch date late Q1 2014.”
The announcement coincides with the Consumer Electronics Show, but in a further sign of TomTom’s retreat from the US market, they won’t even have their own booth at the massive trade show: “The new TomTom GO range will be showcased in their distributor, Wynit’s booth.”
Enough complaints! What about features? The company is calling the new GO range traffic-centric, with traffic data delivered via a new TomTom MyDrive mobile app (iPhone and Android compatible), using your own data plan. They promise “to deliver accurate traffic information, with precision as close as 30 feet, every two minutes.” Here’s a few more notable features:
- Jam Ahead Warning: The risk of accidents from sudden breaking when drivers approach the back of a slow-moving traffic jam is well recognized. TomTom uses its unrivalled ability to pinpoint the back of the traffic jam and the speed of the traffic to provide an extra alert.
- Road Closure Detection: The automatic detection of road closures is now extended and includes major secondary roads as well as highways. This improves the accuracy of routing and helps road users save time and fuel from unexpected diversions.
- Road Works Detection: accurately detects road work on highways, enabling drivers to adapt their journeys to avoid delays or adjust their trip times.
Despite the slow speed at which these units are coming to our shores, they are likely to be embraced by quite a few road warriors, many of whom find TomTom’s traffic info superior to that of other providers.
Here’s the full news release.
About Rich Owings
The thing that really strikes me about that product photo is that there isn’t a single road name or route number anywhere on the map. Just a bunch of pretty lines. Is that really what the map looks like?
Between the maps and firmware, Garmin also seems to be heading in the same direction. Was driving around the greater NYC area last week with the newest maps on my 3550 and noticed the same kind of thing. Most of the Interstate highways didn’t even have shields on them.
Not too impressed with this trend, I guess I’m just getting old… 😉
Boyd, your comment reminds me of the ‘Apple Schematic Maps’ concept, where less is more. Much less.
Much different than what you or I am used to, but may actually function well in practice.
http://williamgill.de/tag/nokia-maps/
Street names, numbers, symbols? That’s just going to confuse people and clutter the map! 😉
Considering the problems many of us current TT users are having with MyDrive while updating our units, TomTom might have spent their time better trying to get their updating software to function better! Yesterday I had a 50kb map update and 50.1 kb satellite update which took mere seconds to download and 45 minutes to update!
So TomTom can access traffic data through an Android or iPhone app. Garmin just supports Android (to my knowledge). Wonder why no iPhone support yet?
I take it still no more news about these TomTom’s yet. Interested to see what they will cost and when they will be launched. Can’t wait for a review and see what you think.
The 500 and 600 are shown on Amazon as being released on March 31.
Thanks, should have thought to look there. Do you plan to get one to review? I love reading your reviews and trust them.
Thanks Cary. My time for the site is getting severely limited, so I’m not sure if I’ll be reviewing one or not. If I could get you a loaner, would you have any interest in writing a review?