TomTom iPhone Car Kit

TomTom iPhone cradle

How it works

Mounted to the windscreen or dashboard by a suction cup, TomTom’s adjustable cradle not only holds the iPhone in place – it can also be rotated to put the phone into portrait or landscape view. (The iPhone automatically detects which way is up and adjusts the screen layout.) The iPhone then snaps into an Apple dock connector.

The cradle also has a rear-mounted speaker, front-side microphone, volume control on the side, and a 3.5mm line out for audio. A car-charger completes the package.

But few things are cheap with the iPhone. The TomTom Car Kit for iPhone costs $198 … and you’ll still have to pay another $120 to download the New Zealand maps application from the iTunes app store, making a total of almost $320. Some TomTom dedicated in-car GPS units are cheaper than this but these units don't have bluetooth car-kit capability.

Performance

iPhone with GPS app

We tested the iPhone with the TomTom Car Kit on the same Wellington city routes we’d used for our recent GPS test. Not surprisingly, it performed almost identically to the TomTom GO 750 ($599) – the top-scoring unit in that test.

It located our Points of Interest (POIs) with ease and gave clear voice instructions that were easy to follow. There was good advanced warning of the next action such as “turn right, then left turn ahead”. It named the streets and, unlike the GO 750, didn’t have any voice glitches.

The iPhone also made the same mistake as the GO 750, telling us to “keep right and take the exit” on a stretch of motorway. The exit was three lanes to the left and, although the screen instructions were accurate, the voice instructions would have made us miss it. This was the only navigation error the iPhone made.

Its main drawback was the volume difference between phone calls and the unit’s voice instructions. We had to turn up the volume significantly for phone calls because they were much quieter than the instructions. Taking calls while using the GPS means you have to hastily adjust the cradle’s external volume control.

Ease of use

The iPhone has virtually the same menu structure and comprehensive range of options and features as the TomTom Go 750. There are advanced route-planning options – and a convenient “call POI” function automatically phones the POI you selected. You can also use the phone's web browser to find addresses or phone numbers not contained in the POI menu.

Reading information wasn’t quite as easy on the iPhone’s 3.5" screen (it’s smaller than the GO 750’s 4.3"). Its menu and keyboard buttons were also small, making it easy to press the wrong button. And occasionally the iPhone was slow: after we pressed a menu button or entered part of a POI using predictive text, the iPhone could take five seconds or more to skip to the next screen.