TomTom Go Live TopGear Edition

Star turn

To give you a taste of what’s in store, if you miss a turn he will bark “Turn right. Turn RIGHT. You missed it! For the love of...” and if you continue up the wrong road you get “Stop and turn around where possible. Yes, you’ve cocked up again. Pay attention!”.

BBC TV's TopGear team: Thankfully, you only get a voice from the big chap in the middle

You can also choose between a metric and an imperial Jeremy, which came as quite a surprise. I’d have imagined him point blank refusing to countenance the former smacking, as it does, of things European and a world map no longer coloured red.

Like or loathe the talent, this is one of the more usable celebrity satnav voices I’ve encountered and I’ll take it any day over Brian Blessed or Yoda or John Cleese. Still, if listening to Clarkson begins to grate, you can always switch to either one of the three other English voices fitted.

Celeb voice aside everything else is standard TomTom fare and includes maps of the UK and the Republic of Ireland, HD Traffic congestion monitoring and IQ Routes to plan the historically optimum path twixt A and B. There’s also one year's free subscription to TomTom’s LIVE services - including Google Local Search, speed camera locations and HD Traffic - across Western Europe.

The same is true of the physical design. The 4.3in resistive screen is sharp and bright and the built-in mount is versatile, solid and compact. It’s also free of any exterior TopGear branding, which I take to be a good thing.

Excellent TT built-in mount

Using the device in anger I found route selection and traffic jam avoidance to be good, the vocal guidance technically succinct and accurate and a rummage through the menus turned up plenty of peripheral options like being able to edit or add your own points-of-interest.

One design choice I do take issue with though, is the oddly angled mouth of the micro USB port, which rules out using a non-TomTom cable and that means you will be forever moving it between car and house if you need to connect your TomTom to your PC.

Verdict

An essentially standard but still very competent and feature-laden 4.3in TomTom satnav with added Jeremy Clarkson. If you must have a celebrity voiced satnav, this is one of the more bearable on a practical level, providing of course you don’t think that JC is too much of a twit. ®

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