TomTom VIA 135 M (5 Inches) Car GPS Europe 45 to Life Mapping

I ummed and arred about this satnav and nearly went for the Garmin 2597 but my nephew, a long-distance coach driver persuaded me that the TomTom is best. I wish I'd ignored him.You don't get any documentation for the satnav out of the box except for a flyer to tell you to plug it into your computer. It doesn't explain the subtleties of the different connection options so the user has to guess which is the one to use for download (MyDrive or TomTom Home) I elected myDrive and was connected. I elected to download the Europe map updates. They started off and my satnav said, OK, disconnect form PC. But the PC said, Sty Connected. Good job I did! Download OK.Then I elected to download the speed camera database. I ignored the instruction on my satnav to disconnect and started the download. PC said it would take 2 hours 30 mins. Then satnav burst into life and agreed with timing. So sat there waiting for download to complete (it goes very much faster towards the end). However, the satnav must have a power-off timer built in so that it switches off after approx two hours - before the download completed!!I powered back up, reconnected and saw a msg on PC to say download not complete. It took ages to figure out how to complete and I'm still not sure that it did it. My account at TomTom shows that my satnav has europe maps and speed cameras. I won't know until I get to France.Powering off is a problem. I once borrowed a TomTom in France and after an hour or so it too powered off for no reason. It took a long time before I could get it back on again. I hope this new 135M is not going to do the same.All in all, I am not happy with TomTom. My very first satnav years ago was a Road Angel. It was pretty slow but it worked well enough and the book was good at helping out. I'll add more comments as I get to use the new one, but setting it up and learning how to navigate the screens and what does what is a nightmare!!!........part two ............OK....I've now downloaded the User Guide to my Kindle and my Tablet computer so I can read it more easily. With this and a stab at the intuitive (hard work, though) nature of the beast I was able to get some use from it. And I have to say, my initial tests were very satisfactory.First, the system works very well while driving and, when you vary your route, I found that it re-calculated in less than 4 seconds!! Very good. That helps a lot.But one thing is odd: I bought this model because it allowed me to issue voice commands. However, the manual and the device's help lists the commands that one can give, which, unfortunately vary. An example: You are supposed to be able to tell the satnav to take you to a 'hotel', a 'restaurant' or 'home'. So I would say, 'drive me to x'; or, 'take me to x'. But the menu sys you should use the words 'navigate', 'take', 'drive', yet the system accepts only the words it wants - invariably not the ones in the user guide! Seems the systems designers and the tech authors need to get together on this! That said, once learned, it works.We'll see how it goes....

This is my first in-car satnav. Up to this I had been using google maps on my iphone. The TomTom is a huge improvement. It is very intuitive. I was able to figure out all the features without having to refer to the manual.The route choices are sensible and advertised journey times are accurate. The visual display is clear, and the options to flip between different views (birds-eye to ground level) are very nice. The night colour display is also very easy on the eye.Some reviews had suggested that the screen was on the large side but I wouldn't want anything smaller. That said the battery consumption is heavy enough as a result.I've used it now in Ireland, Luxembourg, Belgium, Germany and Spain. The Belgian and Irish speedlimits are accurate, the German ones less so and the Spanish ones less so again. In Spain you can't rely at all on the speed limit feature which is a pity.Caveat: this is at the upper end of the price range and it's the only satnav I've used so I don't really have a benchmark.

Its good and worked reasonably well in Sicily although a couple of times it tried too hard to find the shortest route and took us down some roads too narrow for cars.If the destination is not quite where you want it, its difficult to slightly alter by just touching the point on the map. You can do this easily on the Garmin.I also understand that more expensive Tomtoms have a better response.I put a memory chip before downloading the updates and it all worked very smoothly. so there is lots of space on the device I used a 16gb sandisk micro SD card.These days I wouldn't be without a sat nav. They are pretty indispensable. This version is not the cheapest and it certainly isn't the most expensive but to my mind gives a great coverage of Europe and free map updates.Yes the camera updates are extra but that's par for the course.All in all a good buy.

It is an absolutely excellent piece of kit.I lost one recently and it was never returned so I have bought a second one as I am so pleased with it.I use it just about every day without any problems and it will take me straight to the selected address front door.I have been last week on holiday in the Costa del Sol area of Spain and it took me every where that I needed to go even to Gibralter without problems using its European maps.Also the Blue Tooth connection to my Samsung Ace3 phone works really well so that I can be hands free in phone conversations with no problems at all and it is so easy to syncronise the two together.

Bought this for use abroad. Getting used to making it go, but appears to do what it should. The touch screen is a little sluggish, and I find that the programming is not as intuitive as I'd like, but maybe I'm just a bit dim, and things will improve with use!

I will have more to say about it after I have used it on the continent, so far in Britain it worked well.

Good tool does exactly what it should do, only criticism takes far to long to download to setup , three and a half hours !!!!

I bought this sat nav in October 2015 and over the last month the connection inside the sat nav has become disconnected and switches off I have to stop and wiggle the lead to get it to switch back on, this interrupts my journey on a frequent basis. I have had to buy a replacement and have gone for another brand as I feel that I have not had full value with the Tom Tom.